Mahmood Mamdani left Uganda at the age of 17 to study in the US. There he was taught an abstract sort of political science which preserved a jealous distance from 'anthropology' or actual political history or human geography. Soon after returning to Uganda in 1972, Mamdani was expelled along with other Ugandan Asians, by Idi Amin. Some months later, he went to the University of Dar as Salam which was much more left-wing than Makerere in Uganda. More importantly, Tanzania was 95 percent Bantu speaking and thus much more linguistically homogenous. Uganda had a 30 percent Nilotic minority from which the Army was mainly drawn. Thus, Uganda was never going to be as stable as Tanzania. It would need to do more 'devolution' which is why the Brits made it a Protectorate. Sadly, Obote, the Prime Minister, got rid of the Kabaka, who was President for the first three years after Independence, and created a one-party Socialist dictatorship. He was overthrown by his Army Chief some four years later. Meanwhile, Tanzania remained perfectly stable. Thus, it was obvious, Dar as Salam was not the right place to study Ugandan politics more particularly if you had spent the last few years being brainwashed on American campuses. Mamdani says 'My political awakening began in the United States
a very rich country which had fought a Civil War one century previously to ensure that secessionism or War-lordism would never again raise their ugly heads
and matured in Dar es Salaam.'
A Socialist shithole which had become a one-party state in 1965
The plain fact is, Mamdani had no emic understanding of Ugandan politics. Even V.S Naipaul understood the place better because he had spent a few months at Makerere University in the mid Sixties. But Naipaul felt ashamed of his own family's agricultural/trading background whereas 'Asians' in East Africa tend to identify with Bantu agriculturists and their ancient Kingdoms and traditions while also feeling affinity to pastoralists- Nilotic, 'Hamitic', or whatever. For Hindus, there is the feeling that since 'Krishna' means 'very black skinned', they are in veritable 'Vaikuntha'. For Muslims, they are in the land of Hazrat Bilal and, in any case, Swahili, has the same Arabic words as Urdu while on the coast, the elite are often 'Shirazi'- i.e. of Persian origin.
British 'Asians' (including myself by reason of my father's four year posting to the Indian High Commission in Nairobi) first became aware of Mamdani's stupidity and ignorance when his 1983 book 'Imperialism & Fascism in Uganda' came to our attention. By then, I had graduated from the LSE and had formed personal friendships with African intellectuals working for the UNDP etc. Indeed, for people like me, the Coasian 'Law & Econ' approach- which we first learned off in the 'Public Finance' module run by Prest & Le Grande- had completely altered our understanding of 'Colonialism'. Moreover, chaps in their thirties who had experience of working in 'post-colonial' bureaucracies were fully aware of the deficiencies of Command Economies and the lamentable fact that Aid and 'Sovereign Debt' had run out of steam. For this reason, Mamdani looked like a senile buffoon. Then Mira Nair married him and we pitied the poor, elderly, Gujarati Muslim who, we firmly believed, was being brutally subjected to reparative rape by a Punjabi Hindu woman of superior class and education.
The reason, us LSE darkies looked down on mad Mamdani's 1983 book was that it contained such gems of wisdom as the suggestion that the Brits introduced cotton into Uganda in 1903 because the American Civil War (which ended in 1865) had caused a 'cotton famine' in Manchester! The truth is Uganda needed to export cotton to defray the expenses of its administration. Cotton was grown by peasants, not on plantations, and they gained cash income which they could spend as they pleased. The British were protecting the Ugandans from civil war and invasion. Thus the Ugandans prospered by growing and selling cash crops. First there was standardization and quality control for Ugandan cotton which led to increased market demand. Then, in 1930, a Coffee board was set up with the result that coffee exports increased greatly. The Brits were helping Ugandans to grow richer by solving 'collective action problems'. Mamdani sees nothing but Imperialism and Fascism in peasants getting richer by selling cash crops.
The other curious thing about Mamdani's book is his tendency to put all the blame for Amin's atrocities on non-Muslim shoulders. He has a particular animus against Wanume Kibedi- Amin's first foreign minister. Kibedi's sister was Amin's wife. Both had to flee after Amin killed their uncle in 1973. Kibedi was later appointed Ambassador to the UN by Museveni. Still, it must be said, in 1983, Mamdani referred to Amin's regime as Fascist. Since then, it seems he has changed his mind.
As a doctrinaire Marxist with no personal knowledge of events in Uganda after Independence, Mamdani was simply a 'useful idiot'- nothing more. He returned to Kampala after Amin fell as part of a Christian NGO initiative but was thrown out by Obote. Finally, when, for economic reasons, Museveni invited the Asians to return, Mamdani- as an Asian- could be displayed as a sort of mascot. From time to time he would say something critical of Museveni and people would say 'how kind of Museveni not to kill or deport Mamdani!'
In his new book, 'Slow poison', Mahmood Mamdani writes-
ETHNICITY AND TRIBE Africa has always been a collection of tribes, goes the conventional refrain.
No. Africa had become a collection of States by the beginning of the Twentieth Century. Previously, it had featured Kingdoms, Empires and some territories ruled in a traditional manner and other territories which weren't ruled at all. In some places there was a dominant tribe under a hereditary Chieftain. But this was not always the case. Speaking generally, in sub-Saharan Africa, tribe meant a linguistic community. The word 'clan' was used if the same language was spoken by people who might be at war with each other. However, where this term was used it was generally the case that there was a memory of common descent and governance. By contrast, in Europe, tribes of disparate origins- e.g. Angles & Saxons- come together to form a nation. The question was whether, in the new countries created by Western Imperial power, different peoples, speaking different languages and sometimes following separate religions, could come to share a sense of common nationality.
Mamdani says in an interview- 'I was puzzled by the political architecture that Britain created in its colonies to govern.'
Like Mamdani, I went to primary school in East Africa. I wasn't puzzled at all by the political architecture created by the Brits in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. Why? Teechur drew maps on the blackboard and explained it all.
'The census tagged every person living in a colony as belonging either to a race or to a tribe,
either they were classed as European or Asian (Indian subcontinent) or they were African. Since the vast majority were African, there was a further division based on mother tongue which corresponded to 'tribe'.
and I was curious: what’s the distinction?
Asians could be taught their own languages in their own schools.
I realized that a race was anybody who had come from outside,
No. Nubians were a tribe in Uganda though they came from outside.
who was not Indigenous, and a tribe was anybody who was Indigenous.
This is clearly false with regard to the Ugandan Protectorate. Moreover, it was carried over into the citizenship law of independent Uganda. Obote removed Kenyan citizens from official positions in 1965 and forced about 30,000 out in 1969.
So I asked myself: “What difference does it make?” Well, it made a difference in how they were governed under the law.
Different communities have different personal law- e.g. re. marriage, divorce, inheritance, etc.
All races, whether they came from Europe or from south Asia, anywhere, were governed under the same law, civil law.
No. If Mamdani's daddy had taken a second, third, or fourth wife, he wouldn't have gone to jail. This was because he was Muslim. A White Christian or Jew- even if he was the Governor- would have been prosecuted for bigamy.
To be governed under the same law meant that you were supposed to have a common future.
No. The law may be the same but those who are smart, thrifty and enterprising will have a much brighter future. People who do stupid shit may have no fucking future whatsoever.
Tribes were not governed under the same law.
Personal law was different. But this was also a function of religion. Criminal law was the same.
First of all, there was the fiction that each tribe had a homeland.
No. Nubians had no homeland. They had arrived when the Christians and Animists in South Sudan rebelled and chased away this group of mercenaries.
I call this a fiction because it’s not true.
Mamdani is writing fiction. He knows Nubians are a recognized tribe in Uganda but have no homeland.
Before colonialism, not only Africans, but humans have been migrants.
They have been settlers.
You cannot peg humans to a particular piece of territory over centuries and millennia.
Yes you can. Every country in the world has done so. Mamdani has shit for brains.
You can’t. They’ve moved. This fiction that every tribe had a homeland was extended so that every homeland had a customary authority.
Some did. Some didn't. In Uganda, there were 4 recognized Kingdoms and one less well defined territory at Independence. Under Museveni, the number of such entities has tripled. This appears to be a good thing. Museveni has lasted almost 40 years. His son is likely to take over. Uganda is stable. Sadly it isn't ruled by a Muslim whose family entered it in the 1880s. That's why Mamdani hates Museveni.
Cultural authorities were turned into political authorities.
To some extent, in some places. But if authority wasn't exercised in the manner the Governor approved, that authority was transferred to someone else.
And then the British created something called customary law,
No. Customs created customary law. Why not say that the British invented the Buganda language?
which could be enforced by customary authorities with British power standing behind them. This made for a separate future for the tribes, unlike the races.
Ugandans wanted to be independent. The Brits agreed to fuck off. But before they went they created a machinery for the different peoples of Uganda to create common laws, institutions and thus a shared future. Sadly, the country turned to shit because Obote and Amin were shitty dictators, relying upon thugs from their own tribes, who fucked up the economy. Museveni, despite being initially more left-wing, turned out to be smart and effective. His son heads the army and so there should be no succession problem. Obote had created a one party state in 1969. Museveni has held regular elections since 2006. On the other hand, there are allegations of vote rigging.
I understood this to be the political, legal essence of what we normally call “divide and rule”.
Mamdani didn't notice that the Brits had to unite territories to rule them cheaply. It was Independence which led to Partitions and Population Exchanges.
After Obote got rid of the Kabaka and made himself the President, he abolished the traditional kingdoms. Why? He wanted to crush any and every source of opposition to himself. Sadly, his Army Chief had the same idea.
When I went to South Africa in 91, I was writing a book on Africa.
Because Whitey doesn't care how shitty books about Africa are- especially if written by darkies.
Every chapter was written, except one chapter on south Africa, because south Africa was supposed to be the exception. Apartheid was supposed to be the exception.
Fuck off! Kenya had it in the White Highlands. Rhodesia had it. I suppose the French in Algeria could be said to have something like it. Basically, if there were enough Whites, then it featured. Uganda and Tanzania didn't have enough Whites and thus didn't.
And after just a very little time in South Africa, I realized that I’d been totally mistaken. I’d been misled. South Africa was not an exception. I knew this beast. I had grown up under it in Uganda, although you may call it an informal version of apartheid.
No. In Uganda, indigenous Africans held the free-holds. Non-Africans were not permitted to do so. This didn't mean they couldn't have significant control rights. But, that's a story about Coase's theorem- which Mamdani is too stupid to understand.
It was the same thing where the state used law to divide the population into different groups and privileged one section of the population at the expense of the other. I began to come to a conclusion that every modern colony was an apartheid state.
Uganda, unlike Kenya, was a Protectorate. In other words, it was conceived as a place with its own indigenous centres of authority and traditions of jurisprudence. It was like the Indian Princely States. It wasn't like directly administered India. Thus Museveni & Amin & Obote were born as 'British Protected Subjects' and became Ugandan citizens at Independence. Mamdani's parents were British subjects and chose to retain that nationality after India became independent. Had the Ugandan Protectorate granted citizenship to Indian immigrants, they would have been Ugandan citizens- unless they preferred to remain British. But this did not happen.
Had Mamdani gone to College in Uganda or India or the UK, he would understand that there are two types of Federation. One in which secession is permitted will have State based, rather than Federal, citizenship. Thus, because countries can secede from the EU, primary citizenship is of a member state. The US does not permit secession. That's why there was a Civil War. In 1868, by the 14th Amendment, US citizenship became federal.
Mamdani says,
My first encounter with the notion of federation was in the thinking of Abraham Lincoln and the amendments which changed the notion of citizenship. Before the civil war, you were a citizen of the state in which you were born.In the African context, federation was always seen as a colonial maneuver.
Mamdani thinks Idi Amin was 'a maker of modern Uganda'. This is false. He was a corrupt general who first killed his Acholi rival in the army- the man had protected Obote from an assassination attempt probably sponsored by Amin- and then came to power through a coup. He sought to retain power by filling all important posts with his own Kakwa or Nubian people. Mamdani is at pains to paint the 'Nubi' as neither an ethnic group nor a multi-ethnic formation. They came out of a mix of conscripts and runaway refugees drawn from many ethnic groups;- i.e. they were bandits or mercenaries. Nothing good happens when such people take over a peaceful, agricultural, country with its own indigenous cultures and traditions.
In an interview, Mamdani says 'Amin was trained as a mercenary, a child soldier, by the British.
If so, it was at his father's behest because his people had come to Uganda as mercenaries. First, however, he was indoctrinated in Islam by Muslims, not British people. The Gurkhas could be called mercenaries for the British. But they weren't Muslim and didn't launch coups or commit genocide. Idi Amin did. For Mamdani- who also admires the Janjaweed- this makes Idi the George Washington of Uganda.
If Amin was a mercenary for the British, did he cease to be so when the Kabaka became President of Uganda? Obote got rid of the Kabaka. Was Amin a mercenary for Obote? If so, it didn't stop him trying to get the fellow assassinated. Amin got a fellow tribesman to kill the Acholi second-in-command who had protected Obote. Fearful that Obote, who was Lenga and thus closer to the Acholi, would punish him when he returned from abroad, Amin launched a coup against him. The mercenary had taken over a country where Muslims were a small minority. He announced that Uganda was now an Islamic nation. Mamdani, being Muslim, thinks this makes him the 'maker of modern Uganda'.
He was taught to be a ruthless, violent person.
Mamdani was taught to be a stupid, useless, person.
And he indeed was ruthless and violent. The worst, most violent period of his rule was the first two years when the army was split and thousands were massacred in their barracks.
He was killing Acholis who traditionally dominated the Army so his own people could replace them.
His close allies were the British and the Israelis.
No. They were Libya & the PLO both of whom sent troops to fight for Amin when he went to war with Tanzania. By that point, no Ugandan soldier could be trusted and so the Arabs drew up their battle plans secretly and only Amin was told about them. Sadly, they were shit at fighting and soon ran away. Amin's regime collapsed after his best commander was run over by one of his own tanks.
Amin expelled the Israelis about 13 months after coming to power. He relied on Muslim officers including many who were foreign born. This provoked the Arube uprising in 1974 after the Lugbara Foreign Minister was killed by Amin. Arube himself was Kakwa but a Christian not a Muslim. On the other hand, Mustafa Adrisi was a Muslim and appeared very close to Amin. Did Amin try to kill him in a suspicious car accident? That is what his soldiers believed. Their mutiny led directly to the Tanzania war which finally put an end to Amin's murderous regime.
The British had suggested that he assassinate Obote [Milton Obote, who led Uganda before Amin].
No. They had suggested that he sodomize Obote and then eat him. British are like that only. Queenji would often shout 'off with their heads' when she saw a group of darkies. Idi Amin would plead with Queenji saying 'spare the lives of these innocent Black people' but Queenji was very adamant. Thus Amin was obliged to chop off the heads of trillions of Black people. This is because he was a child soldier trained by Prince Phillip.
The Israelis were skeptical. Even if he succeeds in assassinating Obote, they said, his entire power structure would be intact; his military forces would be there.
The big massacre of Acholi & Lenga soldiers occurred in July 1971, 6 months after he came to power. American journalist, Nicholas Stroh, and, Makerere University lecturer, Robert Siedle, who went to investigate this, were killed by Amin.
So Amin dealt with that power structure by physically eliminating them. That was the worst period, a period in which his closest allies were the British and the Israelis,
He called Siedle an Israeli agent.
and you could say they were accomplices in this mass murder.
No. They were sickened by it. Brits & Jews don't like to see kaffirs being killed. But Libyans & Palestinians can't get enough of the stuff.
Amin’s killings became far fewer and far more selective,
no. They increased in size and scale. To make Uganda a Muslim nation, you have to kill the Christian majority.
targeting prominent persons like the chief justice or the vice chancellor of the university,
or the Bishop. Their crime was their religion.
persons he suspected of being connected to the opposition.
Mamdani is a Muslim. That is why he praises Amin, the only Muslim Dictator of Uganda.
It must be said, Uganda at independence was like Ghana or Burma. It had a relatively high material standard of living, a growing educated class, and prosperous landlords and peasant proprietors connected to international markets for cash crops. Sadly, Obote, who belonged to a Nilotic tribe allied to the Acholis. who dominated the Army, conspired against the Kabaka and the prosperous Buganda people. It must be said, when Amin first took power, he held a state funeral for the monarch and paid for his son's education in the UK. The hope was that Amin would hold elections and permit a return to constitutional methods. At a later point it was suggested that the Buganda elite received the lion's share of the assets of the Asians and thus they were quietly supportive of Amin. There seems little evidence for this view. Buganda people, like the Acholis and Lango, were targeted by Amin. The arrest and killing of the Acholi Archbishop and two Cabinet Ministers (both speaking Nilotic languages) in 1977 showed that nobody was safe. Henry Kyemba, Amin's Health Minister, defected to the UK just after this happened. His book 'A State of Blood' was a best seller and created the image of Amin as a deranged cannibal. Like other well educated Buganda people, Kyemba returned to Uganda under Museveni.
Obote had gained power by allying with the Kabaka but later sent Amin and his soldiers to attack the Kabaka's palace. After getting rid of the Kabaka, Obote, took his country in a leftward direction thus earning the approval of Nyerere in Tanzania where he found refuge after Amin's coup. With Tanzanian help, he was restored to power (after a brief period when a Buganda academic, and then a Buganda lawyer, were Presidents) by Ojok, the Lango Army Chief, on the basis of an election whose fairness was disputed. After Ojok died in 1983 in a helicopter crash, Obote's days were numbered . He was toppled by Okello who was angered by Obote's appointing a Lango, rather than an Acholi, as the next army chief. The Acholi dominated army then took power before being defeated by Museveni, a Southerner, who promised a more even handed approach. In particular, he wanted each ethnic group to administer its own territory so as to prevent the country once again becoming prey to marauding soldiers of one ethnicity or another. Sadly, this involved a terrible war with the Acholis. Joseph Kony, is Acholi, and remains at large. Still, since 2006 most Acholis have returned to their villages and are living peacefully.
Museveni's rule has lasted for almost 40 years. He has remade Ugandan identity and secured its status as a sovereign Nation-State. Obote & Amin had all but destroyed what was inherited from the British or, going further back, the ancient kingdoms of the region.
The speaker will point to the multitude of language groups on the continent, their numbers more or less constant over time.
They will point to the rapid spread of lingua francas- e.g. Swahili. However, English and French too have spread very rapidly.
But is a language group the same as a tribe?
No.
Tis book argues otherwise: a language group is a cultural community, an ethnic group.
No. An English speaking Ugandan isn't part of the same ethnic group or cultural community as an English speaking Yorkshireman.
An ethnic group becomes a tribe when
it evolves institutions- e.g. Chieftainships- to deal with collective action problems. Speaking generally, the process continues as a number of tribes unite to form a City-State or Nation.
politicized, and identifed with a fixed territory (“homeland”),
Nonsense! No tribe is created when convicts are shipped off to some remote island.
a hierarchical authority (“customary authority”), and a set of laws that apply only to members of the tribe (“customary laws”).
In which case, Singaporeans belong to a tribe. If I move to Singapore, I am allowed to send my kids to private schools. Singaporeans have to send them to government primary schools. But an Indian origin Singaporean does not belong to the same ethnicity or tribe as a Malay origin or Chinese origin Singaporean. Mamdani is talking nonsense. Why? He is thinking of 'Reservations' in the US or 'Bantustans' in South Africa. But both US & South Africa were 'settler' societies. In the former the European immigrants are still the largest percentage of the population. South Africa, however, has come under majority rule. Uganda, unlike Kenya, never had much European settlement. There was about half as much Asian settlement as Kenya in Uganda but Obote & Amin got rid of the Asians fifty years ago.
A tribe is a political community.
No. It may have no political activity or representation whatsoever more particularly if national boundaries run through it and State power is exercised despotically.
In the African countries, the politicization of culture took place over the colonial period.
No. It always existed and gave rise to Kingdoms and religious movements and population transfer through the slave trade.
Modern colonialism created the tribes of Africa.
No. It merely took cognizance of the facts of human geography.
It is colonial power that translated linguistic boundaries into political ones,
No. Colonial powers carved up the continent with scant regard for 'linguistic boundaries'. That's why the Buganda wanted a separate state. Andrew Cohen, the Governor of Uganda, deposed and exiled the Kabaka in 1953. Intense protests by his people led to the Kabaka's return two years later. Obote & Amin finished what Cohen started. The Kabaka was exiled in 1966. Under Museveni, the Kabakas and other traditional monarchs have returned and can live peacefully in their ancient ancestral homes. This shows Museveni is very evil. It is not enough to deport Asians. You must also deport Africans. Also, you must completely destroy the economy. Otherwise- like Museveni- you are slowly poisoning your country. Hopefully Zohran will deport the Jews and Christians from New York. Only once cannibalism prevails in the streets of Manhattan, will the 'slow poison' of colonialism be purged from the body politic.
and language groups into “nations,” claiming that these were really a carryover of premodern units.
There was no such claim. It is a different matter that 'language groups' demanded 'Nation States' when multi-ethnic Empires began to break up- e.g., in Europe, after the Great War.
To see through these claims,
which didn't exist
we need to focus on three critical changes under colonialism.
The 'scramble for Africa' resulted in Treaties carving up the continent without regard to language, ethnicity, or religion. De-colonization, more often than not, ignored these factors. To be fair, it was hoped that regional economic federations would mitigate problems arising from borders dividing communities.
First was the creation of a power structure in the new units:
speaking generally, the existing power structure was maintained. Alternatively, new men were designated as 'Chiefs' and given wide administrative powers.
“traditional authorities” were empowered by colonial authorities to run the newly bounded “traditional societies.”
In some places, not others. The problem was that if authority did not exist, it could not be exercised. Mamdani wants to tell us a horror story about feudal chiefs exercising power on behalf of Colonial masters. The truth was that such power as they had was ebbing away. If the Chief can't give valuable gifts, his position becomes merely ceremonial. He is merely a pensioner of the Government.
Second was the creation of “customary law.” This law claimed to be a continuation of precolonial custom, but at the same time distinguished between two kinds of residents: indigenous and migrants. Traditional authorities were said to be empowered by customary law to discriminate between those indigenous and those not—the former tracing their genealogy to the time before colonialism and the latter to colonization or after.
Where land is owned collectively, such a distinction is bound to be made. But will it be upheld in practice? No. Coase's theorem explains that how property rights are distributed doesn't matter. A deal can be done for 'control rights'. Those who are more efficient can gain control and make 'side payments' which pass judicial or other scrutiny.
Even when colonial migrants had come to speak the language of the locality (“culture”), they were considered not indigenous to the area.
Not really. There are plenty of stories about this leader or that leader not being a genuine member of the ethnicity he claims.
And even when culturally assimilated, they were treated as political strangers.
No. Sometimes, such matters would be raked up. But, speaking generally, the thing didn't matter in the slightest.
They were considered not part of the tribe. Finally, in a continent where most ethnic groups had historically been mobile, moving in search of productive land and waters, these same ethnic groups were now fixed to a territory (“tribal homeland”) and said to have been fixed to it eternally.
This simply hasn't happened. I suppose Mamdani is thinking of Bantustans. But they disappeared three decades ago.
Colonial power built the colonial state on tribal building blocks.
No. Colonial power built on the Army and the Navy and the Railways and the Telegraph and global markets for cash-crops and raw materials. Tribes simply didn't matter save in so far as it affected military recruitment.
Recruitment into all colonial institutions was based on tribal identities.
The problem got worse after Independence when the Dictator recruited from his own clan. But Saddam was doing something similar in Iraq.
Every institution—from the army to the police to the prisons, even plantation or factory or domestic labor—was identified with particular tribes.
This was the Uganda Mamdani returned to, not the one he left at the age of 17 to take up an American scholarship. Had Governor Cohen accepted the demand of the Buganda and other ancient kingdoms, you might have had a Federal Uganda of a peaceful, prosperous type. Cohen was wrong to think 'top-down' State building could be done. Sadly, it was that nonsense Mamdani imbibed in US universities. Had he studied in Dar as Salam- which had some good British Africanists, he wouldn't have so strong a prejudice against the 'Anthropological' or 'Human Geography' approach. Interestingly, Museveni- who was more radical than Mamdani when they first met in 1973- had studied in Dar as Salam. But he also had personal experience of the Mozambique struggle. He was a genuine revolutionary who learnt from his mistakes. Mamdani was and is a doctrinaire Pundit with no emic knowledge of the country he emigrated to as a child.
When members of a tribe demanded increased representation in any institution, their calculation was inevitably based on a tribal arithmetic. Tribalism was a representation of colonial logic.
Tribes rebelled against Colonial authorities. Surely, this cretin has heard of the Maji Maji and He He rebellions? We were taught about them in Primary School in East Africa. It is obvious that 'tribal arithmetic' is the same thing as democratic arithmetic. African politics wasn't so very different from Indian politics.
Idi Amin and Yoweri Museveni have been defined by their opposed relationship to tribalism: Amin as the father of the nation,
he was a Muslim and, as such, was given refuge by Saudi Arabia. But he relied on his own 'Nubians'. He did much to destroy his country. But so did his former patron, Obote. Mamdani was brought back to Kampala by a Christian NGO after Amin fell. He became deliriously happy when he was invited to Pyongyang. Uganda must follow the North Korean example. The position of Dictator should be hereditary. But it is Museveni, not Obote or Amin who will be able to pass on power to his son. Don't forget Museveni was once to the left of Obote or Nyerere.
and Museveni as one who has sought to resurrect tribe as a political identity and make it permanent.
Museveni has given Uganda stability. True, like other Socialist leaders he has embraced some market-based reforms. But, like Nyerere his Socialism is African, not something derived from obsolete textbooks written in the Nineteen Fifties or Sixties by stupid American Leftists.
I first saw Idi Amin in 1972, after I returned home to Kampala from the United States to begin research on my doctoral thesis.
Had he studied in Africa, he might have understood something about his own country.
Ali Mazrui
from an important family of Islamic scholars in Mombasa. Both the crazy John Okello (who had massacred Arabs and Asians in Zanzibar) and Idi Amin wanted to exploit his prestige. He was smart enough to refuse and to move to the University of Michigan in 1974.
, the head of the Political Science Department at Kampala’s Makerere University, had suggested I join the department as a teaching assistant,
Muslims should stick together
which I was delighted to do. That same year, Amin came to Makerere to preside over the university’s fiftieth anniversary celebrations.
He would kill the Vice Chancellor soon enough.
From the moment he arrived, Amin was the center of attention. As he took the podium, Amin’s remarks had the effect of a tremor: “I came here with a battalion of soldiers so that when you lift your heads from books, you know who has power.” We were stunned. Then came an even more outrageous statement: “On my way to the main hall, I stopped at Mulago (the university hospital). I looked at your records. I see that most of you are sufering from gonorrhea. I will not tolerate you spreading political gonorrhea in Uganda.”
Amin knew Obote was planning an invasion. The African students he was talking to understood what he was saying. If you back Obote, I will kill you. The V.C, however, was supposed to be a friend of Amin's.
This was my introduction to Amin’s many uses of public buffoonery as political performance.
He was deadly serious. Mazrui took the hint.
A year later, I joined the University of Dar es Salaam as a young lecturer. There, I met Yoweri Museveni
who had played a part in the first invasion of Uganda the previous year
who had graduated from the university and taken a job as an instructor at the Cooperative College in Moshi,Tanzania. I had heard of him as the charismatic head of the University Students’ African Revolutionary Front (USARF) at the University of Dar es Salaam.
The guy was an actual revolutionary. He had participated in the 1972 invasion. More importantly, he learnt from his mistakes and prevailed as a military leader. How? Organize 'liberated areas' to be self-administering and self-garrisoning. Otherwise, you just have a game of musical chairs with endless coups and bands of marauding soldiers crossing borders with impunity.
By contrast, Mamdani was a pedant with little knowledge of Africa. He may have been a Marxist but he was no revolutionary.
Perched on a hill several miles from the city center, the university campus was generally known as “The Hill.” Never a shortage of anecdotal stories when it came to Museveni, one went like this. In the week after Mao’s death, Museveni was teaching at the Hill. Before class began, he walked to the blackboard and wrote something like, Marx was a great man. Marx is dead. Lenin was a great man. Lenin is dead. Mao was a great man. Mao too is dead. I, too, am not feeling so well . . . There was little reason to think of Museveni as modest.
Museveni has held power for 40 years. What he learnt from Marx & Lenin & Mao is that you have to build 'from the bottom up.' The result is that he will go down in history as the true father of his country. Obote & Amin were tribalist Dictators who implemented crazy economic policies.
Like other subjects in the colony, both Amin and Museveni were products of British colonialism in at least one sense: they were both publicly identified as members of a race or a tribe.
Unlike Mamdani's parents, who were British subjects and were identified as being of the Asiatic race, they were British protected subjects till Uganda became independent. In Amin's case, tribalism was a feature of the way he exercised power.
And so was I.
His parents could have chosen Indian or Pakistani nationality.
The British were master classifiers.
No. They didn't classify their own people. Who in Britain now knows which Anglo-Saxon or Celtic tribe he belongs to by virtue of paternal descent?
They understood that to be modern was to be master of all; the power to define would lead the way to other powers, to arrange and rearrange everything, in nature and in society.
This is magical thinking. I may say 'I define Putin as a pussycat'. But this does not turn Putin into a pussycat.
This hubris would ultimately lead the British to cleanse and reorder areas of the world as part of a larger effort to remake the world as a whole.
Nonsense! The Brits were smart. They saw that transoceanic trade could make their home islands more prosperous and more secure. But, by the 1930s, it was becoming obvious that the Imperial game was not worth the candle. Darkies would have to learn to rule themselves or perish in the attempt.
Not surprisingly, their first act after conquest was to classify all plants and animals.
Linnaeus was Swedish. Sweden didn't go in for colonies. The reason for classification was scientific. It enabled more rapid accumulation of useful knowledge.
Humans, too, were classifed, into natives and non-natives.
and male and female. British invented gender! We must 'decolonize' our bodies by repudiating the notion that we either have a penis or a vagina but not plenty of both. Then we should fuck ourselves to death to protest against Israel.
Non-natives like myself (I was of South Asian descent) were persons of no fixed abode.
No. Mamdani's permanent address was mentioned on his passport. Idi Amin decided to cancel his Ugandan passport and deport him. That's why he says 'Amin is the father of the Ugandan nation'. Museveni is very evil though, under him, even Zohran got an Ugandan passport.
In contrast, natives, like Amin and Museveni, were defined by place. Classified into a variety of species, each belonged to a “tribe” with a designated territory (“tribal homeland”), under charge of a single “traditional authority.”
Who had 'traditional authority' over Amin? No one save his seniors in the Army. What about Museveni? The answer is the same. Neither belonged to a traditional kingdom or acknowledged a hereditary chieftain. This is not to say they would not have been subject to the authority established in their place of domicile. But, by moving elsewhere, they would be free of it.
The “tribe” was different from the precolonial “ethnic group”
tribes existed in precolonial times. The term 'Ethnic group' is recent. It was introduced because the word 'tribe' suggests a primitive society.
in two ways.
Only one way. It was recognized for legal and administrative purposes.
First, it was identified with a fixed territory
because all legal and administrative jurisdictions have this feature
and, second, every tribe had a hierarchical authority with the right to mete corporal punishment to native subjects as the exercise of a “customary” right.
Nonsense! There was no right to beat people. What Mamdani means is that there was an immunity for holders of specific types of legal or administrative authority to inflict corporal punishment under specific circumstances.
The person in charge of maintaining order and gathering taxes in this territory was known as the tribal chief, as distinct from the clan head.
He could be both.
By foxing cultural identity to a territorial space, colonialism politicized culture as “tribe” and organized it under a single traditional authority.
No. The State subdivided the territory it controlled and created or recognized legal and administrative authorities with geographically delimited jurisdiction.
By the time of Uganda’s independence in 1962, the colony represented a patchwork of tribes.
Who wished to maintain those tribal identities. Also, they wanted Asians to fuck the fuck off.
The colonial economy that Britain created was powered by migrant labour.
No. It attracted some migrants.
In Uganda, migrant workers came from across several borders, including Rwanda, Sudan, and Kenya, and small traders came from the older British colony of India. Having brought these migrants to Uganda
they came on their own. Mamdani is thinking of 'indentured labour'- e.g. in Fiji. There was no such thing in Uganda.
without any restriction on the duration of their stay, the colonial authority at the same time barred them from owning land in their new home.
They could take out 99 year leases.
The prohibition on owning land was extended to denial of birthright citizenship at independence.
Because that is what indigenous Ugandans wanted.
As part of the preparation for independence, Britain finalized a list of “indigenous tribes” (communities) in the colony so as to leave no doubt as to who was considered officially “indigenous” and who was not.
Why did they do so? It was because that is what the Ugandans wanted.
The constitution at independence (that is, the 1962 Constitution) reserved citizenship by birth to members of “indigenous tribes” in the country.
That is still the legal position. Why? That's what Ugandans want. On the other hand, it is true that Ugandans rejected the gender binary forced upon them by the British. Idi Amin was well known for lamenting his lack of a vagina- for which he blamed Queen Victoria.
The first government, led by Milton Obote, the then– prime minister and second president of Uganda,
the first President was the Kabaka whom Obote exiled
followed Britain’s lead when it expelled all Luo persons living within the country as indigenous—regardless of how many years they had lived there.
Mamdani means Obote's expulsion of Kenyans- mainly Luo, in 1969-70. It is believed 25,000 people were affected. But this was after Obote had turned to the Left. He was giving the Brits a hard time by threatening to expel Asians with British passports. Many had already been deprived of their livelihoods.
The distinction between “indigenous” and “non-indigenous” became critical when it came to staffing the modern sector emerging in the colonial period—the army, the police, large-scale trade.
No. Obote & Amin wanted to put in loyalists of their own tribe.
The power to define and distinguish the “indigenous” from those not was the first lever of power wielded by postindependence governments.
Because 'tribalism' was an African, not a British, thing.
It was at the heart of the politics of “tribalism.” Though invented by Britain,
in the sense that the distinction between penises and vaginas was invented by the British
we shall see that none perfected it as did Museveni.
His son is his army commander. That makes for stability. I suppose he is seen as favouring his own Southern 'Hima' group but he has done much to conciliate the Buganda.
As part of an attempt to stabilize his rule and vanquish all opposition, Museveni subdivided existing districts into many, doubling, tripling, and even quadrupling the number of districts. Now, each district had its “native” tribes (sometimes more than one) alongside “non-native” or settler tribes. Continuous fragmentation of the subject population, an ongoing and seemingly endless process, reinforced by official violence and institutionalized corruption—that is, diferent ways of disciplining resisters and rewarding collaborators—is what I call “slow poison.”
But, it is what the rest of the world calls 'effective cement'. Museveni has ruled for four decades. He says 800,00 were killed between 1966 and 1986. The total population at that time was about 15.5 million.
A decade after independence, in 1971, Amin became president in an orgy of violence, wielding one part of the colonial army as a hammer against the part that remained loyal to the ousted Obote government.
Amin thought Obote would sack him and thus struck first. Obote had underestimated the less educated man.
The colonial army had been recruited from groups marginal to the country’s administration and the economy and was marked by two features. First, the army came mostly from the area north of the Nile River, which gave it a regional character. Cash crop– producing peasants south of the Nile River were carefully kept out of the army, even though they had a long tradition of participating in military service in different centralized kingdoms of the south.
Sadly they tended to fight each other in succession battles.
The reason was simple: after all, the army was likely to be used against them. Second, the colonial army was recruited from particular ethnic groups.
There was the belief that people who ate green plantain could not subsist on grain and thus grain-eaters were recruited (grain is easier to transport). But there was also a theory that 'Nubians' were 'martial' while Bantus were docile agriculturists.
Mamdani stresses the miscegenated and quite recent origin of the Nubians. He considers Emin Pasha, a German Jewish convert to Islam who was appointed an Egyptian Governor of a region they soon lost, to be the true author of their existence. He appears to lend credence to stories of Idi Amin's mothers spiritual or magical powers. He displays a degree of erotic arousal while recounting tales of Amin's physical and sexual prowess. It is on the basis of these stories that he regards Amin as 'the father of Uganda'. Yet, Amin was repudiated by his people. He died in exile. He may have fathered many many children, but it is Museveni, not Amin, who will pass power to his son. Already, Museveni has been in power for the greater part of Uganda's history. By the year 2000, after 14 years of Museveni, Ugandan per capita income returned to the pre-Independence, 1960 level. In the last 25 years, real per capita income has almost doubled. This isn't 'slow poison'. It is slow but steady improvement in State Capacity and material standards of living.
Mamdani writes-
'I present this narrative as an opportunity for the reader to see through the standard academic claim to “objectivity” and “neutrality.”
In other words, 'I, as an academic, have written down a string of stupid lies. This is so that readers understand that academics are incapable of objectivity or neutrality.'
The problem here is that not all academics are useless. There are some who can give valuable advise on how to make your country more secure and more prosperous. This is because they search out alethic information which is objectively verifiable. They use the Structural Causal Model which makes the best predictions, not the one which appeals to them subjectively for ideological reasons. Thus they are able to tell countries what can be done in the short to medium term to benefit the whole country.
I have come to question any claim of a single objective truth.
Because you have been repeating stupid, mischievous, lies for six decades.
It is more illuminating to think along the lines of Ibn Khaldun, who suggests that we see objective truth as an attribute we give God, for only an omniscient power can be privy to one objective truth.
Ibn Khaldun said that people in a useful profession gravitate to the same objective, ideologically neutral, method of quantifying and predicting things. Sadly, Mamdani's own profession was not useful.
The truth we strive for and glimpse as humans is inevitably coloured by our location and perspective.
For any useful purpose, we can adopt better, more objective, more 'neutral', methods of acquiring facts and finding Structural Causal Models. Saying 'Idi Amin was the father of Uganda' is not useful. It is not truthful. It is not objective. It is a vicious lie.
I invite the reader to share these changing vantage points, both social and political, that have shaped my own point of view.
What would be the consequence of doing so? It would be to say Florence Nightingale was very evil. Jack the Ripper was the true Feminist. What is the point of having so crazy a point of view?
No comments:
Post a Comment