One of Africa’s biggest music stars hopes his country’s young, impoverished masses can make him their next leader. But can he survive until Election Day?
Initially, Wine was aggrieved by this beatdown. But he was friends with generals, with businessmen, with politicians. He’d seen them inflict similar wrongs on others while he’d stood by and done nothing. The more he reflected on it, maybe he deserved it.
All this has only elevated Wine’s stature, not just in Uganda, but across Africa. Legendary South African pop star Yvonne Chaka Chaka called Wine “My Nelson Mandela in Uganda,” a comparison that, while slightly hyperbolic, is not totally off-base. People Power, which thus far is not aligned with a single party, has brought the young and the poor into the political arena.
Inside, the house is open, spacious, and relatively Spartan, save for a library just off the kitchen. There, family photos adorn one wall, not far from a small acoustic guitar and a hand drum. A nook contains reams of music and humanitarian awards. Bookshelves line another wall.
After the dentist, Wine and his entourage head there, to a place they call “the barracks,” their de facto headquarters. There’s not much to it — a small office, a bathroom, a boxing heavy bag, and a dozen or so people milling around a dusty yard, all surrounded by an eight-foot wall — but Kamwokya itself is an important part of Wine’s story.
As Wine’s songs gained traction locally, others noticed. “Most of the musicians turned around, and instead of going to Nairobi, they came here,” Yawe tells me. “Bobi and Bebe Cool formed a group.” They added others and christened themselves Fire Base Crew, which became, for a time, Ghetto Republic of Uganja.
Wine landed in Kamwokya by misfortune. He was born in 1982 during the Bush War. The conflict had begun one year earlier, when following a disputed election that put Milton Obote into power, a group of army officers, led by Museveni, initiated a guerrilla-style rebellion. Obote had already been Uganda’s president once before, during an increasingly unpopular stretch from 1966 to his overthrow by army general Idi Amin in 1971.
Nonetheless, it is, to some extent, the family business. During the 1996 election, Yawe released a song supporting Museveni’s opponent. He was arrested, he says, then beaten and tortured. “They tie a rope on your testicles, then [attach] a car battery and say, ‘Stand up.’ ” Yawe ran for an MP seat in 2011, which he says he lost due to “massive cheating,” and ran unsuccessfully in 2016 as well. He’s been arrested multiple times, but will run again in 2021.
We arrive at a brightly colored house surrounded by multiple white tents. There’s a long buffet table, and about a hundred smartly dressed people sitting in white plastic chairs, eating. When Wine strides in, the place erupts. He shakes hands with several people at the head table, then the sound system begins playing one of his songs and a rush of bodies press close to greet him.
Undergirding much of modern Ugandan history is a tug-of-war between groups vying for power and money. A significant strain of opposition against Museveni is based on the belief that his regime is, as Kalinaki puts it, “a small, ethnic cabal,” that has heaped favor on his own Banyankole people from western Uganda — and particularly his Bahima subtribe — at the expense of the rest of the country. Wine’s ethnic group, the Baganda, is the country’s largest, but has rarely been politically dominant.
The incident was international news. In an open letter, artists like Chris Martin, Peter Gabriel, and Damon Albarn condemned Wine’s treatment. The attention has been a double-edged sword. While the higher profile has provided some protection for Wine and publicity for People Power, it has also edged an earnest movement close to a cult of personality.
Bebe Cool, a staunch ally and friend of Museveni’s for decades, is among the cynics. He expects most musicians running for office will get trounced. “One, they lack budgets,” he says. “Two, they’re not as educated. Three, when you see crowds, it doesn’t mean they transform into votes.” Serunkuma describes Museveni’s regime as a constitutional autocracy. “The autocrats of today operate like ghosts,” he says. “They give you a facade that looks functional. Museveni doesn’t rig an election with obnoxious margins. He’s really smart.” In each of Museveni’s five elections, he’s collected between 59 percent and 75 percent of the vote. “He’s very keen not to be seen as Obote or Amin,” says Kalinaki. “It’s important to him that there’s some veneer of legitimacy.
There are no reliable polls measuring support for Wine, Museveni, or any other presidential candidates. Some point to the size of the crowds Wine attracts as evidence of broad backing. Others question whether he has the logistical know-how to get out his supporters, many of whom are young and may not have voted in the past. Wine told me he believes he’d beat Museveni with 80 to 90 percent of the vote in a fair election, though that seems hyperbolic.
One sunny afternoon, I trail Buchaman in a two-car convoy to Kasokoso, a Kampala slum that sits alongside a landfill. Buchaman is short, and walks with a crutch to compensate for a left leg that, he tells me, was hit by a bullet when he was a child during the Bush War, but which Ugandan media have reported was crippled by a childhood bout with polio. His musical association with Wine makes him a celebrity in places like this, and when he gets out of the car, he’s swarmed.
Indeed, in the past decade, street protests have ousted a series of entrenched African dictators, first in Tunisia and Egypt, then in Burkina Faso, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Zimbabwe, Algeria, and Sudan. This is essentially what Wine’s campaign is about: creating momentum and setting the conditions to spark a revolution. But it’s a serious gamble. “We’re in the middle of a fight,” Wine says. “Museveni believes in violent fight. We believe in logic, and psychological and democratic fight.
Wine himself has plenty to lose. Music has made him wealthy, though his inability to play shows here for the past two years has taken a bite from that wealth. “I can no longer enjoy the things I used to enjoy,” he says. “Ordinarily, every weekend, I’d have concerts and be making a lot of money. I’d be driving the latest cars. I’d have spending cash of maybe 100 million [Ugandan shillings],” or about $27,000.
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