Uganda: Amin and Museveni in the Eyes of Prof Mamdani

Kampala — Renowned scholar Professor Mahmood Mamdani has defended part of former president Idi Amin's political legacy while sharply criticising President Yoweri Museveni.

He accuses President Museveni of transforming Uganda into a fragmented and militarised state sustained through violence and political patronage.

Speaking about his new book, Slow Poison: Idi Amin, Yoweri Museveni, and the Making of the Ugandan State, at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London, Mamdani argued that Uganda's post-colonial history has often been simplified through distorted portrayals of both Amin and Museveni.

Slow Poison: Idi Amin, Yoweri Museveni, and the Making of the Ugandan State is the latest book by Mahmood Mamdani, a professor from Columbia University.

It was published by Harvard University Press. Mamdani's other books include: Neither Settler nor Native, Citizen and Subject, When Victims Become Killers, and Good Muslim, Bad Muslim.

In the latest book, Mamdani writes as a witness to East Africa's endlessly intricate power plays.

He 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.

On page 233 of the book and in other places, Madani cites three examples of "slow poison."

The first was the directed mass murder unleashed in the Amin barracks under the guidance of Britain and Israel in 197 and the "genocidal" acts undertaken in northern Uganda by the Museveni army as part of the US-supported war on terror in the 1990s.

He also cites what he described as the reversal of Amin's nation-building project and the fragmentation of the polity into multiple tribalized districts.

And according to the author, the third form of slow poison was in the form of privatization, also state-directed

While he notes that each leader made violence central to his project, he sees a signal difference between Amin, who retained popular support to the end, and President Museveni.

Last week, Professor Mamdani was hosted by the Centre for African Studies in London in a conversation moderated by a Zambian Scholar, Professor Farida Banda.

During the conversation, Mamdani said that Amin's political journey was more complex than the image commonly presented in Western media and popular culture.

"One of the responses to the book, especially in the British and the American press, has been that this is a whitewash; this is an attempt to tell a story of Amin which is completely untrue and which, for whatever reason