Mahmood Mamdani

In this presentation at the Rotary International District Conference in Munyonyo, Mahmood Mamdani links events in Tahrir Square to the 1976 Soweto uprisings in South Africa. Unity in struggle is one of the common factors. This is a the full text of the speech.

Whatever your point of view, it would be difficult to deny that the referendum on South Sudan – unity or independence – was a historic moment. Self‐determination marks the founding of a new political order.

My remarks will be more critical than congratulatory. I will focus more on the challenge we face rather than the progress we have made.

Iraq and Afghanistan teach us that humanitarian intervention does not end with the removal of the danger it purports to target. It only begins with it.

For the institutions that claim to represent ‘the international community’ – the Western press, international NGOs and UN agencies – the armed conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo has been a paradigm of senseless violence. The number of casualties is indeed staggering.

MOSES MULONDO: Why have you chosen to return to Uganda?

It warms my heart to see these flowing gowns. I congratulate you on work accomplished! For over a millennium, these gowns have been a symbol of high learning from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic.

When former South African President Thabo Mbeki makes the African case for a postponement of the International Criminal Court's (ICC) indictment of President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan, what can he say with dignity and foresight?

It is hard to think of a figure more reviled in the West than Robert Mugabe. Liberal and conservative commentators alike portray him as a brutal dictator, and blame him for Zimbabwe’s descent into hyperinflation and poverty.