Violent Malignancies: Africanizing Cancer Research in the 1970s

Throughout the 1970s, a small group of Ugandan physicians, nurses, laboratory technicians, and administrators ran a cancer research and treatment unit known as the Uganda Cancer Institute. Situated at the top of the hill at Mulago National Referral Hospital, this site conducted combination chemotherapy trials and provided palliative services.

In the memories of the Institute’s director, Professor Charles Olweny and others who worked at the UCI during the 1970s, Idi Amin saw the Institute as a prime example of the possibilities for “Africanized” biomedical research. Politically savvy, Olweny worked with the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Finance during this decade to ensure regular supplies of drugs and allowing the Institute’s staff to conduct medical research in peace.

The chief radiographer tells the tale of Amin visiting the Institute in the mid 1970s, swaggering around the wards, sniffing at the air, and saying, “This place does not smell!” unlike the main hospital below. From then on, Amin instructed his soldiers to go to the UCI for routine medical care and X-rays instead of Mulago National Referral Hospital.

This paper explores how UCI staff members remember their interactions with Uganda’s 1970s government, particularly Idi Amin himself and soldiers. I utilize archival materials and oral historical accounts taken from 2010 to 2013 with the UCI’s Director, radiographer, head administrator, field researcher, nurse-in-charge, a cancer survivor, and an American collaborator. I argue that these stories are deeply personal, and cannot be separate from ethnic and professional identity, or what happened in their lives after Amin went into exile. Memories of Amin as a champion of Africanized medical research or murderous villain cannot be separated from experiences of living in Uganda after the Tanzanian invasion of 1979.