Milton Obote

I was relieved to learn of the death of former Ugandan dictator Milton Obote. Obote clearly benefited by comparison to Idi Amin, who Obote both preceded and succeeded as dictator. His reigns were barely less thuggish than Amin's, but Obote was somewhat erudite and well-spoken so many outsiders never thought he could be as brutal as the bufoonish Amin. Yet the UK Independent notes that: [a]ccording to the current government's estimates, more than half a million civilians died between 1980-85 when Mr Obote tried to force Ugandans out of rural areas and into cities. The current government is hardly an unbiased observer: it's led by the then-guerilla movement that overthrew Obote's second dictatorship. But even if the number isn't exactly 500,000, Obote's regimes were an unmitigated nightmare and I'm sure few Ugandans are sad to learn of his passing.