No matter how Ugandans vote in the presidential elections on January 14, the incumbent, Yoweri Mueveni, is likely to be declared the winner. Museveni has been in power for five consecutive years. He has been able to manipulate election results in his favor because he controls Uganda’s military, judiciary, and Electoral Commission.
Throughout this electoral campaign, however, the long-standing Ugandan president has been upstaged by a formidable young challenger: popular musician-turned-parliamentarian Robert Kyagulanyi, aka Bobi Wine. The 38-year-old leader of the National Unity Platform, who was elected to Parliament in 2017, has been the face of Ugandan opposition since his election.
Bobi Wine’s political background and four important facts about Uganda are worth learning.
Building a Movement, Defying Expectations
Bobi Wine’s abilities have been repeatedly underestimated by both government supporters and his critics ever since he ran for the parliament. Bobi Wine was forced to run independently after he was turned away by the Democratic Party and Forum for Democratic Change, two of the major opposition parties.
He won the by-election for the Kyandondo East Constituency in Kampala with 78%. He has since proven himself to be an experienced politician who has built a strong and successful political movement from scratch.
In his first two-year tenure, he established himself as a principled opponent of Museveni’s policies. He was a leader in the fight against the president to remove the age limit for the presidency. In July 2018, he led protests against the government’s proposed social media tax.
In the same year, he supported opposition candidates who went on to win four successive parliamentary by-elections.
In 2018, he created a political group called People Power Our Power. When the government refused to register his party as a political party, Bobi Wine outsmarted the Electoral Commission. He aligned himself with a pre-existing, smaller one, which he renamed the National Unity Platform. Nearly immediately, more than 20 MPs from other opposition parties joined.
A target of unprecedented state repression
Bobi Wine has been a regular target of state repression.
The Museveni regime responded to his early successes by repeatedly blocking him from holding concerts and banning the public from wearing People Power’s trademark red berets.
Since being elected, Bobi Wine has been arrested countless times. He has never been convicted on any of the charges. Some of his movement’s members and supporters have been killed, sometimes in suspicious circumstances.
Many have been arrested. Perhaps most notoriously, in August 2018, as he campaigned for a fellow independent candidate in a by-election in Arua in northwestern Uganda, Bobi Wine and at least 35 of his political associates were arrested following dubious reports that Museveni’s motorcade had been stoned. That same night, the opposition leader’s driver, Yasin Kawuma, was murdered with a bullet that Bobi Wine believes was intended for him.
In the aftermath of these arrests, the Kyadondo East MP was charged with treason and possession of illegal firearms. Over his next ten days in custody, he was beaten so brutally by government security forces that he could not stand, sit, or walk. He eventually sought treatment for his injuries in the US.
International outrage at this incident has not stopped the Museveni regime from escalating its tactics of repression during this election cycle.
The arrests have continued unabated throughout the current campaign. In addition, campaign rallies have been restricted, and the government has met opposition supporters with deadly force on multiple occasions. Most tragically, following Bobi Wine’s arrest in mid-November, nationwide protests erupted, during which state security forces killed at least 54 people.
In response to these abuses, in early January, Bobi Wine and two other co-claimants filed a 47-page complaint to the International Criminal Court against Museveni and nine of his regime’s security officials, accusing them of gross human rights violations dating back to 2018.
Generational dimension
Uganda’s changing demographics have a great deal to do with Bobi Wine’s electoral appeal. The East African country of 46.5 million people has one of the world’s youngest populations, with a median age of 16.7. Just over one in five Ugandans are between the ages of 15 and 24, and 77% of the country’s population is under the age of 30.
Although these young people have benefited from reforms to public education introduced by the Museveni regime, they see little hope for the future. By some estimates, youth unemployment in Uganda is as high as 70%. Frustrated young people can, therefore, easily identify with Bobi Wine, who grew up in the Kampala ghetto of Kamwokya. Like him, they have only known life under Museveni. He was not even four when Museveni first came to power in 1986.
Bobi Wine has skillfully appealed to this demographic. He frames his political movement in generational terms: the “Facebook generation,” which he represents against the “entrenched interests of the ‘Facelift generation'” of the Museveni regime. He has been able to speak to – and articulate – the deep sense of anger and grievance that young Ugandans feel towards the Museveni regime. In so doing, Uganda’s “Ghetto President” has come to be the face and voice of young people’s collective desire for generational political change.
