New York City mayoral front-runner Zohran Mamdani’s father has been accused of trying to silence an LGBTQ professor in Uganda by padlocking her office, withholding her pay and pushing her out of his department at Makerere University, The Post has learned.
Mahmood Mamdani, 79, blocked Stella Nyanzi, 51, from teaching a course in “Queer African Studies” at the Makerere Institute of Social Research in April 2016, Nyanzi claimed to The Post Thursday.
The elder Mamdani, a professor in the department of anthropology at Columbia University in New York, was also director of the institute in Kampala between 2010 and 2022.
Stella Nyanzi, a poet, scholar and LGBTQ activist, chained herself to the university doors to protest her ouster from the school in 2016. NTVUganda/YouTube
Democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani celebrates his primary victory in the New York City mayor’s race with his family, including his professor father, Mahmood (right). Getty ImagesNyanzi at one point stripped naked, taped her mouth and chained herself to the university’s doors in order to protest the measures taken against her.
“Regarding Prof. Mahmood Mamdani, I did not make it easy for him to taunt, torture and terrorize me,” Nyanzi said, adding she also successfully sued the school.
Nyanzi, who is also a mother of three, was a well-known advocate for gay rights in Uganda when she started teaching at Makerere, the country’s most prestigious university.
“I was shocked when he [Mahmood Mamdani] misrepresented this course in public media interviews by claiming that I had planned to teach homosexuality to students,” said Nyanzi, who is currently a professor at Ruhr University Bochum in Germany.
She claimed to The Post that she was subjected to detention without trial, trumped-up charges, being put on a no-fly list, having her bank account frozen and an involuntary mental exam due to her protest against the university and the government.
Nyanzi has also been convicted and jailed twice for speaking out against Uganda’s longtime president, Yoweri Museveni.
LGBTQ activist and professor Stella Nyanzi was locked out of her university office and had her pay suspended after a clash with Mahmood Mamdani. AFP via Getty ImagesShe further accused the elder Mamdani of being a puppet of Ugandan leadership, through Museveni’s wife, Janet Museveni, who was appointed minister of education and sports in 2016.
“The failure of Makerere University to protect me from further violation of my contract as a public servant … and the failure to restrain and contain Prof. Mahmood Mamdani were instrumentalizations of dictator Yoweri Museveni’s wife — Janet Museveni,” she alleged to The Post.
For his part, Mahmood Mamdani has said Nyanzi was disciplined because she refused to teach when she was admitted into the Makerere Institute of Social Research’s newly created PhD program.
LGBTQ activist Stella Nyanzi (left) was tried in 2017 and 2019 for cyber harassment and offensive communications against Uganda’s president. AFP via Getty ImagesIn an interview with Newsweek, he said she had “adversely affected [the institute’s] position in the academic world” and would put prospective students off attending it after her wild protest.
“The best students will look for alternative. Donors will look for other places to put their money,” said Mamdani.
“Rather than teach in the PhD program, Dr. Nyanzi should be transferred to any other unit in the university that will accept her.”
Zohran Mamdani posed with Uganda’s deputy prime minister Rebecca Kadaga, a proponent of criminalizing homosexuality. X/@RebeccaKadagaUG
Zohran Mamdani’s father, Mahmood, was director of the Makerere Institute of Social Research between 2010 and 2022. AFP via Getty ImagesThe elder Mamdani did not respond to The Post’s request for comment Wednesday.
Nyanzi won a $32,200 judgment against Makerere University in 2020, and it offered to reinstate her position. Nyanzi told The Post she never received the withheld salary.
“Stella’s win is not hers only, but for all academic staff in Uganda,” Danson Sylvester Kahyana, a senior lecturer in the literature department at the school, told University World News.
Uganda’s long-ruling leader Yoweri Museveni and his wife, Janet Museveni, the country’s minister of education. Dai Kurokawa/EPA/Shutterstock“Her case will be referred to again and again in Ugandan legal circles. It should certainly make university administrators more careful with their decisions.”
Zohran Mamdani recently came under fire for posing for a photograph with Uganda’s deputy prime minister Rebecca Kadaga, who is a proponent of harsh anti-LGBTQ policies, including life imprisonment for gay people.
The photo was taken on a family trip to Uganda to celebrate Mamdani’s wedding to Rama Duwaji in July shortly after the progressive’s stunning Democratic primary win.
The Democratic socialist front-runner claimed he didn’t know the anti-gay government official and had run into her at the airport.
Separately, Nyanzi was the subject of a closely watched 2019 trial over apparent cyber harassment, which was monitored by the American Bar Association’s Center for Human Rights and the Clooney Foundation for Justice.
Nyanzi eventually won a $32,000 settlement from Makerere University. James Wakibia/SOPA Images/Shutterstock
Mahmood Mamdani locked out a prominent gay rights advocate in Uganda when he headed up an elite social research institute at Makerere University in Kampala. Robert Miller for NY PostNyanzi, who claimed that she suffered a miscarriage after she was tortured in prison, was also charged with “offensive communication” under the country’s Computer Misuse Act after she referred to the president as “a pair of buttocks” in a post online.
In 2022, she was accepted for a writer-in-exile program run by PEN Germany and says she will not return to Uganda until Museveni, who has been in power since 1986, is out of power.
“For me, as a queer African scholar, the criminalization … of homosexual people (with a maximum penalty of up to 20 years in prison) makes it almost impossible for me to return to Uganda,” she said.






