Mahmood Mamdani’s Sluggish Poison and the way authority reshapes management, belonging, and reminiscence in Africa.
I’ve at all times been focused on what occurs to leaders after they take energy. Not the second of arrival, however what follows as soon as authority turns into established. Over time, choices really feel much less tentative. The house for reversal narrows. Staying in workplace begins to form behaviour in methods that aren’t at all times seen to these exercising energy.
That curiosity drew me to Mahmood Mamdani’s Sluggish Poison. The e book asks the reader to decelerate and listen. Mamdani resists straightforward conclusions. His concern just isn’t solely with occasions, however with how these occasions are remembered, simplified, and ultimately mounted in place. It’s a examine of energy, but additionally of reminiscence.
I used to be significantly focused on his remedy of Idi Amin. Not as a result of the violence of that interval is unsure. It isn’t. However as a result of Amin has change into a determine whose identify typically closes dialogue fairly than opens it. Mamdani pauses that reflex. He examines how sure narratives took maintain, once they hardened, and what was misplaced within the course of. In doing so, he reminds us that historical past is commonly formed as a lot by energy as by truth.
I attended the Nairobi launch of Sluggish Poison, desiring to hear. The room was full, packed to the rafters. This was not a performative second. Individuals had come to interact critically with a demanding e book and with tough questions on energy, reminiscence, and belonging in Africa.
After the launch, we had the honour of internet hosting Professor Mamdani for dinner. What stayed with me was his method. He was attentive to individuals. He requested questions that have been considerate fairly than performative. He listened fastidiously and adopted what was mentioned. His humour surfaced quietly. It was a method of participating that mirrored his writing.
I’m not an skilled on Uganda. I’ve spent quick durations there for work, sufficient to note how confidently the nation is commonly spoken about by those that haven’t spent a lot time listening. That distance allowed me to learn Sluggish Poison not as a judgment on Uganda, however as an examination of how energy settles and the way tales about energy change into sturdy.
Mamdani doesn’t deny violence beneath Amin, nor does he diminish worry. What he questions is how specific claims grew to become resistant to scrutiny and why essentially the most excessive portrayals intensified at particular political moments. For a lot of Ugandans, worry was actual no matter statistics. Mamdani doesn’t dispute lived expertise. He asks how leaders change into symbols as soon as they’re now not helpful to highly effective allies, and the way these symbols simplify complicated histories.
That line of inquiry extends past Amin. Museveni’s story is harder as a result of it started with hope. Mamdani knew him. Supported him. Shared the assumption that the Nationwide Resistance Motion represented a break from the previous. That proximity issues. The critique just isn’t written from opposition. It’s written from disappointment.
What Mamdani traces is a gradual change. Early readability offers option to lodging. Reform turns into more durable to maintain. Remaining in energy begins to form priorities. Mamdani returns to Museveni’s early deal with land and improvement to underline a easy level. The evaluation was not missing. The alternatives have been constrained. Difficult entrenched pursuits carried threat. Managing them felt safer. Over time, continuity justified itself.
Migration runs quietly by way of this story. On the launch, Mamdani reminded the viewers that “we’re all migrants.” Motion, displacement, and resettlement aren’t exceptions in African political life. They’re foundational. As a daughter of an immigrant, that remark resonated with me not as idea, however as lived actuality. Identification just isn’t mounted by origin alone. It’s formed by who’s recognised, who’s protected, and who’s permitted to belong.
Throughout dinner, Mamdani spoke of shifting to South Africa, believing apartheid there was distinctive, solely to grasp that most of the constructions he had lived beneath in Uganda shared related logics. The distinction lay much less within the system itself than in how individuals had been taught to see it. Some types of exclusion are named. Others are absorbed into regular life.
Mamdani has lengthy argued that political violence typically begins when residents are changed into everlasting minorities, current within the nation however excluded from full belonging. In Sluggish Poison, that logic helps clarify how identities harden and the way energy learns to handle distinction fairly than resolve it.
Geopolitics sharpens this studying. Alliances are much less settled. Affect is extra transactional. In such moments, Africa’s numbers matter, and its presence in worldwide boards carries weight. The continent can be being engaged for what it controls. Minerals important to vitality transition, expertise, and defence lie beneath its soil. Entry depends upon political relationships that endure. In that context, predictability is rewarded. Leaders who promise continuity are handled as steady companions, whereas tough questions are deferred.
Studying this e book returned me to my unique query. How leaders change as soon as they’re in energy. How intentions slender with out announcement. How permanence involves really feel regular. These are questions I additionally discover in my very own work, together with Past the Poll, which examines what occurs to management after elections are gained and governing turns into routine.
Sluggish Poison doesn’t provide instruction or verdict. It asks the reader to look fastidiously at how energy operates, how belonging is outlined, and the way societies regulate to situations they as soon as believed they’d resist. That self-discipline of consideration issues, significantly now, when longevity is commonly mistaken for stability and historical past is just too rapidly declared settled.
Mahmood Mamdani is a number one African scholar and public mental. He’s the Herbert Lehman Professor of Authorities at Columbia College and the founding director of the Makerere Institute of Social Analysis. His work focuses on colonialism, postcolonial governance, citizenship, and political violence. His newest e book is Sluggish Poison: Idi Amin, Yoweri Museveni, and the Making of the Ugandan State.
