Mahmood Zamdani – apologist for Idi Amin

Mahmood Mamdani, the anthropologist father of Zohran, the newly elected Democratic Mayor of New York, has written a weirdly revisionist history of the brutal dictator Idi Amin. The Mamdani family were Ugandan Asians, ejected by Amin in his purge in the 1970s, though Mahmood had been previously educated in the US and involved in the civil rights movement.

  Amin was an admirer of Adolf Hitler and considered one of the most brutal despots in modern world history responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths. He expropriated businesses and properties belonging to the Asians and the Europeans and handed them over to his supporters. At the time, Asians accounted for 90% of the country’s tax revenue; with their removal, the economy all but collapsed.

  Mahmood, professor of government and anthropology at Columbia University, has long styled himself as the left’s answer to VS Naipaul. He writes that the expulsions were aimed at the British, not Indians. He urges the reader to discard “media-driven preconceptions” of the gothic tales of Amin’s killings and cannibalism – and presents Amin as an anti-colonial moderniser. He destroyed landlord power, made black rule “meaningful” which evidently earned him aa place in Mamdani’s pantheon of liberation heroes.

 Amin, 30 May 1928, was a Sun Gemini opposition Saturn with an aggressive Mars in Aries conjunct Uranus, trine Saturn and in a brutal square to Pluto.

 What intrigues me is Mahmood Mamdani’s chart, 23 April 1946, Mumbai, India, which has a Taurus Sun square Mars Pluto conjunct in Leo – so he has the same Mars Pluto resonance as Amin. Though that can cut two ways and could have made him more sensitive to Amin’s rampant savagery. But clearly not.

  It may not be exactly helpful for his son’s political position having his father act as an apologist for such a verifiably vicious dictator as Amin.

 Mahmood’s Taurus Sun falls on his Zohran’s Midheaven with his Mars Pluto on Z’s Ascendant – so father pushes son hard but there will be a strong streak of competitiveness in there.  Zohran, 18 October 1991 1.15am Kampala, Uganda, does have a Libra Sun conjunct Mars in Scorpio square Saturn with a 4^th house Pluto – so relations with his father will have been fraught.

None of this may add up to much but it is astrologically interesting – and one to watch out for ahead.

The post Mahmood Zamdani – apologist for Idi Amin first appeared on Astroinform with Marjorie Orr – Star4cast.