Mahmood Mamdani’s Slow Poison Challenges Western Mythology about African Leadership
Mahmood Mamdani’s Slow Poison Challenges Western Mythology about African Leadership
Mahmood Mamdani’s new book “Slow Poison: Idi Amin, Yoweri Museveni, and the Making of the Ugandan State” arrives at a historic moment: his son’s election as mayor of America’s largest city. Yet the book addresses questions far from New York politicsquestions about colonialism, state violence, and postcolonial leadership that explain fundamental tensions in how power operates globally. Published by Harvard University Press, “Slow Poison” combines memoir, history, and political analysis to fundamentally challenge Western narratives portraying Idi Amin as an irrational buffoon and Yoweri Museveni as enlightened modernizer. Instead, Mamdani argues both men inherited structures of violence embedded by British colonialism, making their respective authoritarian projects comprehensible through colonial logic rather than individual pathology.
Reframing Idi Amin Beyond Western Caricature
Western media consistently portrayed Idi Amin as a cartoonish tyrant, sometimes comparing him to Hitler while mocking his pretensions. Yet this narrative serves geopolitical rather than historical purposes. Mamdani argues that Amin, rising from humble origins in Uganda’s marginalized Nubi community, actually maintained popular support through most of his 1971-1979 rule. His 1972 expulsion of Uganda’s Indian minority, portrayed in Western media as genocide and racist violence, involved ethnic cleansing and property expropriation but, Mamdani demonstrates, was not accompanied by mass murder. Amin “ethnically cleansed Uganda of Asians and expropriated them, he did everything in his power to spare Asian lives,” according to Mamdani’s analysis. This distinction matters not to excuse ethnic cleansing but to understand it within political logic rather than individual brutality.
British Colonial Legacy Creates Political Fragmentation
Mamdani’s crucial insight concerns how British indirect rule colonial administration deliberately fragmented Uganda into ethnic units governed through traditional rulers, preventing unified national consciousness. Independence in 1962 inherited this fragmented structure, leaving no shared political identity bridging ethnic divisions. Subsequent leaders deployed violence to impose unity or, alternatively, to manage division. Amin attempted to forge a unified Black nation by removing the Indian minority he saw as colonial remnant. Museveni, by contrast, employed ethnic federalism fragmenting Uganda into competing minority groups subordinate to his centralized military apparatus. Both approaches made violence central to state-building, but for different political purposes.
Contrasting Violence Under Amin and Museveni
Mamdani’s analysis proves particularly important regarding state violence. Amin’s government perpetrated violence but operated within limits, with Amin ultimately overthrown by the 1979 Uganda-Tanzania War. Museveni, who succeeded Amin, implemented violence more systematically through bureaucratic state apparatus. Museveni killed hundreds of thousands in various campaigns, yet Western governments praised him as enlightened reformer because he adopted neoliberal economics and became reliable US ally in the War on Terror. This reveals that Western judgments of African leaders depend less on actual governance records than on geopolitical alignment.
Slow Poison as Colonial Analysis
The book’s title captures Mamdani’s argument that Uganda’s postcolonial fate involved not dramatic revolution but gradual poisoning of decolonization’s initial promise. The anti-colonial movement sought to create a unified nation from fragmented colonial structures. Instead, subsequent rulers, whether consciously or as result of inherited constraints, gradually cut up the country so that you no longer have a single citizenship. Museveni’s fragmentation strategy, in particular, mirrors colonial divide-and-rule tactics using modern identity politics language.
Impact on Understanding Contemporary Politics
Slow Poison speaks to contemporary American and global politics by demonstrating how colonialism’s structures persist in postcolonial governance. The book’s analysis of how political leaders weaponize identity divisions for control illuminates current debates about identity politics in the US. It shows that fragmenting populations into competing identities while concentrated power determines national direction represents not progressive identity consciousness but updated colonial governance strategy. This framework helps explain why Zohran Mamdani’s opponents attempted to isolate him through identity attacksthey deployed colonial tactics of fragmenting opposition through racial and religious othering. Visit Harvard University Press. Learn at Modern Language Association. Access Uganda at Britannica Africa. Study colonial history at JSTOR journals.
