Social Science Research Council

As an eighth-grader learning about American slavery, I had a fantasy. I imagined that some elite Marines and I could outfit ourselves in the latest combat gear and travel back in time to the year 1820. Once we arrived in the heart of the slavery era, we’d storm the plantations with superior weaponry and free [...]

In writing Saviors and Survivors Mahmood Mamdani has painstakingly removed the activist smokescreen that has clouded and confused the tragedy of Darfur. His book is a work of serious and authentic scholarship but more than that it reflects an act of moral courage to confront the half truths that have bedeviled the discourse on [...]

III. The Mbeki Mission and the Way Forward
Mamdani is right on target in his criticism of the Save Darfur tendency to offer simplistic solutions and manifesting misguided belligerence and a blind belief in the virtues of aggressive external intervention, in particular the military variety, as an instant solution for the crisis. His bewilderment at the [...]

II. The State, War and Sudanese Identity

Mamdani has in fact written not one book, but several. His attack on the enthusiastic but misinformed international response to the Darfur crisis is the first book. His tracing of the deep roots and complex manifestations of the conflict in Darfur is another. A third book traces the subtle [...]

I. Recolonisation without Responsibility

As many commentators have already pointed out, Mahmood Mamdani’s recent book, Saviors and Survivors has almost single-handedly shifted the debate on Darfur from a monologue (or a series of rival monologues) into a (very heated) dialogue. By taking head-on the dominant, rather one-sided narrative on the crisis, he had shocked and angered [...]

Saviors and Survivors became instantly controversial, probably more from the Darfur context and conflict it seeks to address than for its detailed scholarship and extensive research. Mamdani’s book is nonetheless an important work. It is well known that the author of “Good Muslim, Bad Muslim” does not hesitate to tackle problematic issues, so there should [...]

With Saviors and Survivors: Darfur, Politics and the War on Terror, Mahmood Mamdani has, in his usual provocative manner, ignited a relevant and appropriate debate on Darfur and what needs to be done to resolve the crisis. Until recently, certain activists had a near-monopoly on publicity, and in doing so they defined not only the [...]

The conflict in the Darfur region of western Sudan, along with the ongoing conflicts in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Somalia, represents one of the most vexing challenges on the African continent confronting the international community today.

A dispute which the United Nations estimates has killed at over 200,000 people and displaced at least 2 [...]

In this final section of what has been a three-part response, I would like to address three issues. The first concerns that of the suffering of the victims. One critic says that I “seem to overlook the daily suffering of the Darfurians” [Abd al-Wahab Abdalla]; another claims I “minimiz[e] [of] the suffering and destruction [...]

My aim in this piece is to focus on Mamdani’s major thesis, examining several of his supporting arguments in turn. I will thus try to avoid contesting Mamdani’s facts unto themselves (as many other contributors have already done this already), except where they are immediately relevant to his broader arguments or his research methods.

Professor Mamdani [...]