Slow Poison

Idi Amin, Yoweri Museveni, and the Making of the Ugandan State

Mahmood Mamdani

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English

Belknap Press
22 December 2025

History; African history; Political leaders & leadership

A leading public intellectual gives his authoritative and personal account of the tragic postcolonial fate of Uganda, his homeland.

In 1972, when Mahmood Mamdani came home to Uganda, he found a country transformed by ""an orgy of violence."" Two years earlier, with support from the colonial powers of Great Britain and Israel, Idi Amin had forcefully cemented his rule. He soon expelled Uganda's Indian minority in hopes of fostering a nation for Black Ugandans. The plan backfired. Amin was followed by Yoweri Museveni, who has now ruled for nearly four decades. Whereas Amin tried to create a Black nation out of the majority, Museveni sought to fragment this majority into multiple ethnic minorities, re-creating a version of colonial indirect rule.

Slow Poison is Mamdani's firsthand report on the tragic unraveling of his country's struggle for decolonialization. A witness to East Africa's endlessly intricate power plays, and one of the most insightful political philosophers of his generation, Mamdani casts a learned and wary eye on Amin, internationally depicted as a buffoon; the radical scholar Museveni; and the global heavyweights that exploited and manipulated Uganda before and after its independence.

Each leader made violence central to his project, but Mamdani sees a signal difference between Amin, who retained popular support to the end, and Museveni, who has not. The Asian expulsion made Amin a monster in the eyes of the West. In contrast, Museveni was hailed as standard bearer of the ""war on terror"" in Africa and was protected from accountability for far greater crimes. In exchange for adopting the package of neoliberal reforms known as the Washington Consensus, he became Africa's poster child. Amin, who aimed to create a nation of Black millionaires, never became one himself. Meanwhile, Uganda's surrender to privatization has brought Museveni's family immense wealth, even as the country remains one of the world's poorest.

By: Mahmood Mamdani
Imprint: Belknap Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 235mm, Width: 156mm,
ISBN: 9780674299870
ISBN 10: 0674299876
Pages: 320
Publication Date: 22 December 2025
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Mahmood Mamdani is Herbert Lehman Professor of Government and Professor of Anthropology and Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies at Columbia University. He was Director of the Makerere Institute of Social Research in Kampala from 2010 to 2022. His books include Neither Settler nor Native, Citizen and Subject, When Victims Become Killers, and Good Muslim, Bad Muslim.

Reviews for Slow Poison: Idi Amin, Yoweri Museveni, and the Making of the Ugandan State

Mahmood Mamdani is an author of much originality, and his latest book, Slow Poison, is an obvious testimony to his well-rounded brilliance. -- Nuruddin Farah, author of From a Crooked Rib Mahmood Mamdani is one of the most acute and resourceful observers of our world, but Slow Poison is exceptionally lavish in its offer of bracing insight and eye-opening exposition. Rarely has any one book captured the profound ambiguity of decolonization: the scrambled pursuit of national freedom, the tortuous negotiations and compromises behind declarations of sovereignty, and the sheer slipperiness of postcolonial power. -- Pankaj Mishra, author of The World After Gaza For half a century, Mahmood Mamdani has been one of the world’s most influential and incisive analysts of African and Global South politics. Slow Poison reveals why. Combining history, political critique, and memoir, the book offers a riveting account of the consequences of state-directed violence, ‘tribalization,’ and neoliberal privatization, as well as the various Western entanglements, upending a litany of myths surrounding Idi Amin, Yoweri Museveni, and modern Uganda. Mamdani makes for a compelling witness. Brilliant! -- Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Africa Speaks, America Answers: Modern Jazz in Revolutionary Times One isn’t always the master of one’s destiny, but for Mahmood Mamdani, remaining a spectator is not a valid option. Written like a novel, this book retraces the steps in the construction of the Ugandan nation, with the relevant critical stakes but above all reckoning with a long administered ‘slow poison.’ -- In Koli Jean Bofane, author of Congo Inc.