Avenging "Whitemail"

Having expelled 26,000 Asian residents during the past four months, Uganda's tempestuous dictator Idi ("Big Daddy") Amin Dada turned his attention last week to another minority group. This time his target was the remnant of Uganda's British community, which has shrunk from 7,000 to about 3,000 in the past six months.

Big Daddy explained the next step in his "black is best" program for Uganda, in a much-heralded midnight TV broadcast from his official residence, with portraits of Queen Elizabeth and Mao Tse-tung hanging prominently if incongruously in the background. Sweating heavily under the hot lights, he started off with a diatribe against British policy toward Uganda, especially London's recent decision to cancel a $24 million aid program, which Amin dismissed as "whitemailing." Henceforth, he declared, all British place names in Uganda would be replaced by African ones, and the Kampala Club, a stuffy symbol of British empire that had remained virtually allwhite, would become the "Government Club," a meeting place for Big Daddy and his cronies.

Then Amin got down to business. All foreign agricultural and industrial operations would be taken over immediately, he announced. They would not exactly be "nationalized," because "that is a Communist term." Besides, the enterprises will not be run by the government but will be sold off to black citizens who can raise the capital--presumably through government loans.

The takeover affects 26 foreign-owned tea plantations, 20 of them British, and 15 businesses that make or sell everything from cigarettes to detergents. All but one of the businesses are wholly or partly British owned. The exception is International Television Sales, which is owned by an American entrepreneur named Harry Engel. He was expelled from Uganda last month after Big Daddy decided that he was really an Israeli.

Big Daddy's speech did not clarify the fate of 780 Britons--including 565 teachers, 77 university instructors and 45 doctors--who are in Uganda under a British-aid program. The British government, which pays 40% of their salaries, had announced that these subsidies would be phased out over a two-year period. In his broadcast Amin appeared to say that British-aid employees would have to decide by Dec. 31 whether to stay on at "local salaries" --that is, by taking a 40% pay cut--or leave the country. Later he softened the blow a bit, however, by announcing that some aid employees could stay on until their contracts expire, provided that they can pass a "screening" next month to satisfy Big Daddy that they are not "subversives" or "confusing agents." Amin's afterthought should help a little; immediate expulsion of all British specialists, on top of the mass departure of skilled Asians, would force most hospitals and high schools in the country to shut down for lack of staff.

In London British Foreign Secretary Sir Alec Douglas-Home attacked Amin's latest moves as "contemptuous by any standards of civilized behavior" and "incompatible with the behavior expected within the Commonwealth partnership." He demanded guarantees of "prompt, adequate and effective compensation" for all British property affected and implied that Britain would take whatever legal action it could against Amin's government. In an interview he was asked why the British government did not retaliate by attaching Uganda's sterling reserves in London. "Because they haven't any," he replied.

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