Hello and welcome to the witness history podcast from the BBC World Service with me,

Reena Stanton Sharma. This week, we're marking 50 years since Asians were expelled from Uganda.

In 1986, President Uwari M7i encouraged exiled Asians to return to Uganda and reclaim their

homes and businesses to help rehabilitate the country.

This is in the interest of Uganda to attract investment back. Now, you cannot attract

investment if you have disappointed. Previous investors, you don't have any credibility.

Asians were known as entrepreneurs running shops and businesses throughout the country,

but all that change when Izzy Amin gave them just 90 days to leave Uganda in 1972.

His violent regime eventually came to an end in 1979. Some 500,000 people died or disappeared

under our means dictatorship and the economy had collapsed. In 1986, Uwari M7i came to power.

The thought of returning home appealed to some, including Dr Mumtaz Gussam.

I decided this is my birthplace and I need to go back because Africa is in my heart

and Uganda is in my blood. Despite a strong pull back to Uganda, the expulsion had ripped her

family apart. Mumtaz was 16 when she became a refugee. Her parents and 10 siblings had been

made stateless. Her youngest brothers and sisters ended up in a refugee camp in Malta with her

parents and Mumtaz and her older siblings were sent to a disused army barracks in the UK.

When we landed, we were taken straight to a resettlement camp and then the food I think was

becoming an issue for us. Most of the Asians in the camps did not want to eat plain food,

so they decided to take over the kitchen, go and buy spices and start cooking Indian food.

So that was quite amusing for us. It would be another four years before the whole family would

be united in England. After university, Mumtaz qualified as a solicitor as she visited Uganda

to see how devastated the country was. The country had become almost ungovernable.

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