Mahmood Mamdani

Not an easy read - the book is full of subtle nuances and allusions. Some of the ideas are quite disruptive of the middle-class liberal values we have come to espouse under the influence of Nehruvism (for instance). In common with many other so-called post-modernist or post-liberal writers, this author also seems to be enjoying both worlds - a successful academic career in the enlightened west, while critiquing (or criticising?) the very values that provide them the freedom and tolerance to be frank and outspoken. One of his main points is that state violence should not be laid at the doors of individual actors and state servants, but must instead be treated as political crimes. The Nurenberg types of post-upheaval trials does not lead to the rooting out of the cause of the violence and cruelty, as the entire thing is pinned on a few individuals who are punished as scapegoats. Another point he makes is that the "nation" needs to be replaced by a non-partisan, secular state with no moorings in concepts of ethnicity, culture, religion, language etc. He commends the example of South Africa, where they avoided making either party the accused for the past under apartheid, so that both perpetrators and victims could come together as 'adversaries' in a viable political system, rather than as 'enemies' locked in a zero-sum fight. This example is contrasted with the US in respect of its Native American population, and Israel of the native Palestinians. One weakness of his arguments against the 'rule-of-law' approach in dealing with political crimes, is that the consensus in South Africa could well break down if a local demagogue arises and destroys the social contract between different ethnic groups. Indeed the subcontinent could well be taken up as a study of the relative merits of the idealistic, constitutional approach to other, more political, coalitional approaches, as the two successor states have gone about their business in such contrasting modes.… (more)

An ambitious, penetrating book that made some bold claims. It introduced me to the centuries of dispossession of Native Americans, the denazification process in Germany, the emergence and resistance to apartheid in South Africa, and the stranglehold of the British colonial scheme on Sudan and South Sudan.

On the Israel section — I mostly agreed with his argument but had some questions about his phrasing and argumentation. For example, Mamdani argues that Palestinians rebelled against the exclusionary Jewish nature of immigration — what he'd referred to as the "settler" nature — but then they also opposed any immigration, even during WWII, which is sus.

Mamdani sees the nation-state as a driver of ethnic cleansing, rather than as the protective apparatus that the 1648 Westphalia treaty conceived it as. For example, he brings up the ethnic cleansing of Germans after WWII — half a million dead, millions more expelled — as evidence that the desire to make a homogeneous Europe necessitated atrocities, not unlike the Nakba that a homogeneous Jewish state demanded. But that is an obvious observation.

One central formulation — that the nation-state can never truly be democratic since it presupposes a permanent majority — never really grapples with democratic nation-states like Japan, with naturally permanent majorities. Some of the writer's solutions also seemed slapped on or perhaps shortsighted, like apportioning some fixed representation for Native Americans as a political route to decolonization, even a state of their own — precisely the sort of tribalization that happened in South Sudan? A sort of approximation of a nation state?

Denazification to Mamdani was a failed process because it handled "big" Nazis as individual criminals — he thinks the antifascist forces should have led the internal reckoning, rather than the big powers exacting a "victor's justice". But what would that internal reckoning look like? And why were these processes mutually exclusive? There is some element of counterfactual history here.

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Review of Define and Rule by Mahmood Mamdani- Wits University Press 2013.
Define and Rule: Native as Political Identity by Mahmood Mamdani, published by Wits University Press in 2013, follows on its initial publication by Harvard University Press in September 2012. The work reproduces the three lectures that comprised Mamdani’s W.E.B. Du Bois Lectures delivered at Harvard in 2008.

The W E B Du Bois lectures , established in 1981 with funding from the Ford Foundation, collectively offer a serious and important platform for Afro American scholars (the full list can be found on line at http://dubois.fas.harvard.edu/w-e-b-du-bois-lectures )
Define and Rule, subtitled , Native as Political Identity is a dense but important little book explaining and interpreting big ideas and the political and legal theories that shaped 19th century British colonial rule. However, the work resonates with contemporary African analysts who face the challenge of understanding the past , overcoming that divisive colonial heritage and particularistic nationalisms and forging rational , unifying identities for the future.
To coincide with the publication of the book, Mamdani also wrote an excellent summary article in the London Review of books, What is a Tribe? (London Review of Books Vol 34, no 17, 13 September 2012) . This article can also be read on line. It was an article that encouraged me to track down the fuller lectures.

The post 1857 crisis of empire in the wake of the Indian mutiny, led Sir Henry Maine to develop a theory of nativism that underpinned and ultimately justified, the practice of indirect rule within the British empire. This approach became the touchstone for defining, organizing and ruling tribal societies whether in India, Egypt, Malaya, Natal, East Africa or the Sudan. The colonial administrators, such as Shepstone in Natal, Lugard in Nigeria and Lord Cromer in Egypt relied upon Maine’s text, Ancient Law into policies.

Mamdani rejects the view that indirect rule was a response to a lack of financial or human resources to run an empire; he sees this 19th century theory of government and switch from direct to indirect rule as evidence of an ambitious and strong state rather than a way of creating and retaining an empire on the cheap. Mamdani deftly considers the application and impact of Maine’s ideas in government, law and religion in India, Malay and in Indonesia (under Dutch rule). There was a distinct switch from divide and rule to “define and rule”. Whether you belonged to a race or a tribe determined the type of law applied, whether civil or tribal and customary. Access to land, participation in government and dispute resolution became group rights to be enjoyed within the tribe. This shaped political power and tribal identity became an imposed label and a self identifier.

The final lecture shoots forward to the era of 20th century decolonization and the legacy now carried by the new nationalist leaders facing the challenges of nationalism, nation building and modernization. Historians in Africa have a particular role in educating leaders to understand the distortions of past realities . Race, kinship, tribe and tradition need to be reinterpreted and rethought to claim new identities and built effective states . Mamdani has some interesting things to say about Nyerere’s statecraft and his ujama villages.

This work can be read profitably by any aspiring leader in an emerging economy or indeed in South Africa to inform reflection on the possibility of forging durable political citizenships based on social justice and new identities . Unless the issues of identity ( and I should add religious tolerance) are addressed , prescriptions from the structural adjustment school of economics will be destined to fail. Mamdani is a powerful intellectual voice for our age and his work is worthy of close study.
KA Munro 2nd June 2013.… (more)