"Social Security Benefits: A Personal Story, Speech at Institutional Capitol Investing Forum.
On January 25, 1971, the peoples of the African country of Uganda took to the streets to celebrate the emergence of a new leader of their country. Milton Obote, Prime Minister of Uganda since independence from the British in 1962, had been overthrown by his army commander. The people welcomed this charismatic general-a former army cook and undefeated army heavyweight boxing champion. Thus began the bloody reign of terror of General Idi Amin, a monster whose regime ultimately would be responsible for the slaughter of more than a million people.
I lived in Uganda with my father, Robert Siedle, a sociologist who had been studying care of the elderly in Africa while teaching at Makerere University in Kampala. I was 16 years old when Amin came to power.
(Slide shown) Here we are photographed while on safari at the Kilembe copper mines near the astounding snow-capped peaks of the Mountains of the Moon and the Queen Elizabeth Game Park. My father had come to know Amin before Amin took control of the country and was initially impressed with him.
(Slide shown) He was photographed as he chatted with Amin and an Israeli diplomat at a reception held at the Soviet Embassy commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Lenin.
In the months that followed Amin's coup, tales of unspeakable cruelty such as murder, torture and rape committed by Amin and his poorly disciplined Army began circulating. My father and a friend, Nicholas Stroh, an heir to the Stroh Brewery in Detroit and a free-lance reporter, became suspicious of the gregarious general. When rumors that hundreds of soldiers at the army's Mbarara barracks, some 150 miles outside of Kampala, had been slaughtered on June 22, 1971, filtered through to the capital city of Kampala, my father and Stroh set out into the African bush to seek confirmation of the atrocity.
So on July 7, 1971, the two men cranked up a battered pale-blue Volkswagen stationwagon with a hand-written "Press" sign attached to the windshield and drove off into the tangled heartland of Uganda, never to be seen again. Their disappearance alerted the world for the first time of the policy of mass murder of the Amin government that came to be referred to by the International Commission of Jurists as Amin's "reign of terror."
On June 22, 1971, I had celebrated my 17th birthday in Africa with my father. A few days later, I returned to the U.S., alone. Neither my father's body nor Stroh's was ever found. Pleas by the U. S. State Department to the Ugandan government to have my father declared dead so his estate could be settled and life insurance benefits paid were met with denials by Idi Amin that my father was dead. My father and Stroh, the hefty general said, had simply left the country, gone on holiday.
Hundreds of stories were written about the disappearances and eventually an informant came forward giving a grisly account of how the two men were brutally murdered by Amin and his soldiers. However, absent proof and without bodies, under Uganda law my father would not be presumed to be dead for seven years.
Eventually a presumptive certificate of death was issued. Eventually his life insurance benefits were paid. Eventually Amin offered a settlement to the families of the two men. But it was the Social Security survivor's benefits I received-- early on -- that enabled me to keep going-to finish high school, college and law school, while the international intrigue I had been thrust in the middle of, was resolved.
Twenty-six years later, in May, 1997, I returned to Uganda as a guest of General Muntu, commanding officer of the Ugandan Peoples Armed Forces, to interview the soldiers who murdered my father and dig for my father's body. The story of my journey is told in a book entitled A Tree Has Fallen In Africa.
The Social Security benefits I received enabled me to survive and eventually overcome the extreme adversity I had to face in the years to come, as I grew from boyhood into adulthood. Thankfully, tragic circumstances did not overwhelm me. As a lawyer and investment management professional, I encourage anyone who enters into the debate regarding modification of the Social Security system to remember stories such as my own.
With that in mind, I would like to open discussion of this important topic.
Setting Standards For The Investment Management Industry
