Ugandans’ embrace of New York’s new mayor, Zohran ‘Kwame’ Mamdani – a Ugandan national with pan-Africanist parents – may not be shared by their leader, President Yoweri Museveni.
For African leaders intent on clinging to power, denouncing their opponents for holding dual nationality is a well-worn tactic for sidelining them ahead of the ballot box.
But when a grandee of a Western state proudly claims the citizenship of another nation, chests are puffed out.
Perhaps too much. Barack Obama’s African lineage dazzled Kenya only when conversation turned, with emotion, to Mama Sarah, the grandmother of America’s 44th president.
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Born in October 1991 in Kampala, New York’s new mayor Zohran Mamdani not only holds Ugandan nationality, but it was the only one he possessed until 2018.
Mamdani’s father, Mahmood Mamdani, is a Ugandan of Indian origin, while his mother – whom he met in Kampala – is Indo-American.
The new leader of the Big Apple, who was elected on 4 November, also spent two years living in South Africa.
Attachment to the continent
More interesting is the family’s pan-African engagement, and the mayor’s declared attachment to Uganda.
In his academic work, Mamdani père has taken a pan-Africanist approach to colonial questions, and chose ‘Kwame’ as his son’s middle name in homage to Ghana’s first president.
As a teenager, Zohran returned to Uganda for an internship at a Ugandan daily newspaper.
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Even if many Ugandans had never heard of him before his election, the press now claims that the politician “adores Kampala”.
His progressive trajectory is also defined by a strong identification with multi-ethnic and multi-religious identity; his religious education, after all, took place at the Claremont Road mosque in Cape Town.
Museveni, more Trumpist?
Ugandan pride following the New Yorker’s election may be tempered by the affinity that the current head of state has regularly expressed for Donald Trump‘s style.
Yoweri Museveni even rushed to the defence of the “frank” American president when the latter described several African states as “shithole countries”.
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Yet Zohran Mamdani presents himself as one of the most radical opponents of the current occupant of the White House.
Still, the octogenarian in Uganda’s presidential palace is unlikely to dampen the symbolic – but popular – excitement surrounding the new mayor of New York, only months before a presidential election in which he is once again a candidate, after nearly 40 years in power.
