Zohran Mamdani’s rise is not just a story of one man’s success. It is the story of what becomes possible when movements — and memories — are nurtured with integrity. From Cape Town’s madrasa halls to New York’s subway stops, the values of mercy, justice, and collective dignity continue to ripple outward.
By ADLI YACUBI
On a windy June morning in Johannesburg, I opened my social media feed and was stunned to see the name ‘Zohran Mamdani’ trending across platforms. Not because I didn’t know the name — but because I did, even if distantly.
In the early 1990s, Mamdani was a child in Cape Town, attending Saturday morning madrasa classes at the Claremont Main Road Mosque, a place deeply associated with the progressive Islamic movement of the time. His father, Professor Mahmood Mamdani, was already a towering intellectual figure in the post-apartheid ferment. I had been working at the National Language Project (NLP) then, and many of us — including colleagues like Gerda de Klerk — were connected to those circles of progressive faith, education, and social justice. Our paths may well have crossed with young Mamdani, though it feels remarkable to see this child of that moment now emerge as the Democratic front-runner for mayor of New York City.
As news of Mamdani’s decisive victory spread — defeating establishment heavyweight Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic mayoral primary — friends from various corners of the globe began connecting the dots. A remarkable arc had come full circle: from Cape Town’s progressive mosques and language movements to the heart of one of the most complex urban political landscapes in the world.
From Claremont to Queens: A political formation
Mamdani’s victory didn’t emerge out of nowhere. It was cultivated in spaces that taught young people not to separate faith from justice, identity from compassion. The Claremont Main Road Mosque (CMRM), where Mamdani received early Islamic education, has long been known as a place of inclusive, activist theology — led since those years by figures like Imam Dr Rashied Omar and strongly shaped by South Africa’s anti-apartheid Islamic ethos.
The family home was no less intellectually fertile. His father, Mahmood Mamdani, was not just a visiting scholar — as political analyst Steven Friedman rightly corrected on my Facebook post — but a full professor who directed a research institute at the University of Cape Town. Mahmood’s own writing — from Citizen and Subject to Neither Settler Nor Native — shaped global debates on colonialism, identity, and resistance. His mother, Mira Nair, is an acclaimed filmmaker whose work explores the intersections of class, gender, memory, and post-colonial identity.
Together, this upbringing embedded in Mamdani an ethos of critical clarity and pluralist compassion — two virtues that would later characterise his campaign and its stunning success.
If there is one truth I carry from writing this piece, it is that our stories are never just local, never just our own. They travel, they weave through other struggles, they bloom in places we may never see. Zohran Mamdani’s path reminds me — and perhaps reminds us all — that faith, courage, and community can plant seeds far beyond our imagining. In my own Rabbānī scrolls and design work, I have tried to hold on to that same ethic: to remember, to witness, and to keep building. May we all keep planting, keep walking, and keep creating together.
Beyond the soundbites: A platform with substance
Media coverage has often portrayed Mamdani’s win as the result of digital mastery — an ‘influencer politician’ who went viral. But as tech journalist Taylor Lorenz argues in her sharp critique, this reading is both shallow and dismissive. ‘He didn’t win because of TikTok or podcasts,’ she writes. ‘He won because he was a generational political talent backed by years of disciplined organising.’
Zohran Mamdani’s platform includes a $30/hour minimum wage by 2030, fare-free public buses, rent freezes, city-owned grocery stores, and universal childcare — funded through wealth and corporate taxes. These are not trendy slogans; they are deeply-researched, locally-grounded policy ideas forged in dialogue with tenants, cab drivers, community imams, and working-class coalitions.
Indeed, the campaign’s integrity was evident in its structure: 27 000 volunteers, small-donor funding (average donation: $35), and widespread multilingual outreach that included Arabic, Bangla, Spanish, Urdu, and Fulani speakers. In an interview with The Fatu Network, Gambian-American organiser AjiFanta Marenah noted how Mamdani met with imams and elders from West Africa at Masjid Ar Rahmah — a mosque still grieving a devastating fire. Her words were telling: ‘This was not just outreach. He listened.’
A movement rooted in memory and meaning
Mamdani’s win has been framed as a generational and demographic shift — and rightly so. At 33, he is poised to become the youngest mayor in New York City history. But this is not just about age. It is about political imagination.
As writer Rachel Hurley observes: ‘He didn’t water down his vision. He spoke clearly — about Palestine, about police brutality, about inequality.’ While some accused him of being too radical, others — including thousands of voters under 35 and nearly 80% of Asian-American voters in ranked-choice simulations — saw in him the first candidate in years who actually named their pain and offered structural responses.
Importantly, he did not shy away from moral clarity. Whether affirming his support for BDS, resisting pressure to co-sign Holocaust memorial resolutions weaponised to silence Palestinian solidarity, or responding to racist attacks with unwavering calm, Mamdani refused to dilute his politics to appease critics.
In this, one senses echoes of his father’s legacy — a fierce critic of authoritarianism whether in Uganda or the United States — and his mother’s poetic instinct to preserve human dignity through narrative.
What this means for South Africa and the Global South
In a time when centrist parties are increasingly detached from grassroots movements, Mamdani’s campaign offers not just hope but a methodology for how to bridge that divide. The lessons are not only for American Democrats, as Rebecca Kirszner Katz argues in her New York Times piece — they are relevant for South Africa too.
We, too, are grappling with the limits of post-liberation politics, the alienation of youth, and the search for a new language of ethics in the public square. Mamdani’s win reminds us that political change doesn’t only come through electoral machines. It can be built — step by step — through community relationships, principled clarity, and a refusal to play by the rules of elite consensus.
His campaign did not begin with polling data or PR consultants. It began with people — Bronx tenants, Queens families, Harlem students, mosque elders. As Felix Biederman noted, ‘He never dumbed things down into meaninglessness.’
Of course, Mamdani isn’t mayor yet; he still faces the general election on November 4. But his endorsement by former New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, and their warm joint appearance on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, offered a powerful reminder of the long tradition of Muslim–Jewish solidarity. It echoed the interfaith alliances that shaped our own struggles against apartheid here in South Africa, affirming that courage and conscience can cross boundaries.
As Robert Reich noted, Mamdani is ‘the corporate Democrat’s biggest nightmare’ — precisely because he dares to centre affordability, class solidarity, and moral clarity. Yet he is equally a supremacist’s nightmare, as Alon Mizrahi argued, because he is ‘a Muslim Normal’: calm, compassionate, politically lucid, refusing every easy stereotype. That double challenge — to both neoliberal machines and racialised fear — is what makes his rise so potent.
Reclaiming the power to dream together
In the end, Zohran Mamdani’s rise is not just a story of one man’s success. It is the story of what becomes possible when movements — and memories — are nurtured with integrity. From Cape Town’s madrasa halls to New York’s subway stops, the values of mercy, justice, and collective dignity continue to ripple outward.
In a time of fragmentation, Mamdani’s clarity invites us to build differently. To listen deeper. To organise not just against oppression but toward belonging. And to believe, again, that cities — and hearts — can be won with vision.
References:
Hurley, Rachel. ‘Zohran Mamdani’s NYC Primary Win Is a Huge Lesson for Dems.’ RatCClips, June 25, 2025.
Lorenz, Taylor. ‘Zohran Did Not Win Because of TikTok and Podcasts.’ UserMag, June 25, 2025.
Katz, Rebecca Kirszner. ‘Democratic Leaders Tried to Crush Zohran Mamdani. They Should Have Been Taking Notes.’ New York Times, June 25, 2025.
‘Meet New York City’s Likely Next Mayor — with a South African Connection.’ Daily Maverick. June 25, 2025.
‘Introducing the Young Woman Behind Zohran Mamdani’s Shout-Out to His Gambian Uncles.’ The Fatu Network. June 26, 2025.
Reich, Robert. ‘The Corporate Democrat’s Biggest Nightmare.’ Substack, June 26, 2025.
Mizrahi, Alon. ‘They Don’t Hate Mamdani Because He’s a Muslim Radical. They Hate Him Because He’s a Muslim Normal.’ June 27, 2025.
‘Zohran Mamdani: The Bronx Student Who Made Africana Studies His Political Compass.’ Times of India. June 2025.
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, featuring Zohran Mamdani and Brad Lander, June 2025.
‘Seven Books by Ugandan Scholar Mahmood Mamdani, Father of NYC Mayoral Candidate Zohran Mamdani.’ Scroll.in. June 25, 2025.
