By Spy Uganda
Longtime Makerere University don Prof. Mahmood Mamdani has ‘landed in things’ after he was appointed Advisory Board Member of the United Nations Democracy Fund.
Following the appointment, Prof. Mamdani, an Anthropologist and ICLS Affiliated Faculty member, has since been invited to become a member of the Advisory Board of the United Nations Democracy Fund, UNDEF, during the period 2020-2021.
Mamdani, FBA, born April 23, 1946, is a one of the pillars of the Indian Association of Uganda. He is a Ugandan academic, author, and political commentator. He is the director of the Makerere Institute of Social Research (MISR), the Herbert Lehman Professor of Government at the School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University and the Professor of Anthropology, Political Science and African Studies at Columbia University.
Mamdani is a third generation Ugandan of Indian ancestry. He was born in Mumbai and grew up in Kampala. Both his parents were born in the neighbouring Tanganyika Territory (present day Tanzania).
He was educated at the Government Primary School in Dar es Salaam, Government Primary School in Masaka, K.S.I. Primary School in Kampala, Shimoni and Nakivubo Government Primary Schools in Kampala, and Old Kampala Senior Secondary School.
He later received a scholarship along with 26 other Ugandan students to study in the United States. The scholarships were part of the independence gift that the new nation had received. Mamdani joined the University of Pittsburgh in 1963 and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in political science in 1967.
He was among the many students in the northern US who made the bus journey south to Birmingham, Alabama organised by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to participate in the civil rights movement. He was jailed during the march and was allowed to make a phone call.
Mamdani called the Ugandan Ambassador in Washington, D.C., for assistance. The ambassador asked him why he was “interfering in the internal affairs of a foreign country”, to which he responded by saying that this was not an internal affair but a freedom struggle and that they too had gotten their freedom only last year. Soon after he learnt about Karl Marx’s work from an FBI visit.
He then joined The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and graduated in 1968 with a Master of Arts in political science and Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy in 1969. He attained his Doctor of Philosophy in government from Harvard University in 1974. His thesis was titled Politics and Class Formation in Uganda.
