Fifty years after expulsion, Asians are thriving again in Uganda

in Kampala, the capital, is a good place to ponder the changing fortunes of Uganda’s south Asians. It began life as the home of Bandali Jaffer, an Indian cotton trader. His son, a member of the first Ugandan parliament, turned it into a hotel to host a visiting pope. Then, in 1972, the expelled the country’s 55,000 people of Indian descent and confiscated their property. The Fairway became an army base.The expulsion, which took place over three months and culminated 50 years ago this month, was a traumatic chapter, but not the final one. Today the hotel is back in the family, managed by Mr Jaffer’s Canadian-born great-grandson Azhar. “I never thought I would end up here,” he says, but now “this is home.”