Tribute to Ali Mazrui by Mahmood Mamdani
We should think of Ali as a long distance runner from a continent that specializes in giving the world some of its best long distance runners. Ali ran to his last breath: the ink kept flowing and the corpus kept growing, and the voice was as booming as ever.
I first met Ali at Makerere University in 1972. I was a teaching fellow who had just embarked on my doctoral thesis. Ali was the professor. We came from two different generations. His was the last in the battle against colonialism. Mine was the first to enjoy the fruits of independence. It was a time of intoxication for both of us.
The young Mazrui had been catapulted from the position of a lecturer to that of a professor in a short span of time. This helicopter rise was a testimony to two facts. The first was that just as a newly independent country had to have its own flag and national anthem, an African university in a newly independent African country had to have an African professor. That Mazrui was chosen to be that professor pointed to a second fact: he was among the best of home grown timber.
Professor Mazrui’s story over the past decades has been one of tenacity and stamina under great pressure. I witnessed several moments in this journey, three in particular, each identified with a different place: Makerere, Dar es Salaam and Michigan.
The single most impressive aspect of Mazrui at Makerere was that, though he was a beneficiary of nationalism, he was not dazzled by it. He was, indeed, among the first to recognize the Janus-faced power of nationalism, in particular its tendency to ride roughshod over both minorities – ethnic and religious – and dissidents in the majority.
Read more
General1 week ago
Natural Sciences1 week ago
Agriculture & Environment5 days ago
Health1 week ago
Health1 week ago