Uganda 2021 Elections: Who is Bobi Wine?

There has never been a peaceful transfer of power in Uganda, but political pop star Bobi Wine hopes to change that by ousting President Yoweri Museveni, who has been in office for a long time, on Thursday’s vote. BBC Africa correspondent Catherine Byaruhanga takes a look at the challenger.

A few weeks before the general election and what could be the biggest day of Bobi Wine’s life, he brought his presidential campaign to his family’s ancestral home.

The 38-year-old pop star, whose real name is Robert Kyagulanyi, made his reputation in the informal settlements of the capital, Kampala, but here in Kanoni, a quiet rural town in central Uganda, his support is equally evident.

Hundreds of young people, mostly men dressed in red, appear to emerge from the bushes and gardens and surround their procession. Bobi Wine, also known as the “ghetto president”, climbed the sunroof of his white Toyota Landcruiser and waved to the crowd – they respond frantically.

In an unlikely change of dress for a presidential candidate, he started wearing a bulletproof vest and protective helmet.

In December, a bullet was dropped into the windshield of his vehicle, narrowly missing a passenger. Bobi Wine said he thought his life was in danger.

At Kanoni, as had happened numerous times during the campaign, he ran into a police and military blockade – tear gas and bullets were fired. Authorities said they were simply trying to disperse the crowds and enforce Covid-19 guidelines.

But Bobi Wine believed that this was another sign of intimidation. He has been consistent in saying that he will not succeed, as he feels that he is at the head of a mass movement.

“People are not just following me. People are following an ideal that I represent,” he told the BBC in 2019.

“I didn’t start and I won’t end it. I’m just one of millions and millions of Ugandans who want the best.”

His National Unity Platform (NUP) party’s manifesto addresses basic needs, such as improving access to health, education, drinking water and justice. All of this, says the NUP, can only be done by removing President Museveni from power.

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Over the past two decades, Bobi Wine’s music production has been filled with songs on these issues and they have inspired fervent followers.

‘He understands us’

Law student Marion Kirabo, 23, is competing to be a local councilor and is one of her supporters.

“Even before his political life, he was someone with whom the young man identified,” she says.

“Mainly through his music, I could clearly see that he understood the social issues that young people faced, especially young people in the ghetto.”

When President Museveni came to power in 1986, Bobi Wine was about to turn four and lived in Kanoni.

Central Uganda was the battlefield of the war in the bush that brought Museveni’s rebel National Resistance Army to power and its political wing, the National Resistance Movement (NRM).

Bobi Wine’s grandfather, Yozefu Walakira, was part of a different rebel contingent, but from time to time during the conflict he would welcome Museveni into his home.

Walakira died during the civil war after being injured when his home was bombed – an attack that also killed three family members.

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Bobi Wine’s family later moved to Kampala. His mother Margaret Nalunkuuma, a nurse, was the main provider of income and bought land in the Kamwokya slum where the musician lived and built his now world-famous recording studio.

Some of its primary and secondary schools were often within walking distance of Kamwokya.

As a teenager, he discovered a passion for the arts, but when he attended the prestigious Makerere University, he began to study social sciences. After a semester, he changed course and did music, dance and theater, obtaining a university degree in 2003.

‘Campaigning all my career’

In 2017, the reggae star turned his hand to politics as he saw it as the next logical step.

“You know, throughout my music career, I have been singing about the challenges that … people are going through,” he told the BBC.

“So, it’s like I campaigned, my entire music career.”

His song Tuliyambala Engule (We Shall Wear the Victor’s Crown) became one of the campaign’s unofficial hymns.

He won a partial election to become a deputy for Kyaddondo-East, an electoral district north of the capital and, even though he was independent, he aligned himself with the opposition. In a series of partial elections, he campaigned for candidates who defeated NRM candidates.

There was a tone of regret in Bobi Wine’s voice when he reflected on his rival’s career in an interview with the BBC in 2019.

“Why did such an award-winning revolutionary decide to become one of the most despised dictators in the world?” he asked.

“But it is also a lesson for many of us, to know that we are saying what President Museveni said when he was in our times. And also to remember that only the idea of ​​building strong institutions can save us from ourselves.”

Comparisons between a young Mr. Museveni – charismatic, energetic and inspiring – with today’s Bobi Wine are difficult to escape.

The rebel commander was only 41 when he came to power, promising Ugandans security, a stronger economy and a better future.

Some wonder if their new challenger, full of idealism and populist rhetoric, would not make the same mistakes.

Activist Siperia Mollie Saasirabo, 24, who says she is now in “political exile” in Kenya, is disillusioned with Bobi Wine.

In 2019, she became the face of student protests against an increase in Makerere University fees. For that, she was kidnapped by people she believed to be plainclothes soldiers, beaten and barely unconscious.

‘He lacks an ideology’

At the end of that year, she briefly joined Bobi Wine’s party, but left because of what she saw as a lack of ideological basis.

“He was asked about his economic system when he was president,” she said, referring to an interview in July 2020 that Bobi Wine gave to a local radio station.

“He was asked whether he was on the left or the right of the ideological scene, and his response was that he was neither on the right nor on the left and he will just use what works. It just doesn’t make sense to me.”

Apart from the large crowds that come together to support him, like Kanoni, it is difficult to say how popular he is and whether the applause will turn into votes. Data on registered voters and their voting patterns is very limited.

Francis Kibirige, national coordinator of the Afrobarometer survey in Uganda, has been conducting opinion polls and studies in Uganda since 2000.

He says the question remains whether Bobi Wine has done enough to transcend opposition policy and dilute the huge vote that President Museveni and NRM won in previous elections.

He argues that NRM supporters see the party and the president as “the guarantor of peace” and Bobi Wine’s NUP has not done enough to persuade them otherwise.

As with most of Museveni’s previous five elections, this was marked by allegations of violence against the opposition, the press and civil society activists. In November, at least 54 people were killed after police and soldiers intervened to halt protests against Bobi Wine’s arrest.

In this context, there are those who already question the validity of the vote.

Bobi Wine, however, encouraged people to vote and says voters should make sure that there is no fraud in polling stations.

He has no illusion that taking down Museveni will be easy. “Although we know we are facing brute force, we are confident,” he told the BBC in an interview in 2020.

“We are confident because the people of Uganda are on our side. And we are confident because the story is on our side.”