By Adagbo Onoja
Pundits are still sure he is the winner – in – waiting as Mayor of New York City. He would be scoring many firsts if he is finally pronounced anytime soon.
At 33, he would be the youngest Mayor of the mega city although, to escape charges of ageism, Intervention would not like to over-invest in this. He would be the first Muslim Mayor of the city. The fluidity of identity also runs against reading too much into this too except that it happens, it would be throwing mud at the identity essentialism, particularly the Whitism that intellectuals and practitioners of MAGA, for example, have been animating. Lastly, he would be the first unrepentant Socialist to occupy that position. That is the ideological touch to the Zohran emergence, a very significant one.
There is the aspect that is not mentioned in any elaborate manner in the coverage of Zohran so far. That is the aspect about his father, Professor Mahmood Mamdani, Columbia University academic legend, being an African – a Ugandan – and which means an African stake in the Zohran phenomenon. The suppression of the African stake in an emergent powerful voice in global affairs might not be unconnected with the matrilineal/patrilineal opposition in tracing kinship. The question then would be that of which angle the media in Africa should approach it. Whichever angle, Zohran is adding value or extending what Obama started: the rise of a multi-continental identity in the American politics in spite of racial, ideological and cultural roadblocks, historically.
The only difference here is that, unlike Obama whose emergence was predicted, Zohran crept on the (African) world without notice. When Professor Ali Mazrui visited Nigeria in 2004, Professor Okello Oculi insisted he must perform a quasi-academic function. The outcome was Mazrui delivering a lecture. At the lecture in the Department of Political Science at the University of Abuja in 2004, Prof Ali Mazrui told his audience that Obama was an African-American politician to watch. Obama, said Mazrui, had an approach to politics that made Mazrui to put a bet of stunning success on him. Whether Nigeria/Africa heard Mazrui quietly or not is besides the point now. Barely five years later, someone the president of Kenya could call and crack jokes in a language no spy agency could easily decode was voted as the 44th president of the United States.
Intervention is not aware that anyone had any such prediction on Zohran from an African soil. It might have been possible in Uganda where his father – the famous Mahmud Mamdani – comes from. But very unlikely in Nigeria.
Unmistakable!
It is Zohran’s father almost every academic knows, every academic in the social sciences, which is his domain. Dr. Yusuf Bangura, another African political scientist of stature who knows Mamdani says that even at 79, Mamdani whom he describes as very engaging still teaches.
Here is thus a beautiful paradox on its way that the elder Mamdani will now yield ground to the son and take the backseat except for PhD students, researchers and academics who must continue to read, amongst others, his Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Colonialism. Otherwise, it is the younger Mamdani those below 30 across Africa would be tuning to now.
He would be because a sitting Mayor of New York City is a well located actor. New York City is not just another city. It is a financial, diplomatic, commercial, intellectual and cultural hub on a global scale. It is a city with more complexity, with bigger budget and a witness to more diplomacy than many of the 185 or so nation states that makes up the United Nations. As a socialist, irrespective of the variant, he would remain captivating. The variant of socialism he subscribes to wouldn’t matter because socialism can never become a homogenous practice. It will die instantly the moment that happens.
What is the overarching import of the Zohrans of this world? It is that the reigning American self-understanding as a land of opportunities has constituted a category of players who are taking it to a different level, the level of rupture. While the Luther Kings, Obamas, #BlackLivesMatter activists and the Zohrans are reactivating the racial diversity dimension beautifully, the Samuel Huntingtons, Donald Trumps and MAGA activists are insisting on essentialism or the America of the White-Anglo Saxon and Presbyterian (WASP) supremacism. The outcome of that tension will be the most interesting spectacle to watch how it plays out in world politics for years to come.
Even if Zohran doesn’t get it, he has already made a statement. What that statement is depends on who and where anyone is reading this piece. But an American of African father and Indian mother, of Muslim religious identity and a socialist view of the world winning the Mayor of New York at the height of MAGA-ism cannot but be the statement.
As Mayor of New York city, Zohran may not be able to rewrite the rules (don’t rule that out anyway) but what might be more important right now is his signifying presence. And he is sure bound to be around for quite some time, given his age. It means that, in him, there is an additional voice and presence in the power resource checklist of his stock around the world. Presence and voice can be such power resources if innovatively handled.
It is up to the reader to decode what that voice is all about from the extract below. It is from what he told his supporters in a June 14th, 2025 speech.
New Yorkers who are ready to turn the page on years of corruption and incompetence. To reject the politics of distraction and fear, of big money and small vision, of cowardice and collaboration in the face of Trump’s authoritarianism. New Yorkers who are ready for a new generation of leadership that puts working people first.
We stand on the verge of a victory that will resonate across the country and the world. Make no mistake: this victory will be historic, not just because of who I am — a Muslim immigrant and proud democratic socialist — but for what we will do: make this city affordable for everyone.
If New York truly is the city that never sleeps, we deserve a mayor who fights for those of us who labor at every single hour of the day. I will be that mayor.
Together, New York, we’re going to make buses fast and free.
Together, New York, we’re going to deliver universal childcare.
And I’ll be a mayor who doesn’t bow down to corporate interests, doesn’t take his orders from billionaires, and sure as hell doesn’t let ICE steal our neighbors from their homes. There are no kings in America, whether that’s Donald Trump, Andrew Cuomo, or the Republican billionaires who fund their campaigns.
For too long, New Yorkers have learned not to expect much from those they elect. Failure has become familiar.
Make no mistake: our democracy is under attack from the outside, but it has also been eroded from the inside. When politicians give you crumbs time and again and tell you to feel satisfied, it should come as no surprise that so many among us have lost faith.
They know that this election isn’t just about the future of our city. It’s about the future of our democracy. Whether billionaires and massive corporations can buy our elections.
Trust me, they will try. From now until June 24, you will not be able to turn on your TV, check your mail, or watch a video on YouTube without seeing an attack on our movement. There will be lies to stoke fear and suspicion, even hate. And behind these lies are the same billionaires who put Donald Trump back in office.
But we know that this movement is more powerful than their money. That’s what New Yorkers have already begun to say today, at polling places across our city. And on June 24, we will speak in one voice.
