Uganda's white Rat
August 19, 2003 Edition -1
By Jane Kellu
Major Bob Astles is unrepentant, writes Jane Kelly.
This is a gentle if eccentric scene. Two dingy rooms occupied by a white-haired pensioner are given over entirely to his pets. Ginger, a former stray cat, sprawls on a sofa, while Scruffy, a tame magpie, hops about the furniture, stealing car keys and hiding his meat inside Wimbledon Borough Library books.
At first sight, 'Major' Bob Astles, 79, in turn-ups, stiff collar and drooping moustache, looks like the sort of old buffer who stayed on too long in the colonies after the British had left. In fact, after the British left Uganda in 1962 Astles's life took on a grandeur and style it had never had before.
For eight murderous years he was closer to African potentate Idi Amin Dada than the dictator's own bullet-proof vest. Amin, the self-styled 'Conqueror of the British Empire' and the 'Last King of Scotland', finally died on Saturday after a stroke in exile in Saudi Arabia.
It was he who gave Astles the title of major. Astles, in turn, called Amin H.E. or His Excellence. As Amin's aide, Astles, known in Uganda as 'the White Rat', became the second most hated man in Uganda.
Amin, who once proposed marriage to Princess Anne, admired Hitler, kept human heads in his fridge, decapitated his own wife Kaye and murdered 7 000 Africans.
In 1975 Astles arranged an extraordinary stunt in which Amin's 130kg bulk was held aloft by four uneasy-looking white businessmen. It was a picture that shocked the world, with its suggestion of black domination over white and a potent reminder of post-col-onial mayhem and disinteg-ration.
One year later, Amin was making headlines again when Palestinian terrorists, who hijacked an El Al plane, were allowed to land at Entebbe airport near the Ugandan capital, Kampala. One of the hostages, British-Israeli Dora Bloch, 75, was hospitalised, but then seized from her bed, beaten and burned to death.
Throughout it all Astles remained unperturbed, safe at the heart of Amin's odious regime. He was his 'odd job man', happy to obey orders and, claim many, to facilitate Amin's bloodlust.
Officially, Astles was head of Amin's so-called anti-corruption squad and advised the president on British affairs. Many lived in fear of him because of the power and influence he wielded.
He is unrepentant today about what he did and his friendship with one of the most evil men who ever lived. "I loved it," he says of that period of his life when he was at Amin's beck and call. "When my minister (Amin) asked me to do something, I'd do it. And I'd do it all again, definitely."
After the fall of Amin in April 1979, Astles spent more than six years in prison in Kampala before returning, penniless, to Britain. Since then, he has lived quietly and in straitened circumstances. Astles was born into a working-class Kent family in 1924. His father was a soldier and most of his childhood was spent in barracks.
As a teenager, he joined the Indian army and then the
Royal Engineers, reaching the rank of sergeant.
He was 21 when he left Britain for Africa seeking a Boys' Own adventure. He had charisma, energy and great affinity with the Ugandan people. His first job was as a building foreman; then with £100 he set up Uganda Aviation Services Ltd, the first airline in Uganda to employ Africans.
Astles also ran a TV station, owned a 50-acre pineapple farm and set up some boys' clubs. He also founded an animal sanctuary on an island in Lake Victoria.
In 1958, aged 34, he married Monica, who had come with him from Kent. She divorced him a year later after running off with a boat builder. A year later he married an aristocratic member of the Bugandan tribe, Mary Ssen-Katukka, and they had two children.
It was in 1962 that he had his first momentous meeting with Amin. Astles had been struggling in the waters of Lake Victoria for 20 minutes, pulled down by his yachting boots, when Amin, then a captain in the 4th King's African Rifles, dived in and saved him.
They met again in 1964 during trouble in the neighbouring Congo when Astles became Amin's regular pilot, prepared to fly the ambitious African on dangerous missions. They were brought together by their love of animals.
Astles supported Milton Obote, Uganda's first president, but on January 25 1971, Obote was overthrown by Amin in a military coup. Astles quickly switched allegiance.
Things went well as he flew members of the new government about in his plane.
"I kept my eyes shut and said nothing about what I saw," he says, "which they liked."
But more sinister forces were gaining ground in Uganda.
The secret police were establishing torture centres, and in December 1971 suspicion fell on Astles because of his support for Obote.
Amin sent him to Makindye prison on a spurious charge. He was there for 17 weeks, often shackled and brutally interrogated. "It was tough," he says.
"I saw about 50 army officers from the Acholi and Langi tribes marched in. They were all taken to cell C2, where they were bludgeoned to death. I saw people kicked to death in my cell. I was beyond fear.
"Amin called me a 'rotten apple' on the radio, and nationalised my airline. It was ordin-ary Africans who helped me to survive. One guard was kicked to death for helping me."
In the end Astles made over his whole government pension in cash to get out of prison, but amazingly he did not leave the country.
Amin forced him to take Ugandan citizenship.
In 1975, Idi Amin, perhaps realising the public relations value of a white henchman, decided to smile again on Astles. Within a year Astles was referring to his leader as "a misunderstood man" and "a very kind man".
Today, Astles says it was his sense of duty and a childhood that frowned upon emotion, that made him so loyal to Amin. Perhaps it was his form of revenge on the middle-class whites who despised him?
Ultimately, his misguided loyalty to Amin led to disaster.
After invasion by neighbouring Tanzania in 1979 toppled
the despised dictator, Amin escaped to Saudi Arabia. Astles fled to Kenya, but was brought back to face "trial" in Uganda.
Aged 60, he was imprisoned in Kampala's Luzira prison and placed on Death Row. After six years, he was released.
On returning to England, a close friend, Betty Julius, an historian, whom he'd met in 1941, offered him rooms in her house in Wimbledon, where he still lives.
He spends hours every night on the internet, in touch, he says, with "African leaders", such as Yoweri Museveni, the current leader of Uganda.
Until Amin fell into a coma, he and Amin spoke by phone once a year. "He would ring up to find out if I had been spying on him," says Astles.
His abiding love of the darkest, most untamed continent and the dangerous men who run it is undiminished, and as he sits there with his animals, his memories are of what he perceives to be his glory days as Amin's loyal and trusted servant.
