{"id":5206,"date":"2025-11-18T16:04:24","date_gmt":"2025-11-18T16:04:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/readtrends.com\/en\/mamdani-uganda-amin-museveni-belonging\/"},"modified":"2025-11-18T16:04:24","modified_gmt":"2025-11-18T16:04:24","slug":"mamdani-uganda-amin-museveni-belonging","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/readtrends.com\/en\/mamdani-uganda-amin-museveni-belonging\/","title":{"rendered":"Mahmood Mamdani on Uganda, Amin, Museveni and national belonging"},"content":{"rendered":"<article>\n<h2>Lead<\/h2>\n<p>Mahmood Mamdani, a Columbia anthropologist and author of the October 2025 book Slow Poison, revisits his 1972 expulsion from Uganda and the political currents that produced it. He places Idi Amin\u2019s 1971 coup and the 1972 expulsion of roughly 80,000 people of South Asian descent in conversation with Yoweri Museveni\u2019s long rule since 1986. Mamdani argues these episodes illuminate how states construct categories of belonging \u2014 Indigenous, settler, citizen \u2014 and how those labels determine rights. The interview also touches on contemporary reverberations, including the rise of his son Zohran Mamdani in New York politics.<\/p>\n<h2>Key takeaways<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>In 1972 Idi Amin ordered the expulsion of about 80,000 people of South Asian origin from Uganda, a move Mamdani frames as racial nationalism that reshaped national identity.<\/li>\n<li>Mamdani\u2019s book Slow Poison (Oct 2025) links Amin\u2019s brief, violent first year in power to later patterns under Museveni, who took power in 1986 and remains influential.<\/li>\n<li>Estimates of killings under Amin vary widely; scholarly ranges cited include roughly 12,000 to as many as 500,000 deaths, reflecting contested archival and testimonial records.<\/li>\n<li>Mamdani contends that Museveni promoted administrative fragmentation by recasting more Ugandans as \u201csettlers,\u201d restricting land and political rights to those deemed Indigenous in increasingly narrow terms.<\/li>\n<li>The author draws a contrast between Amin\u2019s anti\u2011Western posture and Museveni\u2019s alignment with neoliberal institutions and U.S. regional security priorities, which affected international portrayals of each leader.<\/li>\n<li>Mamdani connects his personal history \u2014 displacement, diaspora life in London and Dar es Salaam \u2014 to a lifelong scholarly focus on who is admitted to the political community and why.<\/li>\n<li>The interview highlights contemporary parallels in the United States, including debates over birthright citizenship, identity policing and threats of mass deportation.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Background<\/h2>\n<p>Mamdani was 26 when Idi Amin set a three\u2011month deadline in 1972 for Asians to leave Uganda. Tens of thousands departed in a state\u2011sanctioned purge that severed families and uprooted livelihoods built under British colonial rule. Mamdani\u2019s family dispersed to the UK, the US and Tanzania; he remained until the final day, later settling into intellectual circles in Dar es Salaam that included pan\u2011African thinkers and activists.<\/p>\n<p>Uganda\u2019s modern political trajectory began with independence from Britain in 1962 and was punctuated by a 1971 coup that brought Amin to power. Amin\u2019s overthrow in 1979 did not end cycles of contestation: Museveni\u2019s rise in 1986 introduced a longer political project that, according to Mamdani, reengineered citizenship through administrative and legal measures. These two eras \u2014 Amin\u2019s violent populism and Museveni\u2019s prolonged rule \u2014 are central to Mamdani\u2019s reassessment of how states make and unmake communities.<\/p>\n<h2>Main event<\/h2>\n<p>Slow Poison combines memoir, archival research and political theory to revisit Amin and Museveni as formative figures in Uganda\u2019s postcolonial state. Mamdani situates the 1972 expulsions as both a break with colonial hierarchies and a unifying racial narrative that bound disparate African groups under a shared Black identity. He emphasizes that Amin initially enjoyed significant domestic support even as international reporting emphasized his brutality and sensationalized rumors about him.<\/p>\n<p>Mamdani also traces Israel\u2019s and Britain\u2019s early involvement with Amin: he argues both states cultivated ties that shaped the coup\u2019s aftermath and the new regime\u2019s early actions. Amin\u2019s later posture \u2014 aligning with Gaddafi, criticizing western policies, and rejecting earlier patrons \u2014 changed how he was seen internationally, Mamdani says. By contrast, Museveni\u2019s later embrace of IMF\/World Bank policies and cooperation with U.S. security initiatives produced more favorable Western coverage despite serious domestic abuses.<\/p>\n<p>The book foregrounds Museveni\u2019s practice of subdividing administrative units and defining \u201cindigeneity\u201d in increasingly narrow terms. Mamdani argues this process turned many citizens into second\u2011class residents or \u201csettlers\u201d barred from land ownership and high office \u2014 an administrative method of fragmenting potential political coalitions. For Mamdani, that incremental, legalistic erosion of a common political identity is the \u201cslow poison\u201d afflicting Uganda\u2019s body politic.<\/p>\n<h2>Analysis &#038; implications<\/h2>\n<p>Mamdani\u2019s core diagnostic separates two political technologies: Amin\u2019s dramatic expropriation and Museveni\u2019s persistent fragmentation. Amin mobilized a populist racial identity through a single, dramatic rupture \u2014 the expulsion \u2014 while Museveni relied on institutional reclassification to erode equal citizenship over decades. Each strategy produced distinct domestic effects and divergent global narratives about villainy and legitimacy.<\/p>\n<p>The international response to each leader, Mamdani suggests, was shaped by geopolitical alignment. Amin\u2019s antagonism toward former patrons invited Western demonization; Museveni\u2019s alignment with Western security and economic agendas granted him international leeway. The implication is that external legitimacy often hinges less on democratic practice than on geopolitical usefulness.<\/p>\n<p>Domestically, the administrative narrowing of belonging has long\u2011term consequences for social cohesion and conflict. When land and political rights hinge on district\u2011based claims to indigeneity, inter\u2011group competition intensifies and democratic accountability weakens. Mamdani warns that legalistic definitions of who \u201cbelongs\u201d are easily weaponized in patronage systems and can harden into systemic exclusion.<\/p>\n<p>For democracies beyond Uganda, the book offers a caution about the fragility of universal citizenship. Policies that privilege origin over residence, or that make political rights contingent on ancestry, create openings for demagogues and exclusionary politics. Mamdani points to contemporary U.S. debates \u2014 birthright citizenship, deportation rhetoric and identity testing \u2014 as resonant, if not identical, phenomena.<\/p>\n<h2>Comparison &#038; data<\/h2>\n<figure>\n<table>\n<thead>\n<tr>\n<th>Topic<\/th>\n<th>Idi Amin (1971\u201379)<\/th>\n<th>Yoweri Museveni (1986\u2013present)<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td>Key action<\/td>\n<td>1972 expulsion of \u224880,000 Asians<\/td>\n<td>Administrative subdivision; reclassification of indigeneity<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>International posture<\/td>\n<td>Initial Western ties; later anti\u2011Western alignment<\/td>\n<td>Alignment with IMF\/World Bank and US security interests<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Casualty estimates<\/td>\n<td>Death toll estimates range 12,000\u2013500,000<\/td>\n<td>Linked to regional interventions and human rights abuses (varying reports)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/figure>\n<p>The table highlights contrasting mechanisms: Amin\u2019s abrupt, visible rupture versus Museveni\u2019s gradual legal and administrative reshaping. Both strategies altered who could claim land, office and political voice. Quantities such as the 80,000 expelled in 1972 and the wide range of mortality estimates for Amin\u2019s rule are central and contested facts: they anchor the narrative even as interpretation varies by source and scholar.<\/p>\n<h2>Reactions &#038; quotes<\/h2>\n<p>Mamdani frames his intervention as both personal and theoretical: he blends family memoir with institutional critique to question how states define membership.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cWith the loss of Uganda, we lost a sense of belonging, and of rootedness.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><cite>Mahmood Mamdani, Slow Poison (memoir)<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This line, drawn from Mamdani\u2019s memoir passages, explains the personal stakes behind his scholarly project: expulsion shaped his lifelong focus on political belonging and diaspora identity.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cThe challenge is how to reconcile cultural identity with political belonging.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><cite>Mahmood Mamdani (interview)<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Here Mamdani summarizes the book\u2019s normative aim: to insist that cultural difference not be a pretext for denying equal political rights. He uses both historical cases and contemporary politics, including his son\u2019s mayoral victory, as proof points.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cMuseveni became a Washington poster boy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><cite>Mahmood Mamdani (interview)<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This succinct assessment captures Mamdani\u2019s view that international alignment can mute criticism of authoritarian practices, and that media frames are politically consequential.<\/p>\n<aside>\n<details>\n<summary>Explainer: Indigeneity, settler and citizen<\/summary>\n<p>In Mamdani\u2019s analysis, colonial administrations distinguished between those categorized as races (often governed by civil law) and tribes (governed by customary law). The colonial fiction of tribal homelands converted cultural authorities into political ones and created parallel legal regimes. \u201cIndigeneity\u201d in postcolonial states often inherits that architecture: it becomes a legal and administrative tool that can grant or deny property, office, and rights. Mamdani argues that a politics based on residence and shared civic commitment \u2014 not ancestral origin alone \u2014 better secures universal political rights.<\/p>\n<\/details>\n<\/aside>\n<h2>Unconfirmed<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>The highest estimates of Amin\u2019s death toll (up to 500,000) are contested among historians and rely on differing methodologies and sources.<\/li>\n<li>Some claims about direct, specific instructions from British or Israeli officials to Amin are debated in archival research and remain partially contested.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Bottom line<\/h2>\n<p>Mamdani\u2019s Slow Poison is an intervention that blends memoir and scholarship to reframe two eras of Ugandan statecraft as complementary case studies in how political communities are constructed and eroded. Amin\u2019s dramatic expulsions and Museveni\u2019s bureaucratic fragmentations are different techniques with similar stakes: control over who is counted as fully political.<\/p>\n<p>Beyond Uganda, the book prompts readers in established democracies to reconsider policies that condition rights on origin rather than residence. Mamdani cautions that legal definitions of belonging can be repurposed for exclusion, and he offers federation and common citizenship as institutional responses that prioritize where people live over where they come from.<\/p>\n<h2>Sources<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/ng-interactive\/2025\/nov\/18\/mahmood-mamdani-father-interview-zohran\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The Guardian<\/a> (interview and feature, journalism)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lead Mahmood Mamdani, a Columbia anthropologist and author of the October 2025 book Slow Poison, revisits his 1972 expulsion from Uganda and the political currents that produced it. He places Idi Amin\u2019s 1971 coup and the 1972 expulsion of roughly 80,000 people of South Asian descent in conversation with Yoweri Museveni\u2019s long rule since 1986. &#8230; <a title=\"Mahmood Mamdani on Uganda, Amin, Museveni and national belonging\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/readtrends.com\/en\/mamdani-uganda-amin-museveni-belonging\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about Mahmood Mamdani on Uganda, Amin, Museveni and national belonging\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5204,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rank_math_title":"Mahmood Mamdani on Uganda, Amin and who belongs | Insight","rank_math_description":"Mahmood Mamdani revisits Uganda\u2019s 1972 expulsions and Museveni\u2019s rule in Slow Poison, tracing how Indigeneity and state policy decide who counts as a citizen.","rank_math_focus_keyword":"Mahmood Mamdani, Uganda, Idi Amin, Yoweri Museveni, expulsion, Indigeneity","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/readtrends.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/readtrends.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/readtrends.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readtrends.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readtrends.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5206"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/readtrends.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5206\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readtrends.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/readtrends.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readtrends.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readtrends.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}