Life & Mortality Quote by Ryszard Kapuscinski

Violence, in Kapuscinski's framing, isn’t the overflow of confidence; it’s the leak of panic. The line strips Idi Amin’s mass killing of any heroic or even coherent political motive and reduces it to something uglier and more intimate: fear dressed up as statecraft. Kapuscinski’s intent is diagnostic, not just condemnatory. He’s naming a logic that authoritarian regimes rely on but rarely admit: the ruler who cannot tolerate uncertainty converts suspicion into policy, and policy into bodies.

The subtext is about preemption as a moral solvent. If your enemies are always about to strike, then anything you do becomes “self-defense,” even genocide. Kapuscinski pushes that rationalization to its grotesque end by moving from “enemies” to “entire tribes,” showing how paranoia scales. Once fear becomes the engine, categories blur: opponent becomes traitor becomes ethnic group. It’s not only cruelty; it’s an administrative imagination that turns politics into extermination planning.

Context matters: Kapuscinski reported on postcolonial states where power was new, institutions brittle, and external pressures constant. Amin’s Uganda, riven by military factionalism and ethnic patronage, offered real threats to a ruler who seized power by force. Kapuscinski doesn’t deny that; he weaponizes it. The fear may be understandable, but the response is revealing. A leader’s insecurity becomes everyone else’s emergency, and “rebellion” becomes a convenient label for any community that might someday refuse to kneel.