From Idi Amin’s Uganda to Texas: One Man’s Story of Survival and Faith

This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories. And we tell stories about everything here on this show. But our favorite subject, well, it’s redemption stories. Stories of faith and hope and love. And my goodness, that’s the story of so many Americans. And faith, by the way, being a fundamental part of a large majority of the people of this country. And that’s why we tell those stories. And up next, the story of Doctor Dennis Simpebwe. Dennis, you were born on April twentieth, nineteen sixty-seven, in a small town in the African nation of Uganda.

Tell us about it. Uganda, Eastern Africa. Winston Churchill called it the Pearl of Africa. “Perfect weather,” they say, “and happy people.” But in the midst of that, anarchy, because we had Idi Amin, if you remember the famous Idi Amin. So, life was tough. I remember my earliest memory. I’m clutching my baby sister’s hand. We have to go to school, and there’s a dead body in the pathway, but we’re too young to jump over the body. And so, I remember the big debate: “Should I go home? If I go home, get into trouble, but I can’t really—” So, I remember telling Sylvia, “Sylvia, close your eyes as we get through the body,” and then we counted one to three and jumped over. And then it goes back from there. The army wasn’t paid, so at night they would come to our villages and loot and steal, raping as young as three years old. In fact, at one point, my village almost told the girls were pregnant by soldiers. And so, that’s life for me, and not enough food. I didn’t have shoes until I was six. We’d climb mango trees for lunch, guava trees for late for breakfast. It was just tough, tough.

How did Amin come to power? How does this happen in a country?

Idi Amin? It’s almost like the same story repeated. You look at Saddam, and some of these other big guys. He was—it was a—it was a favorite of the British. In fact, he was a colonel in the British army. So, so he comes on. He was a hero at first, but he turns—he turns on us. And he gets greedy and starts to then tribalism. Then it’s… it’s the same old story of Africa when the power. It’s a power issue. And so, he begins to get nervous when there’s a—listen, there’s a power struggle between him and the West. And, like Gaddafi, you know, it sounds like because he’s very… he’s too independent; he won’t be a puppet. But with that comes the subjugation. And he didn’t go to school, so he thinks money can be printed. Then he’s irritated by the Asians—the Indians—because they’re running everything. So, one day he decides, “You know what? No more Indians will want the Uganda to be run by Ugandans!” And he—he just exists three days. He expels all Indians in… for seventy-two hours to leave the country. And he literally takes Ugandans and gives them. I mean, I remember this picture. I was young. I remember seeing him on TV, walking down the main street. We had one main street in Kampala, and it was literally giving shops that you, that belonged to Asians, has given them to. “You take that one! You take the shoe shop! You take!” And of course, what happened is, here these Africans were now running things, but they were not trained to run. So, of course, everything plummets: turmoil, inflation, and so poverty sets in. And what used to be the Pearl of Africa, Uganda, was the breadbasket of East Africa—its cradle. Before then, the best hospital was in Kampala. Now, Idi Amin. Initially, as he got nervous, he wanted to squelch rebellion. Of course, it became heavier-handed. Then he decided to pivot to the Arab world, and so he wanted to turn Uganda into a Muslim nation with Sharia law. So, it was illegal to wear miniskirts. And it was illegal… One day he woke up, he said, “I don’t want to see slippers, sandals—slippers! I don’t want to see people’s feet!” And people were actually literally arrested for wearing slippers and sandals in town in Kampala. They’d arrest you. So, it was chaotic, chaotic. But so, and then it can, of course, then makes it comes after church, after church. Then he had to see: he didn’t like any of the independent religions’ expressions of religion. Friday became a public holiday. So, Friday was a public holiday for the Muslims. Sunday was a public holiday for the… so, we had like four days of work, you know. And of course, all of this is his plummet in the economy. And things are getting worse and worse and worse. And so, persecution. Then he began to outlaw all independent religions or expressions of faith. And so, thus began the persecution. And the archbishop was arrested and killed. And so, that was life under Idi Amin until he was ousted. And then what happened is all the… then the tribalism. And now, those factions of military soldiers. And then the anarchy set in, just like some of these other places like Gaddafi and Libya and Iraq. That’s what happened in Uganda. So, we have factions all over, anarchy, rule of law—nothing, nothing. The army wasn’t paid, and they’d come every night to rape and steal and kill, and it was a disaster.

So, talk about your parents and what role they played. Talk about that.

Mine was tragic. My dad was the provider. But he had other women. In fact, they were more like concubines—more open. We knew them. We knew them. In fact, one of them was—what had been—my mother’s best friend who lived next door. So, Daddy would come back home, and we would see him go to the neighbors. And I remember seeing Mommy, you know, just dealing with… wow, wow. And so, that was confusing for me as a boy. And he’d come up drunk at night at eleven p.m., usually beating Mommy. But then every time I came out—I was the firstborn—Every time I came out to their little room, as this beating her, he would stop. So, that caused me to think, “Oh, oh, I can help you! I can help Mommy.” And over the next few months, every time I’d make sure to be awake: “Don’t go to sleep, because you need to rescue Mommy!” And she didn’t know until recently that I barely slept, because whenever they went to their room. In my little brain—my little seven-year-old brain—I was thinking, “What if he beats her and kills her?” So, I’ll sit right at their door all night. And it made me rescue her.

And when we come back, more of this remarkable life story and how he ends up coming here to the United States and doing remarkable things with his life. More of the life story of Doctor Dennis Simpebwe here on Our American Stories.

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I’m getting depressed. I’m learning about my history. I’m learning that no Simpebwe—that’s my last name—had lived beyond age forty. They were all womanizers and alcoholics, and they had died young. And so, but I strolled into an event. You know, one time Mommy said, “There’s a crusade.” This guy was coming from Nigeria, and he was going to talk about crusade… God. And so, Mom took me to this crusade—a big, open-air event—and this guy was talking about peace. He said, “God can give you peace,” and in my brain I was thinking, “Yeah, but how?” And then it was as though this man could hear me, because all the questions I asked, he would scream out, “Don’t you wonder how you don’t need us?” So, I’m like, “Well, but I have to… how is he gonna do?” “You want to know how I was gonna do it?” I’m like, “I’m thinking you can read my mind! What’s kind on?” But, you know, then he eventually said, “If you want this peace, come.” And I was the first time, “Mommy, let’s go! I want—I want peace.” And we prayed a prayer. And as I was going home that night—because it was five o’clock, and five o’clock was scary for me because the sun was gonna set—was that the night I would see my sisters raped, my mother raped? Was I going to die? Was I going to spend the night outside because sometimes we didn’t? It was too dangerous to sleep in the house, so we’d run around all night during these military raids, looking for places to hide. But this particular night, January twelfth, nineteen eighty, there was peace, and I was thinking, “Ooh, I’m not scared!” I got home. My sister asks me, “Dennis, what are you happy?” “What are you giddy about?” I said, “I don’t know. I just… I think God’s given me peace.” And she looked at me, rolled her eyes, and says, “Go to sleep, you’re tired.” Next morning, I woke up, and pining, “I still have peace!” “I still have peace,” I said. And I couldn’t wait to go to school. Now, mornings were terrible in class because every empty seat meant they were either killed, or their mothers were raped, or whatever—they were displaced. But this morning, January thirteenth, nineteen eighty, I’m like, “I’m a little smiles…” My friends are looking at me. “What’s wrong with you, Dennis?” I was the class captain. I said, “I don’t know, guys. I just know that yesterday I prayed a prayer and I asked God to be part of my life.” And I think it did. And after a while, they wanted me to explain why I was happy. And I said, “You know what? I give my life to God because He…” They said, “What do you mean, God?” I said, “I don’t know. It’s God loves us, that He cares, that what it… And for me, He can do for you.” And I became an instant evangelist. In fact, after thirty days—after the first month—I had like fifty of my friends all coming to church with me. And we then all had a happy corner, and they knew it: that that’s the happy corner. Dennis said, “It’s happy corner,” and people were curious. But I began to have this idea that God gave me peace that transcended my environment—something that blew my mind that I still can’t explain to this day. But it’s as real because I’ve lived it.

And this would be why dictators hate God.

Yeah, yeah, because they couldn’t. In fact, the peace came from inside. It didn’t matter. In fact, it got worse, my environment. This is what I have a problem with: the simplistic perspective on God fixing. And so, even though Amin was ousted, and there were other very term dictators that came around that actually killed en masse. But Amin would have a burial almost every week of a friend or… But I was giddy and happy—not giddy, giddy, but I had joy. The Bible talks about it as joy unspeakable—joy unspeakable. I was peaceful, had shalom. You just called it shalom: the peace that transcends circumstances. That’s what I got, and I could share it with. I’ve shared it over eighty countries now, forty for forty years. It’s the same. Whether it’s a prostitute in Amsterdam and a beggar in India, it doesn’t matter, or a multimillionaire in Beverly Hills. There’s this peace that God gives that is unmatched. I was ready to pour out what I had inside of me, so excited that a path was created for me. We began. We formed a singing group, began singing, and as we sang, oh, the schools wanted to hear us! All of a sudden, we’re the biggest thing in town! We started to… Then we started to… we had… we had a church service. We’d go to church, but we started to… I told the pastor, “Hey, can we just come play music a whole hour before the church starts?” He said, “I… okay.” And so, we just started playing. We would play music, and six, seven thousand kids would just come listen. They were mesmerized. And of course, I wasn’t promising, which is cool is, I wasn’t saying God’s going to come fix your world. But have God in your life, and your world will make sense. But not be fixed makes sense. You’ll have a reason to wake up—the spring in your feet—and He can do that. He can do that. I’ve seen Him do that. And so, that began to change. My father would die of AIDS, which was like, “Okay,” because he was a womanizer and all that. And then for a while, we’re thinking Mom is going to die too. But then America happened. You know, Mommy isn’t dying. And so, a lot of people now, after Amin leaves or the anarchy, now we had an AIDS epidemic. Entire villages had just kids running around with their parents dead, rotting in their homes. Because, remember, there was anarchy, so there were no services. There’s one doctor to fifty, seventy thousand people. So, again, more chaos. In fact, that’s when the British media said to say Uganda is cursed: after Amin, after all this, now AIDS. So, this again, in the midst of that. We kept preaching, singing joy transcendent in the midst of death. And some group came from England, heard us sing. They invited us to England. We went and sang in this one church. That church happened to have the editor of Voice Magazine, Black Britain, and BBC. And they’re all going to this iconic church called Kensington Temple. And when we sang, they all like… The next day, we’re on radio, we’re all over. They called it the African group from Africa that’s taking England by storm. And that year we won the award for Best British New Artist. We’re not even English; we’re not even British. But again, the same message. I remember when we recorded. Then we recorded one song that became a club hit in London. All the nightclubs playing the song called’s go, “Don’t Pass Me By, Lord, Don’t Pass Me By.” But they loved it again: the message transcending culture. And here we are now in nightclubs—the biggest nightclubs in Europe. I remember seeing Muhammad Ali and all these guys, and you know, just… there we were, the group—a gospel group—in the midst of like some of us have never even been to a club, but we were featured. So, the music opening doors, the message transcending, received an invitation to America, Chicago. Same thing happened. Before we know it, we’re all in these places, get a five-album deal. And that opens up a global, global ministry of music that took us to forty countries. And same song, same message: peace, peace.

So, how does the singer become a doctor?

Ah! I bump into this gentleman who had a distance learning program, and so a record-time bachelor’s, master’s, Ph.D., all still singing. As soon as I was done doing that, a church approached me and said, “Can you start a college for us?” I said, “I’m a singer.” He said, “No, but you’re a singer with a Ph.D.” So, we a lot of founded a college, the International College of Excellence. And that got me into academics instead. Of twenty-two campuses in eight countries. And then filmed an organization called Eagle’s Wings International. And I’m just going to just… we’re good hubs now in twenty-six countries again. You know the message, same message: God’s amazing.

God’s amazing. Simple words—words he absorbed—and then words, well, that drove the rest of his life and his core message. When we come back, this remarkable story, and a remarkable immigrant story—an American dreamers’ story like almost none other. We’ve told here on this show: the story of Doctor Dennis Simpebwe here on Our American Stories. And we continue with Our American Stories and Doctor Dennis Simpebwe’s story. Dennis, your band’s success took you to the heights of music in Africa. You took Europe by storm, and then you were invited to America.

Tell us about it. It was stumbled to Chicago first, nineteen ninety-three. Came, sang in this little Romanian church. You know, we’re like, “Hey, put your house together!” Yeah. And they were looking on us like we were the first black people to ever grace that stage. They almost fell over, and they were like, “These Africans!” So, they almost patronizingly… Then I found out the Baptists don’t clap hands. And I’m like, “Okay, okay…” But we just… we just… you know what? And so, the next, next tomorrow, “You’re going to sing again tomorrow, but could you not have the music because they didn’t like the tracks? They didn’t like guitars and all that.” So, we said, “Okay.” So, we decided to sing a cappella. And so, my wife was in there, which was… she was… She said, “We loved you!” And I’m like, “You sure? Yeah?” With the church, it was a little tough for them. But I don’t think they’re going to have you back. But, you know, so she and her friend took us to the next church. And there, that was a black church. I was like, “I wouldn’t going crazy!” They had never seen Africans like us doing… We were just wearing all African hats, and we just went outrageous on them, and they just loved it. And she almost fainted because it was… now it was too loud. She’s from Romania, so she shared a similar story of Ceaușescu. While she was sharing about waking up at five a.m., lining out for groceries, I said, “Yeah, we did too.” We had no gas. “Yeah, we did too.” The… if you had a car, you just looked at… “Yeah, we did too.” The blackouts.

My dictator is worse than your dictator!

Yes, yeah.