Bobi Wine performs at his Kyarenga concert in Busaabala, Kampala, on November 10, 2018. PHOTO | ISAAC KASAMANI
When legendary South African popstar Yvonne Chaka Chaka called Bobi Wine “My Nelson Mandela in Uganda” in 2018, she sounded extravagant.
At the time, Mr Robert Kyagulanyi, better known by his stage name of Bobi Wine, was just a year into his tenure as a Member of Parliament.
But Chaka Chaka was clear about her vision: “It’s time for young people to take over; the old guard are messing up,” Chaka Chaka said at Kampala Serena Hotel as she held Bobi’s hand.
“You are my hero; and you have to be the hero of those young ones. Don’t fail them. All they want is hope, for tomorrow,” she told an attentive Bobi.
Bobi’s magic was his ability to spontaneously persuade the young and the poor—who are the majority—into politics with a sense of “Yes We Can,” mostly through his revolutionary music.
Power of revolutionary music
Being South African, Chaka Chaka knew the power of music that speaks truth to power. It’s what gave hope to Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress (ANC) and to anti-apartheid activists Steve Biko, Robert Sobukwe, Chief Aalbert Luthuli, Lillian Ngoyi, and Walter Sisulu, among others, during decades of repressive White rule, until it surrendered.
Bobi wine at a past concert.
It’s through defiant music that exiled South Africans Miriam Makeba, Jonas Gwangwa, Hugh Masekela, and Abdullah Ibrahim, amplified the voices of the oppressed to the wider international audiences that eventually pressured the Boers into submission.
It’s revolutionary music in Zulu and Xhosa that united the black South African majority to stick to demanding racial parity, even when riots were met with wanton fire.
It’s such protest music that emboldened Vuyisile Mini to sing one of his freedom songs, heading to the gallows, where he and two others were hanged in 1964.
It’s such music that propelled Bobi Wine from an upstart in 2017 to the most powerful political magnet in Uganda, almost overnight. Perhaps only Col Dr Kizza Besigye knows what such a meteoric arrival feels like.
Unwelcome cook at dinner table
When the Kyadondo East parliamentary seat fell vacant in early 2017, Bobi Wine pounced, announcing his candidature, before an almost effortless win. But he was no opportunist. Besides love, beef and hustle, he sang about leadership.
When the government evicted street hustlers off Kampala’s streets ahead of the 2007 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Kampala, Bobi and back up vocalist Nubian Li released Ghetto, accusing leaders of betrayal. He became the Ghetto President.
Ahead of the 2011 elections, President Museveni, who goes by the popular alias Sevo, flaunted his rapping skills with Mpenkoni. In the same year, Eddy Yaweh, singer, producer and Bobi’s elder brother, sought the Kampala Central parliamentary seat.
His motivation, he told Nanna Schneidermann during her research for the Nordic Journal of African Studies, was to change the demeaning narrative that musicians were “just entertainers in formal politics.” He likened his lot to housemaids who are expected to cook, but not expected around the dinner table.
But Yawe failed, and again in 2016. But a year later, his brother Bobi avenged his failure. Bobi’s surprise candidacy and brief campaign yielded a landslide victory against seasoned politicians.
Bobi had run as an independent, with his detractors in other political parties criticising his inexperience and ghetto past and underrated his unique potential.
But Bobi’s mantra of “bringing the ghetto to Parliament” became an instant hit. This was amplified by his protest and motivational songs that exposed the excesses of the establishment to awaken the youth and the poor.
Revellers who attended Bobi Wine’s Kyarenga Concert at One Love Beach in Busaabala, Kampala, on November 10, 2018. PHOTO | GABRIEL BUULE
Soon, the very politicians who had doubted Bobi, some experienced enough to be his mentors, came crawling for his blessing.
Bobi’s People Power movement morphed into the National Unity Platform party, upending traditional parties’ dominance in the 2021 polls to become the biggest Opposition group in Parliament.
The battle line was drawn. Quickly, Bobi evolved from a political novice to the biggest threat to President Museveni’s 39-year-old grip onto power.
Subsequently, Bobi became an enemy of the state – a marked man – with a huge target on his back.
From hero to villain
Before delving into direct politics and activism, Bobi had a successful music career as top Afrobeat singer of over 20 years, with no personal problems with the State, despite his love of singing against corruption and self-interest among leaders.
His song, Obululu, which called for peace during the 2011 elections to avoid the anarchy that followed the 2007 elections in Kenya, won the admiration of the Electoral Commission and sponsored Bobi for the “Battle of the Champions” concert against his long-time rival Jose Chameleone.
His Firebase Crew also performed at the pre-nomination youth rally, where Mr Museveni unveiled his rap song.
But in 2012, Bobi Wine released Tugambire ku Jennifer, urging the inaugural Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA) executive director Jennifer Musisi to relax her iron grip on the city, as she cleaned up Kampala for a new trade order.
Towards the 2016 elections, politically charged songs gained traction, with late Adam Mulwana’s crowd-energising hit song, Toka kwa barabara (Clear the way), becoming Dr Kizza Besigye’s campaign signature tune.
Meanwhile, top musicians, including Bobi’s current friend King Saha, teamed up with yet another catchy tune, Tubonga naawe, assuring President Museveni that “We are with you.”
In 2020, Bobi told Rolling Stone that he rejected Shs500m to join the project. However, some say Bobi shunned the project because of his old grudge with rival pop star Bebe Cool, the project coordinator. Instead, Bobi released Dembe (Peace), bemoaning greed for power and condemning electoral violence.
In the song, Bobi rhetorically challenges: “Why don’t you look up to Mandela? He served one term and quit.” Could Bobi have been taking a swipe at Museveni for “overstaying?”
But Bobi says this was a general message.
In March 2016, photos of Bobi Wine strumming the guitar, with his wife Barbie Itungo beside, and Dr Besigye beaming on the couch went viral on social media. The pop star was playing Situka (Rise up), an inspirational classic he released as Besigye—under house arrest—nursed a fourth consecutive defeat to Museveni since 2001.
Interestingly, it’s the song that Bobi’s supporters sang during protests when he was beaten and detained during the Arua by-election violence in October 2018.
Bobi intoned: “…when leaders become misleaders, and mentors become tormentors, when freedom of expression becomes the target of suppression, opposition becomes our position.”
But once Bobi joined opposition politics, he instantly lost the freedom to sing anything.
This reversed his fortunes as the government’s gateway to the ghetto, helping police to combat ghetto riots, drug abuse, and many such ills. Instantly, Bobi became “a villain, who spread lies and hate to incite violence.”
Most of his new songs were denied airplay, and by late 2018, Bobi claimed the police had cancelled or blocked over 125 of his planned concerts.
“The police never had a problem with me, even in the days I smoked weed; when I was an outlaw,” Bobi said on Capital FM’s Desert Island Discs last year.
“It’s me whom police called to calm the riots when a fellow artist – Master Bluster – was shot dead, and in many other cases. It’s ironic that now, when I am a mature person, I have problems with the police,” Bobi lamented.
Mother’s warning
Within just one year of Bobi’s political career, he had been beaten, teargassed, arrested, detained, charged with treason—all the forms of violence that Dr Besigye had suffered in 17 years were rechanneled to Bobi - his heir apparent.
“My mother always told us the cause of our family’s predicament had been politics,” Bobi told Rolling Stone, “and always warned me we were better off staying out of politics.”
For supporting Museveni’s guerilla war in the 1980s, Bobi’s father, who was a Democratic Party (DP) member, was jailed until 1988. Bobi’s brother served seven years on treason charges. Now was Bobi’s turn to pay entering the fray of politics - the so-called dirty game.
Unlike Besigye, Museveni’s most consistent rival, Bobi represented a generational threat. On his political debut in 2017, Bobi was 35, while Museveni was officially 74.
Bobi mostly targets the youth, who are the majority and poorest. He’s the living example: straight outta Kamwokya slums, to the world. He tells them: like me, you can be that flower that grows in concrete.
“I came into politics not to be president per se, but to inspire others to rise up,” Bobi told Newzroom Afrika in South Africa last year.
Bobi Wine branded t-shirts for sale at his Kyarenga Concert in November 2018. PHOTO | GABRIEL BUULE
In 2018, during Enkuuka, the Buganda Kingdom’s massive year-ending festival in Lubiri, Bobi sang Uganda Zuukuka (Uganda Wake Up)—their 2015 revolutionary classic that never hit like he had hoped.
Nonetheless, the song was stirring, and Bobi, on the day sang:
“We are the leaders of the future and the future is today.”
Pointing at the mammoth crowd, Bobi challenged:
“Gwe, you are the mayor of the future and the future is today.”
“Gwe, you are the MP of the future and the future is today.”
In Bikwase, Mr Kyagulanyi emphasised: “Bw’ozaalibwa mu ghetto n’okulira mu ghetto, n’osomera mu ghetto, n’ osigala mu ghetto, n’ olobera mu ghetto eyo eba compliance,” meaning “if you’re born and bred in the ghetto, and stick in the ghetto, that’s compliance.
“Naye Bw’ozaalibwa mu ghetto. n’okulira mu ghetto…osobola okuyimuka n’okiikira ghetto…eyo eba defiance,” meaning “if you’re born and bred in the ghetto, you can rise and represent the ghetto, and that’s defiance.” The crowd sang along.
In Freedom, he went typical freestyle and radical: “Ono omusajja tumutya buti naye nga twakungaanye walai tumutwala talinnya…” meaning “We just fear this man but I swear if we unite we can easily oust him.”
Such messages disturb the establishment. Mr Yusuf Serunkuma, a political theorist based at Makerere University, and also a newspaper political columnist for the weekly Observer newspaper, told Rolling Stone that Bobi’s real threat to President Museveni isn’t an electoral one.
“It’s a threat to mobilise bodies onto the streets of Kampala.” That may trigger a full-scale uprising by the young and impoverished – the kind that uprooted entrenched regimes in Tunisia, Egypt, Burkina Faso, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Zimbabwe, Algeria, and the Republic of Sudan.
“The November 2020 riots were a symptom of the time bomb Kyagulanyi sung about,” said another analyst, who spoke on condition of anonymity. More than 54 people died in the clashes as the military opened fire on protesters across major towns after Bobi was arrested at a campaign rally in Luuka, eastern Uganda.
“So allowing Kyagulanyi to promote his identity as a political musician or musical politician would be [somehow] suicidal to the government,” the analyst added.
Little wonder, Bobi’s music shows were blocked, including his Kyarenga concert that was bounced from venue to venue until he finally settled for it at his One Love Beach in Busaabala, a Kampala suburb.
His promoters were arrested and threatened. Some stuck with the ‘risky brand’ while others fled. Bobi petitioned Parliament, and also sued the police. Court would later rule in his favour. But the police stuck to their guns – and Bobi would never perform in Uganda, again.
What then seemed a temporary measure to tame Bobi’s speed has turned out to be cast in stone.
More than six years later, Bobi has only performed abroad.
Parallels with Makeba
After the Sharpeville massacre in 1960 in which South African police killed 69 people, including two of Miriam Makeba’s uncles, the singer became more radicalised against apartheid.
When she addressed the UN Special Committee on the Policies of Apartheid in 1963, South Africa’s government revoked Makeba’s citizenship and banned her music. But she didn’t stop condemning the massive imprisonment and arbitrary killings.
No wonder, in 2008 , UK’s The Guardian newspaper eulogised her as “the anti-apartheid movement’s most audible spokesperson.”
When Chaka Chaka met Bobi in Kampala in July 2018, Bobi was just a year into politics but he had seen all the dirt, notably the military assault on Parliament to force the removal of the upper cap on presidential age limit to allow Mr Museveni stand beyond 75 years.
In August 2018, Bobi’s driver Yasin Kawuma was shot dead by the military during the Arua by-election, which Bobi called an assassination attempt on his life.
Bobi and his followers were then detained and charged with treason on accusations of stoning the president’s vehicle in Arua.
The international arts community in an open letter signed by Nigerian Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka, and musicians Angelique Kidjo, Chris Martin, Peter Gabriel, and Damon Albarn, Juliana Kanyomozi, and Yawe, among others, demanded Bobi Wine’s unconditional release.
Songs with direct anti-apartheid messages were banned from the South African air waves. But the artists became smarter. Sello Chico, released ‘We miss you Manelow, where are you? This became a hit that covertly demanded the release of Mandela. Similarly overt was Chaka Chaka’s “I’m Winning My Dear Love.”
But most of the South Africans in exile and their allies had nothing to fear and took direct aim at the apartheid system and their perpetrators. Makeba and American Harry Bellafonte released Ndodemnyama (Beware, Verwoerd!) — warning then apartheid Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd, that Black Power was coming.
Other songs banned included Eddy Grant’s Gimme Hope Jo’anna; Stevie Wonder’s It’s Wrong, which compared apartheid to slavery and the Holocaust; Roger Lucey’s Just Another Ruler; Asylum Kids’ Schoolboy; Dubula ibhunu (Shoot the Boer); Ayesaba Amagwala (The Cowards are Scared), Senzeni Na, with stinging lyrics like: “Our sin is that we are black? Our sin is the truth, They are killing us, Boers are dogs.
Like Makeba after Sharpeville, Bobi after Arua, went bareknuckle against the State. His “I’m not a politician”, now made little sense as he plunged headlong into politics. After finishing second to Mr Museveni in the 2021 presidential polls, a result Bobi Wine challenged, he spitted venom in songs like Akatengo, a slang for fear, and Ogenda (you must go), where he accused Mr Museveni of betrayal, oppression, vote rigging, and all manner of electoral and governance ills.
Bobi Wine’s brother Fred Nyanzi Ssentamu attends his Kyarenga Concert at One Love Beach in Busaabala, Kampala, in November 2018. PHOTO | GABRIEL BUULE
Perhaps even the best democrat would have struggled to tolerate such vitriol. The songs trended on social media but no mainstream channel could risk grating them airplay.
Bobi also borrowed the South African art of modifying Christian hymns into freedom songs mostly sung in makwaya—choirs. That’s how Tuliyambala Engule, a rendition of the hymn “When the Battle is Over,” in which fellow artists Irene Ntale, Wilson Bugembe, Dr Hilderman, Irene Namatovu, among many, imagined a New Uganda, where schools and hospitals are functioning, and when dictatorship, discrimination, land grabbing, gun rule, and teargas would be no more.
Of course, many artistes would have loved more such collabos with the principal but fear held them back.
Like Makeba, Bobi addresses the international audiences, urging them to “stop funding the dictator.” Unlike Makeba, who spent 31 years in exile, Bobi has the freedom to leave and return home, mobilise his party, and address local media.
But both Makeba and Bobi share one more predicament - not being able to perform for home fans.
Part two tomorrow centres on how much Bobi and the industry miss each other.
