Sex Lives of the Great Dictators (23 page)

Copies were soon changing hands at $500 a time.

Students at the University of the Philippines got hold of a copy. They commandeered the University radio station and played a looped section of the tape. In it, Marcos was begging Dovie to perform oral sex on him. Even the troops sent to re-take the radio station found it hard to keep a straight face. With his tongue buried firmly in his cheek, Senator Benigno Aquino called for a congressional investigation.

The U.S. authorities had to employ the strictest security to gel Dovie out of the country.

Imelda's secret agents were curl to get her. Eventually, Dovie had to fly via Hong Kong, where an attempt was made on her life. The British secret service had to take her into protective custody for five days.

Dovie continued her campaign against Marcos from the U.S., publishing her accusations in the Manila-based journal
Graphic
, which was closed down, and a book called
Marcos'

Lovie Dovie
, which included nude photographs. This mysteriously disappeared from bookshelves. Even the Library of Congress's copy has gone missing.

Meanwhile, Marcos was having an affair with the wife of a U.S. Navy officer and State Department cables were describing him as a "ladies" man". There were dangers for Filipino-American relations in this affair and Marcos soon moved on to Filipino singer Carmen Soriano. Imelda caught up with her in San Francisco in 19"70. Going into her apartment with her financial adviser, Ernesto Villatuya, Imelda demanded that Carmen sign a declaration that she had never gone to bed with Ferdinand. When she refused, Imelda took a swing at her. She ducked and Imelda floored Villatuya. Soon after, he was made head of the Philippine National Bank, a position he held until 1972.

Imelda began extorting money and gold out of her husband over his affairs. At the same time she travelled the world as a roving representative of the Philippine head of state. She went to Libya and, afterwards, implied that Qaddafy had made a pass at her. But to friends, she confided that Qaddafy was gay. There were gay rumours about her too. Among the jetset the word was that Imelda and her constant companion Cristina Ford, wife of Henry Ford II, were lovers. Other gossip was that Imelda had gone to bed with actor George Hamilton.

It was Imelda's sexual jealousy that finally brought the Marcoses down. It was she who ordered that Benigno Aquino's feet should not touch Filipino soil again when he flew back from exile in 1983. Marcos watched in horror as his political rival was shot down on the aircraft steps at Manila airport in front of a plane-load of international journalists. He knew his time was up. Although Marcos managed to blame top military officials for the

assassination and fixed the presidential elections, they had to flee the Philippines in 1986.

The new president was Benigno Aquino's widow, Corazon. Marcos died of lupus in exile in Hawaii in 1989. Imelda went on to become the queen of the chat shows.

12 - EATING OUT IN AFRICA

One of the most bloodthirsty dictators Africa has known was Idi Amin of Uganda. The son of a peasant witch doctor, he converted to Islam. His religion, however, did not stop him drinking. One morning, while he was still in the King's African Rifles, he awoke in a Mogadishu brothel with a fearsome hangover to hear the cry of the imam calling the faithful to morning prayer. Amin knelt at the brothel window and bowed his head, but his prayers were interrupted by the snores of the woman he had left in bed. So he walked over to her, pulled her out of bed by the hair, slapped her across the face and said in Swahili: "Pray you Muslim bitch."

After rising through the ranks of the Ugandan army to become a colonel, Amin staged a coup in 1971, and established his infamous dictatorship. Once in power Amin ruled both the country and his personal life with an awesome vindictiveness. To get any woman he wanted, he would simply order the execution of her husband or boyfriend. Edward Rugumayo,

Amin's Minister of Education who defected in 1973, wrote a five-thousand-word

condemnation of Amin, which he circulated around the OAU, UN and Commonwealth. In it, he charged Amin with being "a racist, tribalist and dictator" and said that Amin "would kill anyone without hesitation as long as it serves his interests, such as prolonging his stay in power or getting what he wants, such as a woman or money".

Women who did not comply with Amin's orders would be brutally raped. Their breasts would be cut off. Some ended up in Amin's fridge. Sarah Amin, his fifth wife, said that she saw the head of a beautiful girl called Ruth in the icebox. She had been one of Amin's lovers and he suspected her of seeing other men.

Amin's first wife was Malyamu Kibedi, the daughter of a schoolteacher. He fell in love with her when he was a twenty-eight-year-old sergeant and army boxing champion. She was an intelligent six-footer. Her family opposed the match, but they lived together anyway.

They had several children, but did not get married formally until 1966 when they had already been together for thirteen years. Even then, there was no ceremony. Amin simply paid the bride price and the marriage was recognized. He did this because, as a Muslim, he was ready to take a second wife and he wanted Malyamu to be recognized as the senior of the two.

Three months after his marriage to Malyamu, he married Kay Adroa in a registry office.

The daughter of a clergyman, Kay was a student at Makerere University and a striking ebony-skinned girl. She wore white for the wedding. Amin turned out in full dress uniform. The ceremony took place in Amin's home town, Arua, and there was a proper wedding reception.

Kay called Malyamu "Mama" in recognition of her status as senior wife.

Within a year, Amin married again. He had already risen to national prominence and was seen as a political threat by President Milton Obote. So he married Nora, a Langi from Obote's own region to allay his fears of tribal rivalry. She moved in with the other two wives and, by the late 1960s, Amin had fourteen or fifteen children.

Wife number four was Medina, a Baganda dancer. Her troupe, the Heartbeat of Africa, used to entertain foreign dignitaries at state functions. She was agile and sexy, and Amin used to sit and watch her spellbound. She was so attractive that she was picked to star in a Ugandan tourist film - though Amin had the footage of her cut out after they were married.

Their affair started in 1971 just after Amin had ousted Obote. In September 1972, people all over Uganda were tuning in to hear news of the ill-fated invasion Milton Obote had mounted from Tanzania. Instead, the news was dominated by the announcement of Amin's forthcoming marriage. Medina, Amin said, had been given to him by the grateful people of Buganda in recognition of all he had done for them since the coup. The only thing Amin had done for the people of Buganda was to murder them brutally in their thousands.

In March 1974, during the fighting that followed the mutiny of Brigadier Charles Arube, Amin had another incongruous announcement for his people. His first three wives, Malyamu, Kay and Nora were being divorced because, Amin said, they were involved in business. This was true. Amin himself had given them textile shops confiscated from the exiled Ugandan Asians. Malyamu, it was also intimated, was politically suspect. Her brother, Wanume Kibedi, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, had recently fled the country. Kay had to go because she was a cousin, the communique said, and this was too close a blood relationship to sustain a marriage.

The real reason was entirely different. With Medina and his mistresses, Amin had little time for his first three wives. He kept them locked up in one of the presidential lodges. Bored and frustrated, they took lovers. Kay became pregnant by Peter Mbalu-Mukasa, a doctor on the staff of Mulago Hospital and a married man with several children.

One night, the three women held a party for their lovers. Their guards were terrified that Amin would find out and phoned him directly. Furious, Amin got on the phone and told his wives that he was coming over to throw them out. They told him to keep Medina and go to hell. Then they locked the guards out and got on with their fun.

The following day, they heard about their divorces on the radio. Amin simply repudiated them three times, Muslim-style. Later he sent official letters of dismissal.

But, for Amin, this was not enough. A month later Malyamu was arrested for allegedly smuggling a bolt of cloth into Kenya. Refused bail, she was kept in prison for three weeks. In court, she was given a hefty fine and released.

The following year Malyamu was injured in an accident when one of Amin's bodyguards drove into her car. When Amin heard about the incident, he said: "Is she dead?"

She was taken to hospital and lodged in a private ward at her own expense. An arm and a leg had been broken. She was put in traction and was in considerable pain when Amin turned up with a posse of journalists from the presidential press unit. He picked a fight with her in front everyone.

"You are a very unlucky woman. You cannot run your life properly," he chided. He told her to go to a witch doctor whose magic would save her from future misfortune.

The next day, he ordered her removed from the private ward, even though she was paying for it herself, and put in a public ward.

In November 1975, she flew to London to seek medical help and never returned. She left her children with his other wives and her father took over her shop. Amin had the shop looted.

Kay's father, the Reverend Adroa, contacted Amin and persuaded him to take her back.

Amin, who had no idea she was pregnant, agreed to build her a house in his home town Arua, but she did not want to live there. Amin visited her in her flat several times and they had blazing rows. After one of these confrontations she was arrested for the possession of a gun and ammunition. When he turned up at the police station, the row continued through the bars of her cell.

"You can't have me arrested for keeping a pistol which you yourself left in my apartment," she screamed.

She was held overnight. In the morning, she explained to the magistrate that the gun belonged to her husband and she was released.

A few days later, her dismembered body was found in the trunk of her lover's car. He had killed himself and had tried to kill his family. There are indications that he had tried to perform an abortion on her which went wrong and she bled to death. Why the body was dismembered remains a mystery.

Amin had it sewn back together again to show to their children.

"Your mother was a bad woman," Amin told them. "See what happened to her."

This humiliating harangue took place in front of reporters and the TV cameras. Amin did not attend Kay's funeral, nor did he send a representative. There were no further

investigations by the police and her name was never mentioned again.

Amin's third wife Nora fared better and she continued running the business Amin had given her. This was probably for political reasons. She was a Langi, a section of the population he could not afford to alienate.

Medina was now the only wife and suffered for it. Their relationship was passionate -

often violent. After one assassination attempt which he suspected she had had a hand in, he beat her so savagely that he fractured his own wrist.

He beat her up when she was pregnant, nearly causing her to miscarry. On another

occasion, she was so badly beaten that she had to go to Libya for several weeks for medical treatment. When she returned she was still wearing dark glasses to hide the injuries around her eyes.

Amin's fifth wife was Sarah Kyolaba, the eighteen-year-old go-go dancer with the jazz band of the "Suicide" Mechanized Unit, an army company named purely for dramatic effect.

She was strikingly beautiful, but was living with the band leader, Jesse Gitta.

When she gave birth to a baby, Amin had her and the child transferred to a hospital in Kampala. Medina visited them there. The visit was covered on television and it was announced that President Amin had had another baby. There was no mention of who the mother was.

After she left hospital, Sarah went back to Gitta, who was the real father of the child, but periodically, Amin would send for tier. When Gitta tried to stop her going, he disappeared.

Sarah suspected that Amin had had him murdered, but there was nothing she could do.

At the next OAU meeting in Kampala, Amin promoted himself to Field Marshal and

invited the visiting heads of state to witness his marriage to Sarah. Part of the celebration was Operation Cape Town, where the Ugandan Air Force were to bomb an island in Lake

Victoria, showing what it could do to a South African city. Things did not go well. The bombs all missed their target and fell harmlessly in the water. The head of the Air Force, Smuts Guweddeko, was dismissed. Later he was found murdered.

The next day, Amin dressed up in his Field Marshal's uniform again to repeat the wedding ceremony, this time for the TV cameras. The resulting footage was broadcast to the nation every few days.

After Sarah married Amin, he forced her to write a satirical song about the disappearance of Jesse Gitta. Later she found Jesse's head in one of Amin's fridges. When he noticed that the fridge had been opened, he beat her.

There was little doubt that he ate his victims. One day in August 1975, Amin was talking to some officials who had been to Zaire where they had been served with monkey meat something unacceptable to Ugandans. Seeing the audience were horrified, Amin shocked them further, saying: "I have eaten human meat."

Sensing he had gone too far, he added that for a soldier at war with no food, it is acceptable to kill a wounded comrade and eat his flesh to survive. Amin also freely admitted eating human flesh to his health minister, Henry Kyemba, who fled to Britain.

In exile, Amin again talked openly of eating human flesh and said he missed it. He could not remember whose heads he had kept in the fridge, but he thought that they might have been those of Chief Justice Ben Kiwanuka, Father Kiggundu and Archbishop Luwum, who he admitted he rather enjoyed killing.