Mahmood Mamdani

Extreme But Not Exceptional: Towards an Analysis of the Agrarian Question in Uganda

The article presents an analysis of the social relations of production and their contradictions in African peasant agriculture, which combine the ‘dull compulsion’ of market forces on petty commodity producers with various forms of extra‐economic coercion. Two paths of accumulation from below and from above are distinguished, the latter based in possession of, or access to, state power. Class formation and agrarian crisis are investigated through the mechanisms and effects of the two types of accumulation, illustrated by data on two villages in different areas of Uganda, which provide an extreme but not exceptional case of the agrarian question in contemporary African conditions. The analysis allows some strategic political conclusions to be suggested.

African states, citizenship and war: a case–study

This article, first given as a talk to a seminar of the Uganda Parliament in 2000, is a reflection on that aspect of the colonial political legacy that passes for common sense in the region of the African Great Lakes. The author takes a fresh look at recent events leading to civil war in Uganda (1981–6), Rwanda (1990–94) and eastern Congo (1997–.) The article contextualizes three issues: citizenship, civil society and political majorities and minorities as outcomes of the democratic process. To explore how notions of these issues have been changing over the past decade, the author examines the dilemma of a particular cultural group in the Great Lakes region—the Banyarwanda.

An African Reflection on Tahrir Square

This essay understands the significance of Tahrir Square as a radical shift both n the way of doing politics, from armed struggle to popular struggle, and in the definition of political identity, from religious to territorial. It seeks to understand the historical significance of the shift by placing it in the context of technologies of colonial rule (both the Ottoman millet system and British indirect rule) and post-colonial attempts to rethink and reform this mode of rule. The result is a historical reflection that begins with Steve Biko and the Soweto Uprising in 1976, Mahmoud Mohamed Taha and John Garang in post-colonial Sudan, and closes with Sayyid Qutb and the significance of Tahrir Square. Este ensayo entiende el significado de la plaza Tahrir como un cambio radical, tanto en la forma como se hace política, de una lucha armada a una lucha popular, como en la definición de la identidad política, de la religiosa hasta la territorial. Busca entender el significado histórico del cambio, situándolo en el contexto de las tecnologías de gobierno colonial (tanto el sistema de mijo otomano como el dominio indirecto británico) y los intentos poscoloniales para replantear y reformar este modo de gobierno. El resultado es una reflexión histórica que comienza con Steve Biko y la sublevación de Soweto en 1976, Mahmoud Mohamed Taha y John Garang en el Sudán poscolonial y termina con Sayyid Qutb y el significado de la plaza Tahrir. 本文将埃及解放广场的意义理解为一个剧烈转变，无论是在从事政治的方式上，即从武装斗争转变为民众抗争，还是在政治认同的定义上从宗教性转变到领土性。文章试图通过将这种变迁置于殖民统治（奥斯曼帝国的米勒特制和英国的间接统治）的技术语境下理解其历史意义，理解重思、变革统治模式的后殖民尝试。其结果便形成一种历史反思，它以史蒂夫·比科和1976年索维托起义、后殖民时期苏丹的马哈茂德·穆罕默德·塔哈和约翰·加朗为开端，终止于赛义德·库特布和解放广场的意义。

Beyond Nuremberg : the historical significance of the post-apartheid transition in South Africa

The contemporary human rights movement holds up Nuremberg as a template with which to define responsibility for mass violence. I argue that the negotiations that ended apartheid—the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA)—provide the raw material for a critique of the “lessons of Nuremberg.” Whereas Nuremberg shaped a notion of justice as criminal justice, CODESA calls on us to think of justice as primarily political. CODESA shed the zero-sum logic of criminal justice for the inclusive nature of political justice. If the former accents victims’ justice, the latter prioritizes survivors’ justice. If Nuremberg has been ideologized as a paradigm, the end of apartheid has been exceptionalized as an improbable outcome produced by the exceptional personality of Nelson Mandela. This essay argues for the core relevance of the South African transition for ending civil wars in the rest of Africa.