Ugandan politicians, dukawallas, and why the 2021 vote is special

The 2021 Uganda election is heating up. It’s an election that is set to reveal a lot, and to surprise. To the surprise first.

Kyadondo East MP and National Unity Platform (NUP) candidate Robert Kyagulanyi, better known by his stage name Bobi Wine, is being billed as the main challenger to President Yoweri Museveni, who is seeking a fourth decade in power. Some are even saying it will be a “two horse race” between the two.

Bobi Wine has faced so many disruptions to his rallies, and attempts to get to speak on FM stations, if the momentum to suppress him continues at this rate, it is not impossible to imagine that by January 2021, he will need police permission to leave his bedroom. It is surprising, because it seemed no other politician in the NRM era would ever face more obstacles in challenging Museveni at an election than Dr Kizza Besigye did, especially, in 2001 and 2006. Yet, here we are.

At first, it is not immediately clear why this would be so, because unlike Besigye who, as a former NRM man, in several respects always posed a threat to Museveni’s hold on his core base, Bobi Wine doesn’t. And his appeal among urban youth, is perhaps only marginally higher than Besigye’s at its height.

However, it is likely part of the seeds of the fear of Bobi Wine lies in that youth factor. Consider this. In the disputed 1980 election, the three main candidates were UPC’s Milton Obote, DP’s Paul Ssemogerere, and UPM’s Yoweri Museveni.

Obote was the oldest candidate, at 55 years of age then. Ssemogerere was 48, and Museveni was the youngest at 36 going by his official birthday, but unpatriotic troublemakers say his “real” birthday is earlier, would place him then at 38 to 40.

Museveni was the candidate of the youth in 1980, in much the way Bobi Wine is. At 38, he is about the same age Museveni was in 1980. If Bobi Wine gets on the ballot and becomes the main challenger to Museveni, we will have the largest age difference ever in a Uganda election between an incumbent, and a claimant to his throne.

Anyhow, Museveni’s jump into the bush after the UPC stole the 1980 vote, was possible because of many things, one of them being that he was the youth candidate, as many of them were willing to join him as foot soldiers in the rebellion. Bobi Wine’s torments are, therefore, likely due to the ghosts of 1980/1981.

And then there are the differences. We have never had an election in which as many family members are running, like this one. We have a record of ex-wives, husbands, children, in-laws, and all manner of relatives running to succeed a family member, to oust them, to represent the neighbouring constituency, or in standing one of the special seats.

This is a change from the dominant trend since independence in 1962. Most Ugandan politicians, until about 2011, mainly used the resources and opportunities their positions gave them to educate their children in the best schools at home and abroad, and get them on the fast track to juicy jobs abroad, or in big corporations at home. They were diversifying the family portfolio, and managing political risk.

Though politicians still take their children to the best schools, too many of them are channelling them into politics. What has changed? To begin with, the NRM has now been in power for almost 35 years, nearly twice as long as all previous regimes combined. There is complacency about political risk, and amnesia has developed about what political fallout looks like.

The aging parents, also, grew up in a more expansionary age than their children. There were new frontiers to conquer for them. They were told they were not just the future of Uganda, but of Africa, and would be the ones to take on the colonial and imperialist order and win a place for Africa at the table of world power.

For many of the parents, opportunities were plentiful. They got jobs quickly, some rose quickly to replace exiting expatriates, and many cashed in on the early boom years of the post-1988 economic liberalisation of the NRM.

Although today we are living in a more globalised age, and more modern economic times, the opportunities in the economy are fewer, in part, ironically, because the times are a little “better” – we are living longer, dying less, and have multiplied in number dramatically. Then, longevity in politics has allowed the wazee to accumulate, and they need relatives to secure their bounty.

Politics has, therefore, become today’s small family business, and the older political dukawallas, who are passing the shops to the family.

Mr Onyango-Obbo is a journalist,
writer and curator of the “Wall of Great Africans”. Twitter@cobbo3