‘The Bobi Wine Effect’: Talking about #PeoplePower in Oslo

What you need to know:

  • A messiah to many. Truth is, I didn’t notice. The biggest revelation to me is that I hadn’t realised that Bobi Wine is actually a kind of messiah to many. There’s something deep there. But also, that though we now hold our political opinions more strongly and expres them more angrily, but at base, we are probably less polarised than I feared. It’s still not so bad that selfies aren’t possible.

Last week I spoke at an eye-opening event organised by the Norwegian Council on Africa in Oslo. Subject? “The Bobi Wine effect: what’s going on in Uganda. A conversation on recent developments in Uganda with Charles Onyango-Obbo”.
I was tipped that Bobi Wine’s (MP Robert Kyagulanyi) supporters were eager, and would show up in large numbers to bat for their man. The hall was full, and chairs were added in the corridor.

I tell you these #PeoplePower fellows are very passionate, and were in no mood for nuance. Could Bobi Wine become Uganda’s president, I was asked directly. Yes, I replied, but he needs to build a broader political alliance beyond his urban youth base.
To the question whether Bobi Wine was “an option or alternative to Museveni”, and whether he was “what Uganda needed”, I offered that what I was certain of was that he captured the imagination of Uganda, indeed Africa and even the world.

What I wasn’t sure of was whether he was the relevant leader for Uganda. That was because, I argued, the existential issues facing Uganda were humongous, and go beyond youth. There have projections that Uganda could face a small to medium environmental collapse by 2025, with a country where a majority of people would still be dependent on firewood for energy running out of fuel wood. That’s seven years away. What happens?

The bigger crisis with the youth themselves, is not just the appalling levels of unemployment they face, but the fact that though Uganda was a leader in introducing universal primary education (UPE) in Africa, the quality of education it offered the millions of children, who came into the public school system, was largely crap.
Most job creation fixes that all sorts of people are offering might not just work because many of them would lack the skills for the opportunities. It’s a double whammy.

But there are deeper fault lines, with chunks of the north, West Nile, the east, and the outer rim of western Uganda still politically alienated and burdened by extreme poverty. This has been compounded by President Museveni’s presidency for life that has taken away prospect of change in the near future, and the added injury of increasing brutal repression. I haven’t heard any leader articulate a credible “One Uganda” programme, I said.
So what would happen if, suddenly, Museveni was run over by a bus, someone asked? Tragically, I said, most Ugandans probably no longer trust that anyone who is not “one of their own and can guarantee their narrow interests” can lead the nation with an even hand.

The next leader who would hold the country together would have to be a mega democrat, and political wiz kid – or the most extreme dictator Uganda has seen. Because the former was more likely than the latter, I said dictatorship seems the most likely outcome.
“Or perhaps a federal system?” someone asked. “Maybe not federalism, but a highly devolved system a notch higher than Kenya’s”, I said.

I kept making the point that only a fool underestimates Museveni, his resolve to remain in power, how far he would go to keep it, and how politically astute he is – you don’t get to be in Uganda for 32 years if you are a clown.
But also, that in his long 32 years in power, Uganda has seen the largest class of people amass fortunes, and accumulate a fairly decent amount of old fashioned middle class riches, and, therefore, those seeking to oust him have to speak better to this vast constituency about “transition arrangements” and the future.

There were, of course, other questions about media freedom, regional issues, diplomacy, but these were the ones that roused people the most. Many were frustrated by “lack of clarity”. They wanted a clear cut “Museveni out, Bobi Wine”.
They disliked the complexity, because the issue in Uganda was only one – get rid of Bosco. Invoking the “old days of Capital Gang” and “battles at The Monitor”, I was accused of going soft. The event run well over the allotted time, and it would have ended very late, but the hammer was brought down. Then it was time for laughs, hugs, and selfies.

Nearly all the non-Ugandans were puzzled. As far as they were concerned, some #PeoplePower had come at me with machetes. An Angolan journalist later asked; “Tell me, how did you remain so calm? I want to learn the secret”.
Truth is, I didn’t notice. The biggest revelation to me is that I hadn’t realised that Bobi Wine is actually a kind of messiah to many. There’s something deep there. But also, that though we now hold our political opinions more strongly and express them more angrily, but at base, we are probably less polarised than I feared. It’s still not so bad that selfies aren’t possible.

Mr Onyango-Obbo is the publisher of Africa data visualiser Africapedia.com and explainer site. Roguechiefs.com. Twitter@cobbo3