“Slow Poison”: Scholar Mahmood Mamdani on New Book About Uganda, Decolonization & More

We speak with the acclaimed academic and writer Mahmood Mamdani, who has just released a new book, Slow Poison: Idi Amin, Yoweri Museveni, and the Making of the Ugandan State. Mamdani, who has taught at Columbia for decades, was raised in Uganda and first came to the United States in the 1960s to study. He and his family were later expelled from Uganda during Idi Amin’s dictatorship. The book “is about the reversal of the anti-colonial movement” in Uganda, says Mamdani. “The anti-colonial movement fought to create a nation out of a fragmented country … and I speak of slow poison as a gradual, piecemeal, step-by-step cutting up of the country so that you no longer have a single citizenship.”

“My Advice to Parents Is Learn from Your Kids”: Mahmood Mamdani on Raising Zohran, NYC’s Next Mayor

The acclaimed academic and writer Mahmood Mamdani speaks with Democracy Now! about the rise of his son, New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani. The professor cites Zohran’s “refusal to budge, to soften his critique of the state of Israel” as a critical aspect of his rise to power. “His refusal to change his stance told the electorate that this was a man of principle, that affordability was not just merely rhetoric, that he could be taken seriously at his word,” Mahmood says.

Zohran Mamdani - Wikipedia

The Idea of the Nation-State Is Synonymous With Genocide

A conversation with political theorist Mahmood Mamdani on the inherent violence at the heart of a nation-building project, the war in Gaza, and the changing meaning of homeland.