Archive November 5, 2025

Zohran Mamdani’s stunning victory in New York City’s mayoral race was built on a promise of hope and political change, a message that is resonating loudly with the people in Uganda, where he was born.

The 34-year-old leftist’s decisive win in the United States’ largest metropolis on Wednesday was celebrated by many in Uganda’s capital Kampala, the city where Mamdani was born in 1991.

For many Ugandans, the unlikely rise of Mamdani – a young Muslim with roots in Africa and South Asia – in the world’s most powerful democracy carries an inspirational message in a country where an authoritarian leader has been ruling since even before Mamdani was born.

Uganda’s 81-year-old President Yoweri Museveni is seeking a seventh term in January elections as he looks to extend his nearly 40-year rule. He has rejected calls to retire, leading to fears of a volatile political transition.

“It’s a big encouragement even to us here in Uganda that it’s possible,” Joel Ssenyonyi, a 38-year-old opposition leader in the Parliament of Uganda, told The Associated Press.

He said that while Ugandans, who are facing repressive political conditions, had “a long way to get there”, Mamdani’s success “inspires us”.

Mamdani left Uganda when he was five to follow his father, political theorist Mahmood Mamdani, to South Africa, and later moved to the US. He kept his Ugandan citizenship even after he became a naturalised US citizen in 2018, according to AP.

The family maintains a home in Kampala, to which they regularly return and visited earlier this year to celebrate Mamdani’s marriage.

‘We celebrate and draw strength’

While Mamdani, a self-described democratic socialist, has vowed to tackle inequality and push back against the xenophobic rhetoric of US President Donald Trump, opposition politicians in Uganda face different challenges.

Museveni has been cracking down on his opponents ahead of next year’s elections, as he has in the lead-up to previous polls.

In November last year, veteran opposition figure Kizza Besigye, who has stood against Museveni in four elections, and his aide, Obeid Lutale, were abducted in Nairobi, Kenya, before being arraigned in a military court in Kampala on treason charges. The pair have since repeatedly been denied bail, despite concerns raised by the United Nations’ human rights officials.

Other opposition figures have also faced crackdowns.

Tens of supporters of the National Unity Platform (NUP) party, led by 43-year-old entertainer Robert Kyagulanyi, popularly known as Bobi Wine, have been convicted by Uganda’s military courts for various offences.

“From Uganda, we celebrate and draw strength from your example as we work to build a country where every citizen can realise their grandest dreams regardless of means and background,” Wine wrote on X as he sent his “hearty congratulations” to Mamdani.

Robert Kabushenga, a retired Ugandan media executive who is friendly with the Mamdani family, told AP that Mamdani’s win was “a beacon of hope” for those fighting for change in Uganda, especially the younger generations.

Describing the new mayor-elect as belonging to “a tradition of very honest and clear thinkers who are willing to reimagine … politics”, Kabushenga said Mamdani’s victory underlined that “we should allow young people the opportunity to shape, and participate in, politics in a meaningful way”.

Okello Ogwang, an academic who once worked with Mamdani’s father at Kampala’s Makerere University, said his son’s success was an instructive reminder to Uganda “that we should invest in the youth”.

“He’s coming from here,” he said. “If we don’t invest in our youth, we are wasting our time.”

Anthony Kirabo, a 22-year-old psychology student at Makerere University, said Mamdani’s win “makes me feel good and proud of my country because it shows that Uganda can produce some good leaders”.

When Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) stormed the besieged city of el-Fasher on October 26, Mabrooka’s husband and brother ran for their lives.

The plan was for them to head to Tawila – about 60 kilometres (37 miles) away – where Mabrooka would be waiting for them with her three small children. By sundown, they had still not arrived.

News spread that the RSF, which has been fighting a bitter war against the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) since April 2023, was carrying out summary executions against the population of el-Fasher, which it accused of siding with its enemy. Mabrooka began fearing the worst.

Then, her phone rang.

A voice told Mabrooka to wire 14,000 Sudanese pounds ($23) – a hefty sum for displaced and destitute Sudanese families – to a bank account, which she suspected belonged to an RSF fighter.

“When I got the call, I was terrified and crying the whole time,” Mabrooka, 27, told Al Jazeera. “I knew they would for sure torture and kill them if I didn’t muster up the money.”

Kidnapping and ransom

Since the RSF captured the army’s last stronghold in the sprawling western region of Darfur, the group has carried out a series of atrocities, including execution, rape and mass looting, according to survivors and local monitors. The Sudan Doctors Network put the death toll from the RSF attack at 1,500 in the first few days after the city’s fall, but the true number could be far higher.

While acknowledging that some crimes have been committed by its forces, the RSF has largely denied some of the worst accusations against it, and insists that it is “liberating” territory.

But in el-Fasher, most of the victims have been from the mainly sedentary “non-Arab” population, who have lived in fear of the nomadic “Arab” fighters who comprise most of the RSF.

The targeted ethnic violence has forced tens of thousands of people to flee to neighbouring villages, but many people have been abducted for ransom by RSF fighters along the way.

According to local monitors, international non-government organisations, and victims’ families, it’s likely that thousands of people have desperately wired money straight to RSF fighters to national banks via banking applications.

Monitors told Al Jazeera that ransoms range from anywhere between $20 to $20,000.

“There is a large number among the displaced people who have been detained, and the RSF is asking for a really big amount from their families,” said Mohamed*, a local relief worker in Tawila with the Emergency Response Room (ERR), a grassroots initiative spearheading the aid response across Sudan.

Mathilde Vu, the Sudan advocacy manager for the Norwegian Refugee Council, told Al Jazeera that many civilians are reportedly being detained as they flee and asked to pay a “transportation fee” to reach Tawila.

Many children have been separated from their parents, as well as women and children from their husbands, she said.

In addition, the United Nations estimates that more than 70,000 people have been uprooted from el-Fasher since October 26 and that over 40,000 of them headed towards Tawila.

Of this number, Vu noted that only about 6,000 people have arrived in Tawila so far.

“This is a clear indicator that people are disappearing or are being held back,” she told Al Jazeera.

Ransom videos

Some families who lost touch with loved ones in el-Fasher received ransom videos from unidentified kidnappers.

Local monitors and global relief agencies, who asked to remain anonymous to protect their teams on the ground, said that RSF fighters appear to be the kidnappers in most cases.

However, criminal gangs and other “Arab” militias aligned with the RSF may also be implicated.

One video circulating over social media, which has been authenticated by Al Jazeera’s verification team, Sanad, showed a man being held for ransom.

In the video, Abbas al-Sadiq, who is a psychology professor at el-Fasher University, pleaded for one of his colleagues to pay a ransom that amounts to roughly $3,330.

“Please wire the money to the [account] number I sent you and please do it now because we don’t have a lot of time. They are just giving me 10 minutes,” said al-Sadiq in the video.

Noon Baramaki, a journalist from el-Fasher, told Al Jazeera that al-Sadiq was released on Saturday after his ransom was paid. A colleague of al-Sadiq also reported on social media that al-Sadiq has been released, but Al Jazeera has been unable to reach him.

Baramki stressed that countless other people have been abducted, yet their families are scared to speak to the press out of fear that the RSF will somehow find out and then kill their loved ones.

“People are really scared to make any statements because they don’t want to be the reason that anyone they love gets hurt or killed,” Baramki told Al Jazeera.

Reunited

A number of news reports have documented that the RSF and allied gangs are executing people who can’t pay the ransoms that have been demanded.

For most families in el-Fasher – who for 18 months were living under a brutal RSF siege that led to a famine – paying a ransom that is thousands or even hundreds of dollars is extremely difficult if not impossible.

Mabrooka, whose husband and brother were abducted, considers herself lucky. She said that she relied on donations from friends and family members in Tawila in order to promptly gather 12,000 Sudanese pounds ($20), which the kidnappers accepted.

Once the money was wired, her brother and husband were released on November 1. They managed to make it to Tawila despite limping and staggering from the exhaustion and beatings they endured in captivity, as well as from the lack of food and water they were given.

“When they finally arrived in Tawila, I cried and cried and cried tears of joy. I remember hugging them and greeting them,” Mabrooka told Al Jazeera. “Thank God they made it.”

While she is now reunited with her husband and brother, she said they are still living in fear.

The family believes that the RSF could soon attack Tawila next to continue to persecute non-Arabs and finish off what many relief agencies, monitors and experts are describing as a possible genocide.

“Honestly, we are terrified that after the RSF finishes off el-Fasher, they’ll come after us here,” Mabrooka said.

“We are scared,” she told Al Jazeera. “Thank God [my husband and brother] returned, but people here are still scared.”