James North writes:
Mahmood Mamdani surprised me during our recent talk in his office up at Columbia University; he said no one at all from the Darfur solidarity movement has approached him to discuss his just-published Saviors and Survivors, (aside from John Prendergast, who did challenge him to a debate). Mamdani’s book is getting considerable attention, but nobody from the Save Darfur coalition seems to want to learn more about his view that the simplistic black-and-white "Arabs" versus "Africans" explanation of the conflict, or the continuing definition of it as "genocide," are obstacles to peace.
The New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof has written more than 30 columns about Darfur, but he hasn’t yet gotten around to calling Mamdani, (nor has he yet looked into Mamdani’s revelation that "no meaningful part of [Save Darfur’s] annual budget goes to help the needy in Darfur.")
In person, Mamdani is thoughtful, curious and fair. "Sure, I give the movement credit for making Darfur a public issue back in 2003-04," he says. "But once the violence went down, from September 2004, they showed absolutely no recognition at all of the change, and they seem to have no interest in a political settlement."
I asked him what he tells his students who ask him about Darfur. "I tell them to get involved in Darfur activism," he says without hesitation. "I encourage them to raise questions, to open up a debate, to give the issue a different direction from the total moralism."
As a student himself in America in the 1960s and early 1970s, Mamdani worked against the Vietnam War, an experience he contrasts with Darfur.
"For the antiwar movement back then, the world was a classroom," he remembers. "The signature activity was the teach-in. The movement’s entire endeavor was to bring its student constituency face to face with scholars, and to learn about Vietnam: its people, history, politics, about the history of colonialism and de-colonization."
The Darfur movement is very different: "If you look at Save Darfur, there is no interest in education, no interest in scholars. For them, the world is an advertising medium. They are after showbiz personalities, and name recognition. The leaders are like Pied Pipers, trying to get the children to follow them."
"Save Darfur," he continues, "is a completely new kind of movement, very entrepreneurial. Let’s take our friend [John] Prendergast; I don’t think he really cares whether this is Darfur, or Congo, or Tibet."
Mahmood Mamdani contends – in his book, at great length – that Darfur requires a political settlement, such as the one that ended apartheid in South Africa but let most of the old regime’s torturers and murderers off without trials. He explains: "I am totally willing to accept a situation where the people responsible for the atrocities in Darfur may not be held accountable. But I’m not willing to accept a situation where they can do what they did again. The future must be different."
Mamdani’s views have been shaped by his own experience as an African of Asian descent. His family was among the 70,000 people expelled from Uganda in 1972 by the notorious dictator, Idi Amin. After Amin fell, Mamdani returned to Uganda in 1979 to teach at the famous Makarere University, where he worked for the next 17 years. (Eventually, thousands of other Ugandans of Asian ancestry also came back.) After he was back for awhile, he realized, to his surprise and some discomfiture, that he had not met a single Ugandan (of African background) who had been opposed to the expulsion of the Asians.
Amin had justified his harsh move by contending that British colonialists had imported the Asians, who dominated small business and prevented Africans from getting ahead. Mamdani recalls: "People would say things like ‘Amin just went about it in the wrong way.’ But I had to recognize that he was responding to a historic issue of injustice that had not been addressed. Amin was a demagogue, but he was able to ride a genuine issue."
Mamdani remembers he had "a second learning experience" when Yoweri Museveni, the current Ugandan president, fought his way to power in 1986. Mamdani and other colleagues in Uganda’s courageous human rights community called for justice against the perpetrators from the previous dictatorships.
He explains: "Museveni said no. He even brought some of them into his broad-based coalition government. At the time, I was outraged. Looking backward, I can see that he was right. If he had tried to hold them accountable, the civil war would have started again, without a doubt."
So Mahmood Mamdani’s message is based partly on his own core experiences. Political violence often reflects genuine injustices, even if ruthless demagogues and dictators exploit situations. Rarely is one side entirely good and the other side completely evil. Peaceful settlements may require painful compromises.
And if the people in the Save Darfur movement genuinely want to promote peace there, they should pay attention to people like Mahmood Mamdani, instead of pretending he doesn’t exist.
