This week New Yorkers may have to come to terms with the reality that their new mayor is the unlikely figure of Zohran Mamdani, a charismatic radical democratic socialist from a Shia Muslim background.

New Yorkers go to the polls to vote for a new mayor today with Mamdani leading in polls and likely to be the next boss of the Big Apple.

Some South Africans will already be familiar with the Mamdani name, particularly those who studied social sciences. His father, Mahmood Mamdani, is one of Africa’s most prominent postcolonial scholars whose work on citizenship and the state is prescribed in universities around the world.

An early proponent of decolonising academia, Mahmood Mamdani, who was born in India but grew up in Uganda, was appointed to the University of Cape Town (UCT) where he soon became embroiled in what today would be called a decolonisation controversy over the nature of the African Studies curriculum, which he criticised as a form of: “Bantu Studies.”

The backlash to his appointment culminated in his departure from UCT. The episode became known as “The Mamdani Affair,” a dispute that in retrospect foreshadowed many of the culture war battles that would later dominate campuses globally.

Mahmood Mamdani’s academic outlook is typical of postcolonial theorists. He blames the horrors of Rwanda primarily on Belgian colonialism, doubts that there was genocide in Darfur, insists there is one in Gaza, and has argued that suicide bombers should be understood as a category of soldier.

His recent book Slow Poison presents a revisionist take on Ugandan dictator Idi Amin as an anti-colonial hero. But to his credit, Mamdani did warn early against the notion of South African exceptionalism long before that became fashionable among local academics.

His son Zohran spent part of his childhood in South Africa before the family moved to America. Now he may soon join the list of South African exports to make it big in the United States alongside the likes of Elon Musk, Trevor Noah, and Charlize Theron. Whatever he learned at his Cape Town school, Zohran clearly inherited much of his father’s intellectual style and political instinct.

Slick

Mamdani’s campaign has been slick and well-funded, built on the frustrations of ordinary New Yorkers facing a cost-of-living crisis that is bigger than some of their famous skyscrapers. His answer is to turn the city administration into a giant piggybank. The policy platform includes rent control, free bus fares, universal childcare, free public higher education, a higher minimum wage, government-owned grocery stores, the retention of New York’s “sanctuary city” policy, and extensive climate change programs.

Unusually for a democratic socialist, he has also campaigned against overregulation of small businesses, linking that to the high price of street food. After endorsing the call to “defund the police,” he now calls for expanding the role of mental health officers in law enforcement.

Unsurprisingly, Zohran has outspoken views on foreign affairs. He has condemned the leaders of Venezuela and Cuba as dictators while also opposing sanctions against them, and once called Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi a war criminal. Yet his most passionate cause is his opposition to Israel. He was a founding member of Students for Justice in Palestine, which was part of the campus movements that staged pro-Hamas “tentifada” protests across American universities.

After the October 7th attacks, he failed to condemn Hamas and previously pushed legislation that would criminalise donations to Israel. He has threatened to have Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrested should he ever visit New York. He recently argued that training programs that New York police receive from Israel mean that: “when the boot of the NYPD [New York Police Department] is on your neck, it’s been laced by the IDF [Israel Defence Force].”

New York has seen its share of eccentric or extreme political figures, but Mamdani’s meteoric rise was made possible by the collapse of moderate opposition. His nearest rival, former Democratic governor Andrew Cuomo, was forced out of office by scandal, both sexual and related to Covid. The incumbent mayor, Eric Adams, a centrist and an opportunist, self-destructed through a bizarre corruption conviction relating to Turkish airplanes and a politically unforgivable pardon from the Trump administration.

The only other contender, Republican Curtis Sliwa, a 1980s subway vigilante who always wears a red beret, reminiscent of the Economic Freedom Fighters, never had a realistic chance in such a deep blue city. Together Cuomo and Sliwa could beat Mamadani but their own internal rivalries seem to be more important than the future of the city.

Frustration

Economic frustration and post-pandemic strain have made Mamdani’s populism more viable than it otherwise would be. Normally, his foreign policy and anti-Israel positions would be politically fatal in a city where roughly 10% of residents are Jewish. However, even before the war Jews were the more targeted minority for hate crimes in New York. Public sentiment around the war in Gaza in Western countries particularly in progressive areas like New York has made antisemitic outrages a regular occurrence in the city.

Mamdani also benefits from New York’s complex mix of secular progressive anti-Israel Jews and ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities who believe there only can be a Jewish state at the time of the Messiah, using these as a shield he has blunted some of the backlash.

Still, earlier voting patterns show that Mamdani performed poorly in the Democratic primaries in districts with large Jewish and African American populations, a sign that his support remains narrow in these communities.

Some commentators argue that electing Mamdani might teach progressives a lesson, forcing them to live with the results of their own policies if New York collapses into the kind of crime-riddled hellscape depicted in movies such Escape from New York.

Others believe he could become a new progressive bogeyman, a figure the MAGA world can meme about in future elections. But these arguments miss the point. A mayor is not a lowly congressional member of the progressive “Squad”, they wield real power.

Consequences

If Zohran Mamdani wins, the first to feel the consequences will be New Yorkers themselves, business owners, commuters, and residents, but the effects will not stop there. New York remains a cultural and financial nerve centre for the world, and its politics echo globally.

When Johannesburg’s African National Congress-led administration spent millions on a Mandela statue in Ramallah and tried renaming a Sandton street after a terrorist, those were symbolic gestures. Imagine what a clever, disciplined radical could do as mayor of one of the world’s great cities.

The Democratic Party, still adrift in its struggle against Donald Trump’s populism, may see in Mamdani a new ideological direction, democratic socialism with urban polish. But as the old saying goes, you can vote socialism in, but you may have to shoot your way out.

Even if he wins, remember, you don’t mess with the Zohran.