Slow Poison: Colonial Legacies and the Unfinished Project of Decolonisation

Slow Poison: Colonial Legacies and the Unfinished Project of Decolonisation

30 March 2026 - Wits University

Professor Mahmood Mamdani will be in conversation with Angelo Fick on nationalism, ethnicity, and the turn to neoliberalism.

Professor Mucha Musemwa hosts Professor Mahmood Mamdani at the Wits Dean of Humanities' Dialogue Series in-person in the Great Hall as well as online on 10 April 2026 at 14:30pm SAT. Click here to register your attendance.

Mamdani is Herbert Lehman Professor of Government and Professor of Anthropology and Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies at Columbia University.

He received his PhD from Harvard University in 1974and was Director of the Makerere Institute of Social Research in Uganda from 2010 to 2022.

Amongst the world's leading public intellectuals

Widely regarded as one of the Top 20 Public Intellectuals (Foreign Policy, US, 2021) and nominated amongst The World's Top 50 Thinkers (Prospect Magazine, UK, 2008), Mamdani is one of the most influential scholars of postcolonial Africa. His work has shaped debates in history, politics, and decolonial studies worldwide.

His works explore the intersection between politics and culture, a comparative study of colonialism since 1452, the history of civil war and genocide in Africa, the Cold War and the War on Terror, the history and theory of human rights, and the politics of knowledge production.

His landmark book Citizen and Subject is widely taught and remains foundational to understanding the colonial roots of contemporary African states. His publications include Neither Settler nor Native, When Victims Become Killers, and Good Muslim, Bad Muslim.

Exploring Uganda's postcolonial struggles under Idi Amin and Yoweri Museveni

The Wits Dean of Humanities' Lecture Series also marks the launch of Mamdani's latest book Slow Poison: Idi Amin, Yoweri Museveni, and the Making of the Ugandan State.

The book is a firsthand account exploring Uganda's postcolonial struggles under Idi Amin and Yoweri Museveni-examining dictatorship, ethnic division, global interference, and the enduring legacy of violence.

Published in southern Africa by Wits University Press and elsewhere by Harvard University Press, Slow Poison will be on sale at the in-person event at the Great Hall at Wits University.

About Slow Poison

In 1972, when Mahmood Mamdani came home to Uganda, he found a country transformed by 'an orgy of violence'.

Two years earlier, with support from the colonial powers of Great Britain and Israel, Idi Amin had forcefully cemented his rule. He soon expelled Uganda's Indian minority in hopes of fostering a nation for Black Ugandans.

The plan backfired.

Amin was followed by Yoweri Museveni, who has now ruled for nearly four decades.

Whereas Amin tried to create a Black nation out of the majority, Museveni sought to fragment this majority into multiple ethnic minorities, recreating a version of colonial indirect rule.

Slow Poison is Mamdani's firsthand account of the tragic unravelling of his country's struggle for decolonialization.

A witness to East Africa's endlessly intricate power plays, and one of the most insightful political philosophers of his generation, Mamdani casts a learned and wary eye on Amin, internationally depicted as a buffoon, the radical scholar Museveni, and the global heavyweights that exploited and manipulated Uganda before and after its independence.

Each leader made violence central to his project, but Mamdani sees a signal difference between Amin, who retained popular support to the end, and Museveni, who has not.

The Asian expulsion made Amin a monster in the eyes of the West. In contrast, Museveni was hailed as standard bearer of the 'war on terror' in Africa and was protected from accountability for far greater crimes.

In exchange for adopting the package of neoliberal reforms known as the Washington Consensus, he became Africa's poster child.

Amin, who aimed to create a nation of Black millionaires, never became one himself.

Meanwhile, Uganda's surrender to privatization has brought Museveni's family immense wealth, even as the country remains one of the world's poorest.

Nationalism, ethnicity, and the turn to neocolonialism

At the Wits Dean of Humanities' Dialogue Series, Mamdani will be in conversation with Angelo Fick, the Director of Research at the Auwal Socio-economic Research Institute in Johannesburg, discussing nationalism, ethnicity, and the turn to neocolonialism.

Fick has taught in various universities and across disciplines in the humanities, sciences, and applied sciences in South Africa and elsewhere.

He regularly analyses and comments on post-millennial post-apartheid South Africa's political economy, especially around questions of justice, freedom, and inequality.

The Wits Dean of Humanities' Dialogue Series Slow Poison: Colonial Legacies and the Unfinished Project of Decolonisation takes place on Friday, 10 April at 14:30 SAT, both in-person in the Great Hall, Braamfontein Campus East, Wits University, as well as online. Please click the following link to register to attend in person or online: https://wits-za.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_VLkUuLucRU-B0gIBPNENUQ