Born and raised in Uganda under the rule of Idi Amin, Margaret Sentamu came to England in 1974 with her husband, John, who was taking up a place at Cambridge University. Since then she has worked in diversity and recruitment and supports numerous charities, including the Mothers Union and Traidcraft plc. In 2005, John was appointed as the 97th Archbishop of York, but even though they now live in a 13th century palace, Margaret certainly has not lost touch with what’s going on in the world. Taking time out of her jam-packed schedule, she told me about her eventful life and her current interests.
Most readers will know of the dictator Idi Amin through the critically-acclaimed film, The Last King of Scotland. However, if you thought its atrocities had been embellished for the sake of the box office, you would be sadly mistaken, as when I asked Margaret what she thought of it, she replied, “I thought it was quite true, quite close to the script as it were.” Forrest Whitaker’s frightening portrayal of him was remarkably real; “when you were with him, he was a very charming man, but obviously the minute you left the room, you could be targeted. He was absolutely ruthless.” Just as Mugabe’s presidency began positively, before going “perilously sour”; so Amin was initially elected by popular vote; by people who “wanted change, but hadn’t bargained for the kind of person they were letting in.” Both dictators had the rest of the world, particularly Britain, fully supporting their rise to power. Only later, Ugandan people and the rest of the world realised they had “unleashed a monster”. The country became a dictatorship after Amin seized full control in a military coup in January 1971, following the same pattern as several past dictators. “History repeats itself again and again…people think, the next leader is bound to be better than the one we have at the moment, so they put the new one in, without having done their homework.”
“You can’t just sit there waiting for bad things to happen”
Obviously, his rule affected Margaret’s day-to-day life; how could it not when “he could just wake up one morning and say, ‘I’m going to ban women from wearing short skirts.'” Almost every single family had experienced his brutality, or knew someone who had “disappeared”. Husbands would be abducted on their way to work; families would be lucky if the body was ever found. Despite this constant uncertainty, Margaret says she did not live in a permanent state of fear. In these situations, the human spirit finds a “survival mechanism” which enables people to carry on as ‘normal’. As she admits, “you can’t just sit there waiting for bad things to happen.”
However, just three weeks after her marriage to John, Margaret was to experience the arbitrary cruelty of Amin’s rule for herself, when her new husband was abducted and imprisoned after being accused of helping a colleague to flee the country. During this time, having no one to trust or talk to apart from her close family, Margaret says that her Christian faith “really kicked in”.
Indeed, the Anglican Church, established a hundred years before, was a constant source of resistance to Idi Amin’s rule and helped many Ugandans to survive the atrocities, due to its emphasis on gathering together, whether in prayer or in support of one another. Margaret believes that it is currently doing the same thing in Zimbabwe, providing comfort as well as quiet resistance. This has not been missed by President Mugabe, who ordered police to lock up churches over Christmas so that members could not congregate within them. This is not the only difficulty that the Church faces, as it has become split between those members who side with the regime and those who oppose it. I asked Margaret if she thought that the succession of corrupt African leaders may be due to the vacuum left by the colonial powers, but she heartily disagrees. “The colonial past is just that, a past, and it ought to be treated as a past.” She cites Ghana as an example of a country that has only had independence for forty odd years, yet is thriving. So, what is the answer? “Africa needs to take responsibility for its own governance.” Despite some notable exceptions, the taste of power seems just too tempting, and without strong democratic safeguards in place, the general rule is: once a president, always a president.
“I don’t think we’re very discerning about who we put on a pedestal”
“Education in developing countries is very important because it opens up opportunities.” Luckily for Margaret, her father, a civil servant, believed in the importance of education for girls, so after school she went on to study Literature in English at Makerere University, Kampala, where she met John. As part of her course, she read a great range of authors, and this was to have interesting results when she came to England. Literature had given her all these ideas, yet though she may have read Wordsworth’s “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”, she had never actually seen daffodils. Similarly, she sang hymns such as “In the Bleak Midwinter” in Uganda, yet had no notion of snow. “So suddenly I was in a country where all these things came to life…it was very exciting.”
Apart from being able to put objects to the names, on her arrival Margaret was struck by several other aspects of English life. Particularly shocking was the sight of people sleeping rough; “I don’t want to idealise Uganda, but in the Uganda I left then, the family structure was strong enough to ensure that this did not happen.” Of course, this may not be true now, as the AIDS crisis has left behind a huge number of orphans, who often end up on the streets. She was also so surprised by the number of people living by themselves in England, particularly those spending Christmas in isolation. African communities are with you from birth until death; “Your life is not your own. You’re who you are because of others and the community in which you are raised.” The same could be said of the Church, which was instrumental in helping the Sentamus settle quickly in England. “There is a given that you all belong to the same Christian faith and therefore you are all members of a wider Church family.”
Margaret is very involved with charities and takes a big interest in world affairs. Her main area of passion is women, her great desire is to “help women and children to achieve their potential.” As an equality and diversity consultant, she encourages companies to consider job applicants that they might be tempted to dismiss, whether they be female, disabled or of an ethnic minority. She is also a patron of Five Talents, a micro-finance initiative which gives small loans to women in developing countries to start businesses, 99.9% of which are quickly paid back. Margaret insists, “It is about giving women the opportunity to stand on their own feet.”
When it came to thinking of female role models, Margaret was hard-pressed to think of any current ones, although history seems to be full of them, like “Indira Ghandi, the first female prime minister of India; although she came from the Ghandi dynasty, there was some passion within her, wanting to make change.” Another would be Rosa Parks, an African-American in 1960s USA, whose actions inspired civil rights campaigners when she refused to move seats on a bus for a white person. Margaret admits that she could not have done the same; “I’m a real coward, I would have given in easily!” After this, no one else is forthcoming. As Margaret says, “we roll out people like Mother Teresa, but I’m not holy enough to lead a life of poverty, chastity and obedience!” However, she’d rather people admired Mother Teresa than the latest X-Factor winner, “I don’t think we’re being very discerning about who we put on the pedestal. I do wonder what some people have done apart from appear on ‘I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here!’ Britain’s celebrity culture seems to be more about changing one’s image than helping to make the world a better place.”
“your life is not your own”
The majority of women in the headlines these days seem to be one half of a “power couple”; think of the Sarkozys, the Obamas, the Clintons, the Sentamus? But Margaret sees this relatively new phenomenon as something worth applauding, “Of course you can succeed as a solo player, but increasingly, if you work as a team, you bring something more to the equation. I’m sure Barack Obama would tell you that he wouldn’t be where he is if it wasn’t for Michelle, and she’d say the same of him.” Team work is important in every kind of relationship, but in marriage particularly, “which is about protecting each other’s identity, but also encouraging each other to be able to flourish. You don’t want to be clones of each other!” Margaret wants to open women’s eyes up to how they can be perceived as people in their own right and not simply as someone’s wife. Somehow, I think Margaret may have upset quite a few of these assumptions in her time! But in so doing, she has only increased my conviction in the truth of the phrase, “Behind every great man, is a great woman.”
