12/30/2025
🇿🇦 Incoming New York mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani who has made history by being the first Muslim in the position spent several formative years in Cape Town in the mid-1990s, an experience he has credited with shaping his politics and worldview.
Born in Kampala, Uganda, late 1991, Mamdani moved to Cape Town around 1996, when his father, Professor Mahmood Mamdani, accepted a post at the University of Cape Town.
The family lived in the southern suburbs, where his father held the AC Jordan Chair in African Studies and directed the Centre for African Studies.
During their years in Cape Town, Mamdani attended St. George's Grammar School in Mowbray, one of the city's oldest private schools.
When the family relocated to the United States in the late 1990s, Mamdani continued his education and later studied Africana Studies at Bowdoin College.
He has often credited his African upbringing, including his years in Cape Town, with grounding his political identity.
Mamdani opened up about growing up in Cape Town earlier this year. "It taught me what inequality looks like up close," he told Time magazine earlier this year. "It taught me that justice has to be more than an idea; it has to be material."
[IOL]
