yes, this is the usual Mahmood Mamdani -- whitewash and obfuscation (in service to empire) overwhelmed by attention to "indigenes", "nativism" and important facts the understanding of which is relevent but subordinate to what he hides."

[1] Paul S Landau-- University of Maryland

"Very strongly stated, but entirely unclear. Leaving aside what you already feel about 
him, the essay is hardly a whitewash of empire -- that is where the indigene policy comes into
play. Plus refugeeism + material greed..."

[2] Raf Custers -- Ducth journalist

"keith what is your agenda ? hu ?
keith harmon snow schreef:"

Schreef?

Agenda? How about a request that people make an attempt to illuminate the deeper truths about Mamdani and his agenda rather than advancing his obfuscations as scholarship.

I don't have time to produce a definitive critique of Mamdani or his recent piece under pseudo discussion. What tires me are the ways in which Mamdani is relentlessly quoted and republished, held up as a champion of some alternative perspective on Congo, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Uganda or Sudan... This recent piece is more of the same. Mamdani presents us with what we are supposed to accept as a critique of imperialism -- and which is widely touted as such by the propaganda system and by the academic community, both of which are huge problems for these countries and people.

A few facts about Mamdani (followed by several points from Mamdani's recent whitewash):

1. Mamdani was teaching at U Dar Es Salaam 1973-1979  when Yoweri Museveni, John Garang, Wamba dia Wamba, Laurent Kabila and others of this "new breed of African leader" (quoting Madeleiene Albright) were studying "Marxism" there.
2. His book Fascism and Imperialism in Uganda is anti-Amin but it is also anti-Obote (perhaps one of Uganda and Africa's greatest leaders) and it protects certain powerful outside (multinational etc.) interests (while exposing others);
3. Mamdani worked in some capacity as Museveni's minister of disinformation in the 1980's when the NRM was fighting and came to power in a ruthless, bloody, genocidal, illegal war against people of Uganda and Milton Obote's rule;
4. He taught at Makerere University (1980-93) in Kampala and was highly aligned with teh Museveni regime of terror;
5. He helped cover up Obote's treatise on Genocide "NOTES ON TH ECONCEALMENT OF GENOCIDE" committed by the NRM and Museveni;
6. Mamdani headed the Ugandan Commission of Inquiry into Local Government from 1986 to 1988 -- another whitewash mission;
7. He was the founding director of Centre for Basic Research in Kampala, Uganda (1987-96, which flourished under Museveni;
8. He likely was (is) very close to (with) William Pike -- the British? editor/publisher of Museveni's primary mouthpiece, the NEW VISION newspaper;
9. He taught at the University of Cape Town (1996-99) during the FIRST US invasion of Congo/Zaire;
10. He published his Rwanda genocide whitewash WHEN VICTIMS BECOME KILLERS in 2002 based on his research in Rwanda etc. during the Kagame regime years of consolidating its power (1994-2002 plus) (e.g. the book continued, as late as 2002 to reference the double presidential assassination as a "plane crash" and he spent approximately 1/3 ?? paragraph on the subject of this massive US-sponsored war crime; the tome is completely covering up the reality of US/UK/Israeli involvement and how the RPF butchered its way into Rwanda (and Zaire);
11. Mamdani  used the RPF to access places in Goma and Bukavu in 1996-1997; he traveled w/James Kaberebe and Jacques Depelchin (who funded and propagandized for the RCD and today runs OTA BENGA ALLIANCE with Wamba Dia Wamba out of S.F.) (in his recent story he notes: "Visiting eastern Congo as part of a fact-finding mission in 1997, I was told by a prominent civil society leader: ‘What can’t be accepted is an order whereby every immigrant who comes in is granted citizenship automatically.’ " However, Mamdani is not disclosing his true interests or affiliations);
12. His work on Darfur (Sudan more generally) has been equally obtuse and distortionist in service to western interests;
13. He does not illuminate ANY western mining companies or speak of ANY western individuals;
14. While he is Ugandan, he is no critic of Uganda (Museveni) -- but instead has some really ugly skeletons hanging in his closets;
15. The recent essay begins from the start (the war began in 1998) with disinformation (it began in 1996) and citing a western intelligence flak outfit (the IRC) (though he immediately backpeddles to suggest that EVEN the (downplayed) mortality numbers (of the IRC) were challenged by others (academics) later and the numbers of dead are (probably) far less;
16. He continues in these veins (of disinformation), with plenty or reasonable and accurate assertions mixed in, to obfuscate, until we reach the definitive paragraph about refugee killings in Eastern Congo (Zaire) in 1995-1998:

"When a 1995 decree declared all Kinyarwanda-speakers to be foreigners, the momentum of ethnic cleansing shifted to Kivu. On 7 October 1996, the governor of South Kivu ordered all Banyamulenge to leave the country within a week, or they would be interned in camps and eliminated. This was an extreme response to a dramatic situation created by developments in Rwanda. Waves of Tutsi migrants and refugees had settled in South Kivu since the late 19th century, but conflict in the province was triggered by the Rwandan Patriotic Front’s invasion of Rwanda in 1990 from bases in Uganda, which inspired many young Tutsi from Kivu to cross the border and join the RPF. That in turn led Mobutu to send a ‘mission’ to the province, ostensibly to verify who among the Banyarwanda was ‘Zairean’ and who was not. Predictably, the exercise disenfranchised more Tutsi, increased the flow of young men into the ranks of the RPF and drove up tensions in the province. The genocide of 1994 had a catastrophic effect on Kivu. As the tables began to turn in Rwanda and the RPF advanced on Kigali, more than two million refugees fled across the border. Their presence heightened the local conflict in eastern Congo and pointed up the pernicious role of the UN and the major foreign powers, France especially. In North and South Kivu, Hutu refugees lived in armed camps that were controlled by the ex-Rwandan army and the Hutu militias (or Interahamwe), who both continued to receive military supplies from the French. The soldiers and militia numbered about 20,000 in Bukavu (South Kivu) and 30,000 to 40,000 in Goma (North Kivu). Many believed there was an agreement between the French and Mobutu that the soldiers would not be disarmed by the Congolese army.”

Mobutu's alliance with Juvenal Habyarimana and Habyarimana's influencing Mobutu -- re: the hidden agenda of the Tutsis from Rwanda who were in Eastern Congo -- are salient issues. But Mamdani has an agenda, and that is to uphold the fictions of the 1994 (sic) Rwanda genocide (sic). Statements such as "France especially..." and "the UN stood around and did nothing" (in Rwanda) and "As the Interahamwe unleashed a regime of terror against Congolese Tutsi, another wave of younger men moved across the border to enlist in the RPF" and "The ethnic situation went from bad to worse after the success of the 1996 rebellion against Mobutu," etc etc etc -- this is the whitewash. In short,  if one were to apply any single adjective to Mamdani it would be 'gatekeeper'. We could embellish that with "academic gatekeeper" or "leftist gatekeeper".

Of course, the man suffers from the pressure of white supremacy and he, really, is not the source of the problem, but only an additional manifestation of it, and he knows quite well (I am sure) that he is proscribed by the boundaries of power (this white supremacy) as applied to African intellectuals (in the belly of the beast) or any coherent, intelligible, educated person of color. The worst part of it all is that he participates in the academic smokescreening and gobblygook that never cuts to the heart(s) of the matter(s).

Finally, Mahmood Mamdani -- along with genocide apologist Philip Gourevitch --was also special adviser for the Rwanda Genocide propaganda film SOMETIMES IN APRIL (<http://tv.yahoo.com/sometimes-in-april/show/36147/castcrew>) which is complete nonsense and which required that Mamdani be an accepted guest of the Kagame regime. Clearly, he is no threat to (or critic of) Kagame.

q.e.d.

keith

P.S.
schreef f. and m. (plural schreven, diminutive schreefje, diminutive plural schreefjes)

1. line, stroke of the pen
2. border (over de schreef: across the border)
3. a decoration at the end of lines which make up letters; a serif.

Not sure how schreef is intended to be used above.