Transcript: Mayor Mamdani Hosts African Heritage Reception
Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani:Good afternoon, everyone. It is an honor to welcome you to the People’s House here at Gracie Mansion as we celebrate our African community in New York City. And I want to just start by acknowledging some leaders, both inside and outside of our city government. We have Salim Drammeh, who we’ve already heard from today. We have Amy Andrieux, the executive director of MoCADA. We have Adama Bah, the chief executive and founder of Afrikana. We just heard from Delia Awusi, the first-ever mom-and-pop czar. We also have our City Council member, Yusef Salaam, who is here in the building. And we have our deputy mayor for Health and Human Services, Dr. Helen Arteaga. We also have the first-ever African head of the Department of Investigation, Commissioner Nadia Shihata.
We also want to acknowledge Ambassador Mohamed Idris, the permanent observer of the African Union to the United Nations, as well as Consul General Tamer El Miligy. And I would be remiss if I did not also acknowledge the proudest African I have ever known: my father, who is here; my mother; my tío and my tía. Whether Uganda or Mozambique or wherever you may be from, we are so happy and proud to have you here today at Gracie Mansion.
You know, on the mantle, right across from my desk at City Hall, sits a soccer ball. It is worn from handling, and across its surface is the face of Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first prime minister, ringed with his most memorable quotes. I was given this ball by a Ghanaian uncle in Harlem a few months ago at an event. It’s a kindness that I have not forgotten. And I do not know if he fully understood what that gift would mean to me, because it has not left my office or my sight since.
Yet, I did not need that ball to know who Nkrumah was. As you’ve heard, thanks to my father, I carry his name myself. My father named me Kwame after one of the continent’s clearest voices for Pan-Africanism, whether it was across the continent or across the diaspora. And that name has followed me across many places that I have called my home. Africa was the first. I was born in Nsambya Hospital in Kampala, Uganda. And that is where I made my first friends, where I walked my first steps, where I developed my first sense of how the world sounded and tasted. Matokes steaming in a pot, Luganda spoken faster than I could ever follow, boda bodas weaving in and out of traffic across the city center.
And at five, my father got a job at the University of Cape Town. And so, we moved to Umzanzi and I was introduced to new languages, to new neighbors, to my first political icon, Madiba. And at seven, we moved again, this time to New York City, the greatest city in the world. And even at that age, I understood that Africa had arrived here long before I had.
You know, on Glenmore Avenue, where Nigerian bakeries sell meat pies and Agege bread. On 116th Street, where jerseys for the Lions of Teranga hang in shop windows next to fabric and incense. On Steinway, where the seafood at Abuqir recalls that of Alexandria. On Burnside Avenue, where Ghanaian families fill church pews on Sunday mornings and jollof pots on Sunday afternoons. I want to be very clear: I’m not going to be getting into whose jollof is best today. I’m leaving that over there.
Now, that is the New York that I know. That is the New York that I love. When strangers come up to me and start speaking Luganda, it strikes me as a small miracle, proof of the decision that so many African New Yorkers have made, both alone and together, to never leave Africa behind.
Kwame Nkrumah understood the truth that lives at the heart of that decision: that the ties that bind us run deeper than the lines that have been drawn to keep us apart. He led Ghana to become the first sub-Saharan African nation to win its independence, and, in doing so, started a movement that spread across an entire continent. Within a decade, Nigeria, Senegal, Cameroon, Kenya and more than two dozen other nations had followed Ghana’s lead.
And that struggle for freedom, it endures today in the nations our families come from, and in the African New Yorkers seeking to live lives of dignity in the city they call home. And Nkrumah once said, “Freedom is not something that one people can bestow upon another as a gift. They claim it as their own, and none can keep it from them.”
Most days, I do not have time to reflect on that ball that sits on my desk. But sometimes, when I have a rare, free moment, I take it down, and I pass it around. And each time I do, each time that ball moves, it serves as a reminder that the work that Nkrumah started is not history. It is still ours to finish. And as we gather tonight, let us rededicate ourselves to claiming that freedom that he spoke of.
Thank you so much, and welcome home.
