Decolonisation: lessons from postcolonial Uganda with Mahmood Mamdani
Key information
- Date
- Time
-
5:30 pm to 7:00 pm
- Venue
- SOAS Gallery
- Room
- SOAS Gallery Lecture Theatre
- Event type
- Seminar & Event highlights
About this event
In 1972, when Mahmood Mamdani came home to Uganda, he found a country transformed by 'an orgy of violence'.
Two years earlier, with support from the colonial powers of Great Britain and Israel, Idi Amin had forcefully cemented his rule. He soon expelled Uganda’s Indian minority in hopes of fostering a nation for Black Ugandans. The plan backfired.
Amin was followed by Yoweri Museveni, who has now ruled for nearly four decades. Whereas Amin tried to create a Black nation out of the majority, Museveni sought to fragment this majority into multiple ethnic minorities, re-creating a version of colonial indirect rule. This talk will present Mamdani’s firsthand account of the tragic unravelling of his country’s struggle for decolonialisation.
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About the speakers
Professor Mahmood Mamdani
Mahmood Mamdani is Herbert Lehman Professor of Government and African Studies at Columbia University. He was Director of the Makerere Institute of Social Research in Kampala from 2010 to 2022. His books include Neither Settler nor Native, Citizen and Subject, When Victims Become Killers, and Good Muslim, Bad Muslim.
Professor Fareda Banda
Fareda Banda is Professor of the Laws of Africa at SOAS University of London. She specialises in Human Rights focusing on the rights of women. Her teaching includes an undergraduate course on Law and Society in Africa. Her most recent book is African Migration, Human Rights and Literature, published by Hart/Bloomsbury.
