Mamdani go home!
Dec 09, 2005
Professor Mahmoud Mamdani resides towards the top branches of any academic tree on God’s earth. He is professor of Government, and Director of the Institute of African Studies at Columbia University, New York; one of the great universities of the world. Outside academia he is married (far from a c
UGANDA’S No1 COLUMNIST... INFORMED, CONTROVERSIAL AND PROVOCATIVE
John Nagenda
Professor Mahmoud Mamdani resides towards the top branches of any academic tree on God’s earth. He is professor of Government, and Director of the Institute of African Studies at Columbia University, New York; one of the great universities of the world. Outside academia he is married (far from a crime!) to Mira Nair, notable movie maker of such delights as Salaam Bombay, Mississippi Masala, Vanity Fair [hmm, Vanity reminds me of hubby], Monsoon Wedding. Golden couple, she perhaps more so. On Monday the Prof wrote an open letter to President Museveni in Vision, which was a study in another of his fields: digging holes in a road and leaving them uncovered for others to fall in! Some kind of engineering? The intended victim here would be Museveni or better still Museveni and his government, etc. It would prove they start and stop cases at will. I fear this particular Mamdani hole will stay empty! He was addressing, as he put it, “…the heart of two issues that bedevil this country: a troubled political succession and the ongoing war in the north.†Of the latter, his solution was “a disbanding of internment camps in the north as a first step to restoring normal civilian life there.†This reasoning, incidentally, was at the same level as that of new UPC “leader†Miria Obote a week earlier. “Disbandâ€? Just like that? Wave a magic wand? What about the effect – we know the cause — of such an action? Would it not be throwing many more helpless sheep to the mercy of the Kony wolves, which was the clear intention of the devilish Kony? It is forgivable when Widow (Namwandu) Obote, coming for the first time into active politics in her grannyhood, holds such simplistic notions, but inexcusably flabby for a Columbia professor! No one quarrels with his observations that the camp people were inadequately fed and protected, although surely a professor as high as this could, for the sake of balance, spare a sentence or two to fathom some reasons why. Those who know their Mamdani will know of his perennial “selective†approach in an argument, which he has unfortunately passed on, at his “university/institute†in the insalubrious Kampala suburb of Kamwokya, to one of his better known students, John Kennedy Lukyamuzi, MP. To be thus eternally cobbled to this erratic pupil must have added some of the new white hairs on the Mamdani head! But it is when the prof proffers his solution to his perceived other major Ugandan problem, that our jaws drop and stay there. Mamdani writes, “The whole point [note: “wholeâ€, not “one of†or even “mainâ€, therefore leaving, “the onlyâ€] of the electoral system in a divided country…is to shift the contest from the military to the political field, and thereby to demilitarise political competition.†Whatever that means, but how would treason, and the setting up of guerrilla forces — on which the whole case (true or false) against Besigye is based — play a part in demilitarising political competition? Quite the reverse! How then can you legitimately blame a government for seeking a legal solution, the courts of law? But our dear Prof, hurtling from the opposite direction, states, “It is this achievement [demilitarising political competition] that you are risking on taking Besigye to the courts — whatever the truth of the allegations levelled against him.†I smell here the sulphur of unreason! So perhaps does he, for he concludes with a flourish: “This is the prime requisite for building both a sustainable political community and a viable rule of law in today’s Uganda.†From where does he pluck “viable rule of lawâ€, which he has so casually ignored throughout his open letter? Indeed his two “solutions†are a dismantling of camps and “a national reconciliation…broad enough to apply to both Dr Besigye and to the leadership of the LRAâ€. Is Columbia University built on Mars, so that this man has never heard of the works of Kony’s LRA, freely granting them unconditional amnesty? Nonetheless his putting of Besigye and the LRA in the same basket is most interesting. One advantage Prof Mamdani has over most Ugandans, President Museveni included, is that if his anarchist views contribute in bringing Uganda to its knees, he can scoot back to his Columbia feeding trough in a hurry. That is, if his virulent hatred of America, as shown in his book, Good Muslim, Bad Muslim, does not whisk it away from under his nose first. Of course weak open letters might academically accomplish that somewhat earlier!
***
While Mamdani was recklessly advocating free pardon for the mass murderer/terrorist Kony and, as expected, Madame Bigombe raised a forlorn voice to remind us that she was still alive and very much doing her peace-talk stuff with the LRA (how they must miss her at the World Bank!) Acholi leaders of a different kidney came right out to say Kony and his deputies must be killed expeditiously (although the word “expeditiously†is mine, meaning speedily, without delay!). To them this was the only way to save their beloved Acholiland from its suffering at the hands of the fiend, a fellow Acholi to boot. In the current vogue of hearing from God about this and that, I also joined the queue, to see what His advice might be on this straightforward conclusion, but truth to tell, much as I tried, God knows, (so to speak) the message did not come! I can only surmise that my batteries were flat; for what do the “God hearers†have which I lack?
John Nagenda
Professor Mahmoud Mamdani resides towards the top branches of any academic tree on God’s earth. He is professor of Government, and Director of the Institute of African Studies at Columbia University, New York; one of the great universities of the world. Outside academia he is married (far from a crime!) to Mira Nair, notable movie maker of such delights as Salaam Bombay, Mississippi Masala, Vanity Fair [hmm, Vanity reminds me of hubby], Monsoon Wedding. Golden couple, she perhaps more so. On Monday the Prof wrote an open letter to President Museveni in Vision, which was a study in another of his fields: digging holes in a road and leaving them uncovered for others to fall in! Some kind of engineering? The intended victim here would be Museveni or better still Museveni and his government, etc. It would prove they start and stop cases at will. I fear this particular Mamdani hole will stay empty! He was addressing, as he put it, “…the heart of two issues that bedevil this country: a troubled political succession and the ongoing war in the north.†Of the latter, his solution was “a disbanding of internment camps in the north as a first step to restoring normal civilian life there.†This reasoning, incidentally, was at the same level as that of new UPC “leader†Miria Obote a week earlier. “Disbandâ€? Just like that? Wave a magic wand? What about the effect – we know the cause — of such an action? Would it not be throwing many more helpless sheep to the mercy of the Kony wolves, which was the clear intention of the devilish Kony? It is forgivable when Widow (Namwandu) Obote, coming for the first time into active politics in her grannyhood, holds such simplistic notions, but inexcusably flabby for a Columbia professor! No one quarrels with his observations that the camp people were inadequately fed and protected, although surely a professor as high as this could, for the sake of balance, spare a sentence or two to fathom some reasons why. Those who know their Mamdani will know of his perennial “selective†approach in an argument, which he has unfortunately passed on, at his “university/institute†in the insalubrious Kampala suburb of Kamwokya, to one of his better known students, John Kennedy Lukyamuzi, MP. To be thus eternally cobbled to this erratic pupil must have added some of the new white hairs on the Mamdani head! But it is when the prof proffers his solution to his perceived other major Ugandan problem, that our jaws drop and stay there. Mamdani writes, “The whole point [note: “wholeâ€, not “one of†or even “mainâ€, therefore leaving, “the onlyâ€] of the electoral system in a divided country…is to shift the contest from the military to the political field, and thereby to demilitarise political competition.†Whatever that means, but how would treason, and the setting up of guerrilla forces — on which the whole case (true or false) against Besigye is based — play a part in demilitarising political competition? Quite the reverse! How then can you legitimately blame a government for seeking a legal solution, the courts of law? But our dear Prof, hurtling from the opposite direction, states, “It is this achievement [demilitarising political competition] that you are risking on taking Besigye to the courts — whatever the truth of the allegations levelled against him.†I smell here the sulphur of unreason! So perhaps does he, for he concludes with a flourish: “This is the prime requisite for building both a sustainable political community and a viable rule of law in today’s Uganda.†From where does he pluck “viable rule of lawâ€, which he has so casually ignored throughout his open letter? Indeed his two “solutions†are a dismantling of camps and “a national reconciliation…broad enough to apply to both Dr Besigye and to the leadership of the LRAâ€. Is Columbia University built on Mars, so that this man has never heard of the works of Kony’s LRA, freely granting them unconditional amnesty? Nonetheless his putting of Besigye and the LRA in the same basket is most interesting. One advantage Prof Mamdani has over most Ugandans, President Museveni included, is that if his anarchist views contribute in bringing Uganda to its knees, he can scoot back to his Columbia feeding trough in a hurry. That is, if his virulent hatred of America, as shown in his book, Good Muslim, Bad Muslim, does not whisk it away from under his nose first. Of course weak open letters might academically accomplish that somewhat earlier!
***
While Mamdani was recklessly advocating free pardon for the mass murderer/terrorist Kony and, as expected, Madame Bigombe raised a forlorn voice to remind us that she was still alive and very much doing her peace-talk stuff with the LRA (how they must miss her at the World Bank!) Acholi leaders of a different kidney came right out to say Kony and his deputies must be killed expeditiously (although the word “expeditiously†is mine, meaning speedily, without delay!). To them this was the only way to save their beloved Acholiland from its suffering at the hands of the fiend, a fellow Acholi to boot. In the current vogue of hearing from God about this and that, I also joined the queue, to see what His advice might be on this straightforward conclusion, but truth to tell, much as I tried, God knows, (so to speak) the message did not come! I can only surmise that my batteries were flat; for what do the “God hearers†have which I lack?