Charles Onyango-Obbo@cobbo3
Record-Breaking Night for Ugandan Scholar Mamdani’s “Slow Poison” in Nairobi. What the Hell is Happening?
Ugandan scholar Prof. Mahmood Mamdani and Jahazi Press—the East African publisher of his latest book, “Slow Poison: Idi Amin, Yoweri Museveni, and the Making of the Ugandan State”—have been met with a big surprise. The Kenyan launch of the book has blown up.
Following a successful run in the coastal city of Mombasa, the book tour moved to Nairobi, where a launch event is scheduled for this evening (23 January). Initially, it was set to take place at Cheche, a radical pan-Africanist bookshop in the suburb of Lavington. Organisers had prepared for a maximum attendance of 400 people; however, within hours of the announcement, nearly 800 people had registered, and interest continued to surge.
Faced with a logistical nightmare, the organisers decided to introduce a cover charge of KSh 1,000 (UGSh 28,000) to manage the crowd. This proved no deterrent; people paid up fast. Consequently, the event was moved to the Jain Bhavan Auditorium in the affluent Loresho neighbourhood, which has a capacity of 1,000. Even this was insufficient, necessitating a second open event to be held on Saturday, 24 January.
Such demand is unprecedented for a paid book launch and represents a first at this scale for a scholarly work in Nairobi – and likely in Africa. This is particularly striking given that Mamdani has never been a "Nairobi person". He has neither studied nor written much about Kenya. Instead, he lived in exile in Tanzania for many years, where much of his earlier work was centred. He researched and wrote on the genocide against the Tutsi in his 2001 work, “When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda”. He has covered Sudan, lived and worked in post-apartheid South Africa, and spent decades in the USA as a professor at Columbia University. It was from there that he published “Good Muslim, Bad Muslim” and the profound, gut-wrenching “Neither Settler Nor Native: The Making and Unmaking of Permanent Minorities” (2020).
While Slow Poison does touch upon Kenya, it is not a motivational or "how-to-get-rich" book. For it to sell out two nights—outperforming many film releases with the exception of blockbusters like Black Panther—suggests a deeper shift. Some observers have suggested that the sensational Mayorial victory of his son, Zohran Kwame Mamdani, in New York has contributed to the hype, with people hoping to experience the famous son through the father – and maybe catch a glimpse of his award-winning filmmaking mother Mira Nair in case she too were around. However, that can only account for a fraction of the story.
This moment could signal a broader regional transition. In the 1960s, Uganda’s capital, Kampala, was the intellectual heart of East Africa. After the military dictator Idi Amin - a central subject of Mamdani’s book- seized power in 1971, Dar es Salaam, then still Tanzania's capital, claimed the title, attracting leading global scholars like Walter Rodney. Yet, under Julius Nyerere’s Ujamaa (socialism), Dar es Salaam became Africa’s "liberation capital", primarily fostering left-leaning scholarship.
In contrast, more centrist and conservative scholars gravitated toward Nairobi, as did irreverent and nihilistic voices like the great Ugandan poet Okot p’Bitek. Over the last 25 years, Kenya has emerged as the freest country (politically) in East Africa, notwithstanding occasional episodes of suppression. It possesses the region's most competitive politics and elections, allowing left, centre, and right-wing ideas to clash freely and to flourish.
Nairobi has also become remarkably diverse and globalised. While Slow Poison is sold freely in Kenyan bookshops, many bookshops in Kampala are afraid to stock it, and those that do often sell it "under the counter". As civil society is squeezed in Uganda and Tanzania, and internet shutdowns accompany their elections, Kenya is rolling out 5G and building data centres.
The increasing globalisation of the Nairobi citizenry, combined with the city's consolidation as a hub for economic, intellectual, and civil freedom, and a hotspot for a new wave of African youth activism (the dramatic Gen Z protest of 2024 and 2025) explain some of the forces that have driven this intense interest in Slow Poison.
It remains to be seen what will happen if or when the book launches in Kampala; however, if the publisher were to charge UGSh28,000 there, they might find themselves hosting the event in the living room of Mamdani’s home on top of the hill in Buziga, although a free event could draw thousands in the current political climate in Uganda, although a free event could draw thousands in the current political climate in Uganda.
