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The Last King of Scotland, 1998
As well as "Conqueror of the British Empire," the notorious Ugandan dictator Idi Amin Dada also awarded himself the title of the "Last King of Scotland" and expressed himself ready and willing to rule whenever the Scots might desire. In this interesting first novel by the British writer Giles Foden, who was born in Warwickshire in 1967 and lived much of his early life in Africa, Amin Dada's bloody career is examined from the fictional viewpoint of a young Scots doctor who becomes the dictator's personal physician, stooge, reluctant confidant, and victim.
Nicholas Garrigan goes out to Africa to work in a rural hospital in western Uganda. While learning about tropical medicine and carrying on a lackadaisical affair with Sara, a doctor from Israel involved with her country's espionage services, he happens one day to treat Idi Amin Dada for a minor injury following an automobile accident. Thus he catches the bloodthirsty tyrant's dangerous attention and it is not long before he is summoned to Kampala to take up the position of personal physician to Uganda's erratic head of state. "That was Idi's way, you see," Nicholas explains on the first page of his memoirs. "Punish or reward. You couldn't say no. Or I didn't think, back then, that you could. Or I didn't really think about it at all."
And as he begins, so he goes on, never really thinking, never saying no, but never explicitly saying yes either. Of course, saying no to a man like Amin Dada could have extremely drastic consequences, and Nicholas is well aware of that. Afraid of that. He's heard the rumours about Dada's worst excesses, the allegations of torture, murder, and cannibalism. Nicholas, indeed, is somewhat of a coward in all senses of the word and, as such, often makes an exasperating protagonist and narrator whenever the reader's own nerves are jangling with the horror of what happens to be going on in the story. But the reader has constantly to ask, and honestly answer, how he himself would have acted or decided in Nicholas' position, and whether the instinct for self-preservation would counsel him too to hold his tongue, wait, and watch.
Nicholas is not indifferent to the lurid scenes he eventually witnesses. His quandary arises because he is overwhelmed: he sees far too much for clear immediate judgment one way or the other. He acquires a not unsympathetic personal knowledge of Idi Amin Dada that includes Dada's harmless qualities as well as the savage bloodlust and violence. He knows the complex man beneath the ostentatious uniforms and medals, the almost childish ingenuousness and ego behind the outrageous and often farcical proclamations. The tyrant's powerful charisma draws Nicholas in with all its brilliant attraction and, despite the timid voice of conscience, Nicholas succumbs to a certain moral corruption. He manages to stand up for himself, on the grounds of medical ethics, only when undercover agents connected with the British Embassy urge him to alter Amin Dada's temperament with drugs or even to do the world a favour by poisoning him outright. He refuses, feebly, and lets the money for the undone deed sit in his bank account.
Foden's novel accurately traces the history of Idi Amin Dada's brutal reign and downfall, featuring along the way the episode of the Israeli raid on Entebbe, where Nicholas plays a small fictional part by describing the airport situation to Sara over short-wave radio (as usual for him, not quite seeming to take in that she is acting in her true role as an intelligence agent). When Nicholas finally gets up the gumption to flee Uganda, it is already far too late and he is caught up in the brief warfare leading to Dada's ouster. He is by then irrevocably compromised by his association with the dictator, who had even tricked the unwitting Scotsman into delivering a bomb that blew up a plane, but Nicholas is still stubbornly asserting his complete innocence. He himself never tortured or murdered anybody, he insists. He only stuck to his job. He is not responsible for the terror unleashed in Uganda. "I only worked in the interests of people's health, as a doctor should. I did nothing wrong, unless it is wrong to have seen some very terrible things."
The Last King of Scotland gives a fascinating portrayal of a flamboyant African tyrant in action and a sobering account of how a fundamentally decent, humane person like Nicholas Garrigan can be mesmerized, corrupted, and rendered impotent to act.
© Wordreign, July 1999
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