Debating Ideas reflects the values and editorial ethos of the African Arguments book series, publishing engaged, often radical, scholarship, original and activist writing from within the African continent and beyond. It offers debates and engagements, contexts and controversies, and reviews and responses flowing from the African Arguments books. It is edited and managed by the International African Institute, hosted at SOAS University of London, the owners of the book series of the same name.
During Donald Trump’s first presidential campaign in 2016, Trevor Noah joked that Trump was the first African politician running for office in the United States. Himself a South African, Noah compared Trump to infamous authoritarians from the continent: Uganda’s Idi Amin, Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe. Highlighting their outlandish rhetoric, The Daily Show cleverly stitched together soundbites that showed similarities between then-candidate Trump and African dictators. Whether it was stressing their own intelligence, claiming to be universally loved and adored, or making unapologetically xenophobic accusations, it indeed seemed as though Trump could be a relic of an African past.
Writing and performing for an American audience, Noah’s jokes landed precisely because comparing Trump to African dictators was meant to prove Trump’s incompetence. It seemed unthinkable that a Western democracy would elect such a president; liberals insisted that the irrationality of Trump’s campaign made anyone who supported him as “crazy” as the candidate himself.
Of course, Trump ultimately defeated Hillary Clinton in 2016. Yet liberals could not shake the notion that this must be an aberration. Pins and bumper stickers proclaiming that Trump was “not my president” or safety pins may have made some people feel better, but the truth remained that Trump was their president. Noah’s jokes suddenly shone light on liberals’ conundrum. Could they continue to laugh while the administration was passing restrictive immigration laws, threatening reproductive rights, and nominating accused sexual predators to the Supreme Court?
In the summer of 2017 and from 2019-2020, I conducted fieldwork in Kampala, Uganda, during Trump’s first term in office. I also took several trips to Karamoja, a region in Northern Uganda where I lived for two years prior to graduate school. As an Asian American whose country was edging closer to authoritarianism, I did not intend to study politics explicitly, and instead pursued a project on kinship and ethnicity. But even if authoritarianism was not a pressing issue back at home, it would have been impossible to miss the proliferation of the same African dictators that served as the butt of Noah’s jokes displayed proudly and publicly by young men throughout Kampala and Karamoja.
Boda boda drivers, young men who drive motorbike taxis in cities throughout Uganda, displayed photographs of Idi Amin and Muammar Gaddafi on their bikes, helmets, and even had patches of their faces sewn onto their clothing. These images interrupted my Western sensibilities, challenging me to reassess my assumptions concerning the collective memory of authoritarian rule. Many Ugandan scholars have written about Amin’s ‘vicious reign‘, but over the course of fieldwork, I spoke with dozens of young men precariously employed as boda drivers and askaris (security guards). All agreed that Amin and Gaddafi represented hopeful visions for all of Africa’s future. Though there were women, especially from Northern Uganda, who also longed for such a leader, the visual displays that I saw were exclusively donned by young men.
The men with whom I spoke were between the ages of 19 and 40, and none lived through the brutality of Amin or were in Libya during Gaddafi’s reign. Yet, all were aware of the violence and repression of the respective regimes. Rather than disqualify them from being laudable leaders, the boda drivers and askaris instead emphasized their anti-colonial rhetoric and protectionist economic policies. These Ugandan citizens were not irrational or “crazy”, as many believed Trump supporters to be. They simply wanted a leader who would fight for their country first, and nearly four decades of Museveni’s reign left them seeking radical change. Being in Kampala at the outset of the Covid19 pandemic illuminated the economic frustrations of Ugandans, as interlocutors theorized that Museveni’s reliance on Chinese firms for infrastructure projects left them powerless. Many openly expressed their opinion that Chinese workers should be expelled from their country, leading to discussions about how Amin’s 1972 expulsion of Asians proved that he was a better protector of Uganda’s national interests.
In 2020, many people in the United States breathed a sigh of relief as Biden defeated Trump and their aberration theory seemed proven as Biden said he would help “heal” the country. Having just returned from Uganda, I was not convinced that people who felt disenfranchised in the US would accept a return to the status quo, or decency, the greatest virtue for liberals. If Noah’s jokes in 2016 were meant to prove the differences between African dictators and American democracy, the election of Trump proved that the similarities were far more striking.
While the distinctions between Uganda and the United States are many, and the economic and political power that the latter holds cannot be ignored in any analysis or comparison, strongmen nostalgia provides us with a potential framework for understanding how Trump’s second term became a reality. Speaking to me about Gaddafi, one boda driver who had never visited Libya said, “Every morning when Gaddafi was president, milk would arrive on your doorstep. Nobody was hungry.” Amin’s xenophobic expulsion of Asians and seizure of their property was remembered by my interlocutors as a patriotic move to ensure the country’s growth.
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The United States is not alone in grappling with right-wing populism. It is on the rise across Europe as well. Dismissing as absurdity the rhetoric spewed by contemporary leaders like Trump, Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, or France’s Marine Le Pen misses the point. Offering political decency does not put food on one’s table or reckon with the reality of inequality unleashed by neoliberal policies and a global capitalist economy designed to benefit the few. When Biden dropped out of the presidential race in 2024 and Harris became the Democratic Party’s hope to defeat Trump for a second time, she stressed her vision of a decent America while Trump was proposing no tax on tips or overtime. The United States and Western Europe may wield economic and political power in the contemporary world order, but the everyday concerns of citizens are difficult to distinguish from those of my interlocutors in Kampala.
Young men’s nostalgia for Amin in Uganda offers the world a lesson: laughing at such leaders does not diminish their power. Taking seriously the grievances of those who long for Amin should force politicians and leaders to offer their own alternative, just, and meaningful visions for the future.
Christine Chalifoux is Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Africana Studies at Franklin & Marshall College in the United States. Her work explores how Ugandan state politics affect everyday life and relationships in Kampala, and centers ethnic minority workers who migrated to the city in search of wage labor.