5.11.2025
Ugandan opposition leader sees the Ugandan-born Zohran Mamdani’s victory in the New York mayoral race as an inspiring political shift but somehow too distant for many Africans at home.
“It’s a big encouragement even to us here in Uganda that it’s possible,” said Joel Ssenyonyi, who represents an area of the Ugandan capital of Kampala. “But we have a long way to get there.”
Uganda, where Mamdani was born in 1991, has had the same President for nearly four decades. President Yoweri Museveni, an authoritarian who is up for reelection in January, has rejected calls to retire, leading to fears of a volatile political transition. His most prominent challenger is a 43-year-old entertainer known as Bobi Wine, who charges he was cheated in the 2021 election.
Mamdani’s father Professor Mahmood Mamdani a political theorist and still a Ugandan citizen despite becoming a naturalised U.S. citizen in 2018, recently published a book “Slow Poison,” in which he juxtaposed the legacies of Museveni and late dictator Idi Amin.
Amin who later went into exile to Saudi Arabia where he died is blamed for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Ugandans between 1971 and 1979.
He argues that both leaders made violence central to their success and that while Amin retained popular support and didn’t die a millionaire, Museveni’s family is immensely wealthy while he’s no longer popular.
Mamdani’s victory in New York offers “a beacon of hope” for embattled activists and others in Uganda. The lesson is that “we should allow young people the opportunity to shape, and participate in, politics in a meaningful way,” Kabushenga said.
Okello Ogwang, a professor of literature who has worked with the elder Mamdani at Uganda’s Makerere University, said the son’s success abroad means “it’s an important thing that we should invest in the youth.”
“He’s coming from here,” he said. “If we don’t invest in our youth, we are wasting our time.”
Ssenyonyi, the Ugandan lawmaker, said Mamdani’s unlikely victory, as remote for Ugandans as it seems, deserves to be celebrated.
“It inspires us,” he said. “Mamdani is Ugandan born, like us.” ABC