Nigeria, June 30 -- Zohran Kwame Mamdani's victory in the primary election to pick the Democratic Party's candidate for New York's mayor in elections to be held in November, has been extensively parsed for its significance. The unusual circumstances of politics in the US, today, make the level of interest in the outcome of the primary election inevitable. The new depths to which politics in the world's leading economy now reach, make the discerning and correct interpretation of trends there, at least for the Democratic Party, an existential obligation.

Yet, of the many possible narratives around the surprise candidate, one has, thus far, been left to dry. On 4 August, 1972, Idi Amin Dada, the buffoon who was then Uganda's head of state a...