[Please trim the earlier Goanet Digest before responding to it.]
Dear Goans, I am sorry that Roland Travas in his moving story reduces the story of what happened in Uganda to one sentence: Later on, in 1972 Goans in Uganda would face a similar dilemma under the dictator Idi Amin. If one reads my second novel, "The General is Up", published by Goa 1556, one will see that it was the British who put Amin into power. In case the fiction is not clear, I have written non-fiction articles about Amin's coming into power, the role of the British, and what happened in Uganda under Amin. One of them is my non-fiction account of the Expulsion, with statistics and figures (my brother John was a statistician in the Uganda Government). My article was published in Afriscope magazine in Lagos, Nigeria, at the request of the editor, Uche Ckkuwumerije. I also have two essays in a book co-edited by Zulema D'Souza, "Uganda South Asians Exodus: Kololian Perspectives", published by the Centre for South Asian Perspectives, University of Toronto, 2002, a copy of which I sent to Dr. Danson Kahyana, who teaches at Makerere University and who wrote a blurb for "The General is Up" attesting to its truth. In the Kololo book, I come close to actually naming the British agent who was responsible for Amin's coup (in the novel it is there in a fictional form though the mask can easily be removed). I refuse to consider myself a poor innocent victim who played and plays no part in history. I am to this day considered to be an African writer, an East African writer, and a Ugandan writer. You will find references to me and my work in books and journals to do with all three. Happy New Year to every Goan, and may our contributions to the world continue to be active ones. Peter Nazareth
