Family Portraits: What We Remember

Idi Amin was a brutal and erratic dictator in Uganda, East Africa responsible for the torture, murder and public executions of of thousands in the 1970s. Among those targeted: the Wakhweya family.

Emmanuel Wakhweya was Uganda’s Minister of Finance when Amin’s terror began. Wakhweya was an early target – relatives tortured, his home ransacked, precious family portraits dstroyed. The miraculous escape of Wakhweya and his seven children – is largely credited with through the family’s matriarch: Christine Wakhweya.

Since 2018, in lieu of images, her granddaughter, an American journalist, collected their oral history, through the memory of her grandma.

This is what we remember.