Slow Poison: Idi Amin, Yoweri Museveni, and the Making of the Ugandan State Mahmood Mamdani, Harvard University Press, £22.38FOR many of a certain generation in Britain, Uganda is synonymous with the figure of Idi Amin, who was lampooned by the tabloid press as a buffoon and tin-pot dictator who, through sheer brutality of nature, in the 1970s expelled thousands of Asians, a great many of whom settled here to become the face of our corner shops.