Shortly after he was announced newly elected mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani took to the podium, flanked by his wife, and parents, Ugandan power couple, Prof Mahmood Mamdani and Ms Mira Nair. The couple has lived in Uganda’s capital Kampala, for decades, where Prof Mamdani first moved with his family in his childhood.
Prof Mamdani is a scholar, commentator, an academic, and author, who specialises in the study of colonialism, anti-colonialism, decolonisation, race, and governance. He has taught at universities in Uganda, Tanzania, South Africa, and the United States.
He was born in 1946 in India and moved to Uganda, where he was raised. In an essay he wrote in the literary magazine, London Review of Books, in 2022, Prof Mamdani indicated he registered as a Ugandan citizen at independence.
He left Uganda in 1972 when Idi Amin expelled Asians who lived in Uganda at the time. The political scientist fled to Britain and later took up a teaching position at the University of Dar es Salaam.
He graduated with a PhD from Harvard University in 1974 and returned to Uganda after the fall of Amin in 1979. Prof Mamdani then worked with Makerere University from 1980 to 1993, and later served as the director of Makerere Institute of Social Research from 2010 to 2022.
He is credited with building a strong PhD programme at the institute and improving research. But his tenure was also riddled with infighting, including with colleagues and students, with some escalating to legal suits.
Prof Mamdani has also authored more than a dozen books, including Good Muslim, Bad Muslim, Neither Settler nor Native, Citizen and Subject, and the latest, Slow Poison: Idi Amin, Yoweri Museveni and the Making of the Ugandan State.
In his 2022 Essay, where he discusses the expulsion of the Asians and the question of citizenship, Mamdani concludes that ‘For the Asians who were thrown out in 1972, Uganda was home.’ It is here that he met Ms Nair. The couple married in 1991. Ms Nair is an internationally acclaimed filmmaker. Her works including Salaam Bombay, and Mississippi Masala, explore delicate themes on race, homelessness, and culture, among others.
Ms Nair also directed the Queen of Katwe, a film set in Kampala. The 68-year-old 1957 Oscar-nominated filmmaker studied sociology at Delhi University and later attended Harvard University. Ms Nair, The New York Times writes, believes their works influenced Zohran.
‘Of course, the world we live in, and what we write and film and think about, is the world that Zohran has very much absorbed,’ the publication quotes Ms Nair.
Yesterday, Ugandans took to social media to celebrate Zohran’s victory, which several agree has its foundation in his upbringing, the works, and calibre of his parents.
‘I saw Zohran at house parties when he was a little boy tagging along with his mom and dad and the usual clique of Pan Africanists.No wonder he is who he is today. His growing up was influenced by so many good people, he had role models and, to his advantage, focused parents who thought beyond themselves and gave our world a wealth of knowledge and creativity,’ Ms Nada Anderson posted on X.