Academic Foundations Shape NYC Mayor’s Vision
Mahmood Mamdani, the renowned postcolonial scholar and Columbia University professor, has spent five decades examining one of Africa’s most urgent questions: who belongs, and who decides? His latest book, “Slow Poison: Idi Amin, Yoweri Museveni, and the Making of the Ugandan State,” offers both a personal memoir and scholarly analysis of decolonization’s tragic arc. Yet this work carries profound implications for understanding his son Zohran Mamdani’s historic election as New York City’s mayor.
From Statelessness to Scholarship
Mahmood Mamdani’s intellectual journey began in displacement. Born in Mumbai, India, he came to the United States in 1963 on the Kennedy Airlift, a US-funded scholarship program that brought East African students to American universities. At the University of Pittsburgh, the young engineering student became politicized, participating in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee’s Freedom Rides in Alabama. This early commitment to justice struggles would anchor his decades-long examination of power, violence, and governance across the Global South. When Mamdani returned to Uganda in 1972 to work at Makerere University, he encountered Idi Amin’s regime firsthand. As a Ugandan citizen of Indian origin, he was among those expelled that same year, forced into exile in the United Kingdom and later Tanzania. This personal experience of being rendered stateless during political upheaval shaped a lifelong research agenda examining how colonialism manufactures division.
The Colonial Legacy in African Governance
Mamdani’s scholarship fundamentally challenges Western narratives about African leadership. In “Slow Poison,” he argues that both Idi Amin and successor Yoweri Museveni inherited an intractable colonial structure designed by Britain to fragment rather than unify African peoples. The British colonial system, which Mamdani terms “indirect rule,” deliberately created ethnic and linguistic divisions for administrative convenience and control. Rather than nation-building, this approach generated what he calls “tribalization”the artificial crystallization of group identities as permanent political antagonists. Amin attempted to forge a unified Black nation by expelling Uganda’s Indian minority, while Museveni, who has ruled for nearly four decades, employed the opposite strategy: fragmenting Uganda into ethnic minorities that competed for state resources. Both approaches, Mamdani demonstrates, perpetuated violence as a governing instrument.
Understanding Power Through Postcolonial Lens
As a Herbert Lehman Professor of Government at Columbia University since 1999, Mamdani has authored foundational texts in postcolonial studies, including “Citizen and Subject” (1996) and “When Victims Become Killers” (2001). His work on Rwanda’s genocide proved particularly influential, rejecting simplistic “tribal hatred” narratives in favor of analysis grounded in Belgium’s colonial manipulation of Hutu-Tutsi identities. This insistence on examining structural power rather than cultural essentialism became central to his intellectual contribution.
Parallels Between Father and Son
Mahmood Mamdani’s decades of scholarly work on belonging and power resonate throughout his son Zohran’s political platform. Both men grapple with questions of inclusion: Who is allowed to participate fully in civic life? Whose material needs matter to the state? Mahmood’s personal experience of being stripped of rights despite being born and raised in Uganda directly parallels contemporary debates about citizenship and belonging in New York City. Zohran’s campaign centered on whether the city’s resources serve Wall Street or working peoplefundamentally a question about who the political system actually belongs to.
Recent Scholarship and Current Relevance
“Slow Poison,” published in 2025, demonstrates that Mamdani’s analytical framework remains vital. In a December 2025 interview with Democracy Now!, he articulated how identity politics represents modern governance’s continued use of colonial-era “divide and rule” tactics. He explained that identity politics encourages narrow self-identification that pits communities against one another while allowing concentrated power to determine national direction without democratic input from below. This analysis directly illuminates contemporary US political dynamics, including the Islamophobic attacks leveled against Zohran Mamdani during his campaign.
Impact on Global Progressive Movements
Mahmood Mamdani’s work has influenced scholars and activists worldwide. His examination of decolonization speaks to movements across Africa, Asia, and Latin America seeking alternatives to neoliberal governance. His research on how states weaponize identity divisions has shaped contemporary activism around immigration, citizenship rights, and economic justice. Through his direction of the Makerere Institute of Social Research until 2022, he mentored a generation of African scholars committed to decolonial thinking. For deeper information on postcolonial theory, visit JSTOR academic journal databases. Learn about Uganda’s political history at Britannica’s Africa section. Explore Columbia University’s research at Columbia African Studies programs. Access decolonization scholarship at Project MUSE academic journals.
