Bøker av Mahmood Mamdani

Intends to recover the notion of culture as a collective, hybrid and plural experience, in light of the political imperative that rules us. In bringing together some of the figures most closely associated with Said and his scholarship, this volume looks at Said, the literary critic and public intellectual, Palestine and Said's intellectual legacy.

"e;When we captured Kigali, we thought we would face criminals in the state; instead, we faced a criminal population."e; So a political commissar in the Rwanda Patriotic Front reflected after the 1994 massacre of as many as one million Tutsis in Rwanda. Underlying his statement is the realization that, though ordered by a minority of state functionaries, the slaughter was performed by hundreds of thousands of ordinary citizens, including even judges, human rights activists, and doctors, nurses, priests, friends, and spouses of the victims. Indeed, it is its very popularity that makes the Rwandan genocide so unthinkable. This book makes it thinkable. Rejecting easy explanations of the genocide as a mysterious evil force that was bizarrely unleashed, one of Africa's best-known intellectuals situates the tragedy in its proper context. He coaxes to the surface the historical, geographical, and political forces that made it possible for so many Hutu to turn so brutally on their neighbors. He finds answers in the nature of political identities generated during colonialism, in the failures of the nationalist revolution to transcend these identities, and in regional demographic and political currents that reach well beyond Rwanda. In so doing, Mahmood Mamdani usefully broadens understandings of citizenship and political identity in postcolonial Africa. There have been few attempts to explain the Rwandan horror, and none has succeeded so well as this one. Mamdani's analysis provides a solid foundation for future studies of the massacre. Even more important, his answers point a way out of crisis: a direction for reforming political identity in central Africa and preventing future tragedies.

When Britain abandoned its attempt to eradicate difference between conqueror and conquered and introduced a new idea of governance as the definition and management of difference, lines of political identity were drawn between settler and native, and between natives according to tribe. Out of this colonial experience arose a language of pluralism.

In trying to fathom the present crisis in the DRC, Mamdani's study concentrates on the Great Lakes region, particularly the region of Kivu and the Kiyarwanda-speaking population. These people were historically divided into three major groups - the Banyamulenge, the Banyamasisi, and the Banyaruchuru, popularly know as Hutu and Tutsi. The author situates the crisis within the context of local and foreign interests and division, primarly within the context of post- genocide Rwanda, and the citizenship crisis - civic and ethnic - in Kivu. He then presents a programme of action - local and international - for Rwanda and Kivu. For Rwanda, he urges global responsibility, which means coming to terms with the genocide in Rwanda; and a course of action which balances justice, democracy, and reconciliation. For Kivu he sets forth a full research agenda on the crisis of state in the DRC. Mahmood Mamdani is a distinguished professor of anthropology and has published widely on conflict, human rights, the legacy of colonialism and African Studies.

Examining how the conflict has drawn in national, regional, and global forces, this book deconstructs the powerful Western lobby's persistent calls for a military response dressed up as a 'humanitarian intervention'. It presents an account of Darfur crisis within a broad context of Sudan's history.