Dovie told the two diplomats of the incriminating evidence she held against Marcos. She believed her life was in danger. They arranged a press conference for her in the Bay View Hotel across Roxas Boulevard. There, she spilled the beans — but referred to Marcos only as “Fred” so that the media could relay the facts without falling foul of reporting restrictions that prevented them from saying anything critical of the President of the Philippines. She even played one of her tapes that featured creaking bedsprings, murmurs, moans and Marcos singing an Ilocano love song which the whole of the Philippines knew was his favourite. Copies were soon changing hands at $500 a time.
Students at the University of the Philippines got hold of a copy. They commandeered the University radio station and played a looped section of the tape. In it, Marcos was begging Dovie to perform oral sex on him. Even the troops sent to re-take the radio station found it hard to keep a straight face. With his tongue buried firmly in his cheek, Senator Benigno Aquino called for a congressional investigation.
The U.S. authorities had to employ the strictest security to gel Dovie out of the country. Imelda’s secret agents were curl to get her. Eventually, Dovie had to fly via Hong Kong, where an attempt was made on her life. The British secret service had to take her into protective custody for five days.
Dovie continued her campaign against Marcos from the U.S., publishing her accusations in the Manila-based journal Graphic, which was closed down, and a book called Marcos’ Lovie Dovie, which included nude photographs. This mysteriously disappeared from bookshelves. Even the Library of Congress’s copy has gone missing.
Meanwhile, Marcos was having an affair with the wife of a U.S. Navy officer and State Department cables were describing him as a “ladies” man”. There were dangers for Filipino-American relations in this affair and Marcos soon moved on to Filipino singer Carmen Soriano. Imelda caught up with her in San Francisco in 1970. Going into her apartment with her financial adviser, Ernesto Villatuya, Imelda demanded that Carmen sign a declaration that she had never gone to bed with Ferdinand. When she refused, Imelda took a swing at her. She ducked and Imelda floored Villatuya. Soon after, he was made head of the Philippine National Bank, a position he held until 1972.
Imelda began extorting money and gold out of her husband over his affairs. At the same time she travelled the world as a roving representative of the Philippine head of state. She went to Libya and, afterwards, implied that Qaddafy had made a pass at her. But to friends, she confided that Qaddafy was gay. There were gay rumours about her too. Among the jetset the word was that Imelda and her constant companion Cristina Ford, wife of Henry Ford II, were lovers. Other gossip was that Imelda had gone to bed with actor George Hamilton.
It was Imelda’s sexual jealousy that finally brought the Marcoses down. It was she who ordered that Benigno Aquino’s feet should not touch Filipino soil again when he flew back from exile in 1983. Marcos watched in horror as his political rival was shot down on the aircraft steps at Manila airport in front of a plane-load of international journalists. He knew his time was up. Although Marcos managed to blame top military officials for the assassination and fixed the presidential elections, they had to flee the Philippines in 1986. The new president was Benigno Aquino’s widow, Corazon. Marcos died of lupus in exile in Hawaii in 1989. Imelda went on to become the queen of the chat shows.
12. EATING OUT IN AFRICA
One of the most bloodthirsty dictators Africa has known was Idi Amin of Uganda. The son of a peasant witch doctor, he converted to Islam. His religion, however, did not stop him drinking. One morning, while he was still in the King’s African Rifles, he awoke in a Mogadishu brothel with a fearsome hangover to hear the cry of the imam calling the faithful to morning prayer. Amin knelt at the brothel window and bowed his head, but his prayers were interrupted by the snores of the woman he had left in bed. So he walked over to her, pulled her out of bed by the hair, slapped her across the face and said in Swahili: “Pray you Muslim bitch.”
After rising through the ranks of the Ugandan army to become a colonel, Amin staged a coup in 1971, and established his infamous dictatorship. Once in power Amin ruled both the country and his personal life with an awesome vindictiveness. To get any woman he wanted, he would simply order the execution of her husband or boyfriend. Edward Rugumayo, Amin’s Minister of Education who defected in 1973, wrote a five-thousand-word condemnation of Amin, which he circulated around the OAU, UN and Commonwealth. In it, he charged Amin with being “a racist, tribalist and dictator” and said that Amin “would kill anyone without hesitation as long as it serves his interests, such as prolonging his stay in power or getting what he wants, such as a woman or money”.
Women who did not comply with Amin’s orders would be brutally raped. Their breasts would be cut off. Some ended up in Amin’s fridge. Sarah Amin, his fifth wife, said that she saw the head of a beautiful girl called Ruth in the icebox. She had been one of Amin’s lovers and he suspected her of seeing other men.
Amin’s first wife was Malyamu Kibedi, the daughter of a schoolteacher. He fell in love with her when he was a twenty-eight-year-old sergeant and army boxing champion. She was an intelligent six-footer. Her family opposed the match, but they lived together anyway.
They had several children, but did not get married formally until 1966 when they had already been together for thirteen years. Even then, there was no ceremony. Amin simply paid the bride price and the marriage was recognized. He did this because, as a Muslim, he was ready to take a second wife and he wanted Malyamu to be recognized as the senior of the two.
Three months after his marriage to Malyamu, he married Kay Adroa in a registry office. The daughter of a clergyman, Kay was a student at Makerere University and a striking ebony-skinned girl. She wore white for the wedding. Amin turned out in full dress uniform. The ceremony took place in Amin’s home town, Arua, and there was a proper wedding reception. Kay called Malyamu “Mama” in recognition of her status as senior wife.
Within a year, Amin married again. He had already risen to national prominence and was seen as a political threat by President Milton Obote. So he married Nora, a Langi from Obote’s own region to allay his fears of tribal rivalry. She moved in with the other two wives and, by the late 1960s, Amin had fourteen or fifteen children.
Wife number four was Medina, a Baganda dancer. Her troupe, the Heartbeat of Africa, used to entertain foreign dignitaries at state functions. She was agile and sexy, and Amin used to sit and watch her spellbound. She was so attractive that she was picked to star in a Ugandan tourist film — though Amin had the footage of her cut out after they were married.
Their affair started in 1971 just after Amin had ousted Obote. In September 1972, people all over Uganda were tuning in to hear news of the ill-fated invasion Milton Obote had mounted from Tanzania. Instead, the news was dominated by the announcement of Amin’s forthcoming marriage. Medina, Amin said, had been given to him by the grateful people of Buganda in recognition of all he had done for them since the coup. The only thing Amin had done for the people of Buganda was to murder them brutally in their thousands.
In March 1974, during the fighting that followed the mutiny of Brigadier Charles Arube, Amin had another incongruous announcement for his people. His first three wives, Malyamu, Kay and Nora were being divorced because, Amin said, they were involved in business. This was true. Amin himself had given them textile shops confiscated from the exiled Ugandan Asians. Malyamu, it was also intimated, was politically suspect. Her brother, Wanume Kibedi, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, had recently fled the country. Kay had to go because she was a cousin, the communique said, and this was too close a blood relationship to sustain a marriage.