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To those in South Africa still disillusioned with democratic outcomes, and to younger voters across the world who feel alienated by corrupt elites and cynical leadership, Mamdani’s victory offers hope.
By MAHMOOD SANGLAY
In an election result few saw coming, and even fewer in America’s political establishment dared to welcome, 33-year-old Zohran Mamdani won the Democratic primary in the race to become mayor of New York City. This is no ordinary electoral victory. It is an inflection point, a political earthquake with tremors likely to reverberate well beyond the five boroughs and deep into the Democratic Party’s leadership.
Yet for many South Africans, the moment carries a quiet, personal resonance. Before Mamdani became a New York State Assembly member and the face of a rejuvenated democratic socialism in the United States, he spent part of his early childhood in South Africa. He is the son of Ugandan academic Mahmood Mamdani and acclaimed Indian filmmaker Mira Nair, both of whom were involved in South Africa’s anti-apartheid and post-liberation intellectual life. This South African thread in Mamdani’s personal story is not incidental. It is formative. It reminds us that justice, if it is to mean anything, must transcend borders. And that the global South’s struggles have always shaped the moral vocabulary of the West’s emerging dissenters.
Mamdani’s rise reflects this dissident tradition. His politics centre on a clear-eyed commitment to affordability, economic dignity, and public safety rooted in the lived realities of New Yorkers priced out of their city. In the words of his victory speech: ‘Where hard work is repaid with a stable life … where buses are fast and free … where rent-stabilised apartments are actually stabilised’. These are not slogans. They are, for working people, demands for breath and for space in a city suffocating under the weight of neoliberal orthodoxy.
That Mamdani identifies as Muslim is neither concealed nor paraded. While some commentators on the American right fixated on his Muslim identity in a display of barely disguised Islamophobia—circulating images of the Statue of Liberty in a niqab, or warning of another ‘9/11’ should he become mayor—Mamdani’s campaign refused to play into identity politics in its superficial form. His focus remained class-based and solidaristic, deliberately avoiding both sectarian appeal and performative piety. That, too, is an instructive lesson for Muslim politicians worldwide: it is possible to be principled without posturing, and rooted in one’s heritage without reducing politics to tokenism.
There is a temptation, especially in identity-obsessed media ecosystems, to centre Mamdani’s religion. But to do so would be to misread the moment. He is not a ‘Muslim candidate’ in the way the media labels often suggest. Rather, he is a candidate whose values—equity, justice, compassion, responsibility—happen to align with the best of Islamic ethical traditions. And these are, crucially, values shared by traditions and communities beyond Islam.
What makes Mamdani’s ascent extraordinary is not his personal faith, but the political faith he has placed in ordinary people. As Robert Reich, former US Secretary of Labour, remarked: ‘The only answer to organised money is organised people’. Mamdani’s campaign proved this axiom with disciplined mobilisation, robust coalition-building, and a messaging strategy that spoke to the economic squeeze felt by New Yorkers across race and religion. He outmanoeuvred Andrew Cuomo, a figure armed with a war chest of over $25 million and the lingering embers of name recognition, by focusing not on abstract slogans but on material realities—rent, transit, and child care.
This is where the significance of Mamdani’s win echoes the ethos of South Africans rooted in the struggle against apartheid and committed to justice. We understand politics not as a quest for status but as a moral responsibility. In our context—where the ghosts of racial capitalism still stalk working-class communities—his victory is a mandate to return governance to the service of the public interest.
Trump calls him a ‘communist lunatic’; others derided his proposals—like free public buses and rent freezes—as naïve or unworkable. Yet these are hardly radical in most parts of the world. Even in New York, such policies enjoy widespread support. What is truly radical, it seems, is the idea that a politician might actually govern for the many rather than the few. That, more than anything, has unsettled America’s donor-driven political class.
For Mamdani, the path ahead is strewn with institutional resistance. The real estate lobby, Wall Street donors, entrenched bureaucracies, and even members of his own party—many of whom have already displayed a hesitance, if not outright hostility—will likely seek to stall or dilute his agenda. As others have warned, the true test will not be the campaign, but the capacity to govern with integrity amid inevitable compromise.
Nonetheless, his candidacy—and potential mayoralty—offers hope. Not just for New Yorkers, but for all who see politics as a vehicle for service rather than self-interest. Mamdani’s campaign has rekindled a vision of politics animated by principle rather than poll-tested platitudes.
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To those in South Africa still disillusioned with democratic outcomes, and to younger voters across the world who feel alienated by corrupt elites and cynical leadership, Mamdani’s victory offers hope. It requires courage, clarity, and community. It may begin in Queens or Khayelitsha, in Soweto or Staten Island—but when nurtured with moral purpose, it can ignite the imagination of cities and nations alike.
Zohran Mamdani, a son of immigrants and of South Africa’s broader liberation memory, has placed that cornerstone in the heart of America’s largest city. Whether it will bear the weight of transformation remains to be seen. But for now, it stands—and that, in itself, is worthy of note.
