Imperialism and fascism in Uganda

by Mahmood Mamdani

An important work on the condition of, and external impact on agriculture in Africa.

Genres: Africa, History, Nonfiction, Politics, Uganda

Paperback

First published January 1, 1983

About the author

Mahmood Mamdani is Herbert Lehman Professor of Government and Professor of Anthropology and of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies (MESAAS) at Columbia University and Director of the Makerere Institute of Social Research in Kampala. He is the author of Citizen and Subject, When Victims Become Killers, and Good Muslim, Bad Muslim.

Mamdani is married to Mira Nair, the acclaimed Indian film director and producer. Mamdani and Nair's only son, Zohran Mamdani, is the mayor-elect of New York City.

Reviews

[Cameron Wilson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pithy and informative. Good deep dive on how the UK, US, and USSR fomented and sustained Idi Amin’s rule of Uganda with far reaching material and training support of the fascist military state, as well as strong trade to support the macroeconomy. For example the US became the largest foreign trading partner with Uganda in the late 1970s, importing more coffee by dollar value than in the early years of Amin or Obote. Lockheed even supplied Amin’s personal Gulfstream II jet through a shell company. Both of these occurred long after the US broke diplomatic ties and publicly denounced the regime.
Nice review of the problems facing neo-colonial economies and how “tribal” disunity in colonized countries was wholly and intentionally sewn by imperial powers.

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

brief but solid marxist analysis of the amin regime in uganda, characterising it as a form of neo-colonial fascism. would be interesting to compare this to mamdani's more recent work as it apparently is somewhat kinder to amin in the light of the subsequent museveni regime.