Mahmood Mamdani

I no longer recall when exactly I met Sam. Maybe it was in the late 1970s at CODESRIA, or in the early 1980s at the Zimbabwe Institute of Development Studies. The late 1990s, though, was the time we truly got to work together, closely and intensely.

Your Excellency, Mr. President; the Chair, the Honorable Minister of Finance; the Honorable Governor of the Bank of Uganda and the Honorable Deputy Governor, Bank of Uganda,

THE INDEPENDENT: Prof. Mamdani, Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia and Burundi have troops in Somalia. It is the first time Kenya has troops in a foreign country. What do you think are the implications of militarisation of the region?

THE INDEPENDENT: The government has banned the civic pressure group known as Activists for Change. What do you think of this development?

Only two weeks ago, Ugandan papers carried front-page reports from the highly respected Social Science Research Council of New York, accusing the Uganda army of atrocities against civilians in Central African Republic while on a mission to fight Joseph Kony and the LRA.

Only two weeks ago, Ugandan papers carried front-page reports from the highly respected Social Science Research Council of New York, accusing the Uganda army of atrocities against civilians in Central African Republic while on a mission to fight Joseph Kony and the LRA.

‘YOU’RE COLD. Why don’t you go downstairs and get a warm sweater and a coat? It’s free. There’s a women’s voluntary organisation that hands it out. Come, I’ll show you where it is.’ Ben led me downstairs, to the WRVS clothing room.

‘You are...?’

‘Mamdani.’

"Kampala 'mute' as Gaddafi falls," is how the opposition paper summed up the mood of this capital the morning after. Whether they mourn or celebrate, an unmistakable sense of trauma marks the African response to the fall of Gaddafi.

I became interested in the question of why the old community collapsed after I returned to Uganda from the University of Dar es Salaam in 1979. I spent months reading community files in government ministries in Kampala.

The discussion on justice in this conference focused on two of its forms: criminal and social. There has been little discussion of political justice. My object in this talk will be to look at the events identified with Tahrir Square through the lens of political justice.