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Bobi Wine addresses fans outside of his recording studio in October 2019 in Kampala, Uganda. (Photo: Luke Dray / Getty Images)
The Ugandan president is growing desperate as a young singer threatens his long hold on power.
First published by ISS today
When he took office in 1986, President Yoweri Museveni said that Africa’s problem was with leaders holding on to power. It turns out that they are prophetic and ironic words. The man who helped save Uganda from the horrors and shame of Apollo Milton Obote and Idi Amin, and then set his country on the path to normalcy, now sadly resembles the evil he replaced.
Clinging to power by hook or by crook, Museveni increasingly turns to brute force. Once acclaimed in the West, it is starting to destabilize the country and tarnish its regional and international reputation.
Museveni, 76, has twice amended the constitution to stay in power. In 2005 it removed the presidential two-term limit and in 2018 it removed the 75-year-old age limit for presidential candidates. That has allowed him to run for a sixth term in the January 14, 2021 elections, which would likely extend his grip on power until 2026.
The campaign for the presidential and parliamentary elections has become increasingly violent. Museveni and his National Resistance Movement (NRM) grapple with what is shaping up to be the greatest threat to their power yet. That is, an ongoing youth protest driven by social media led by 38-year-old member of parliament and singer Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu (Bobi Wine) and his People’s Power Movement, with its partisan political wing, the National Unity Platform. .
For the past two years, Wine has been the subject of relentless harassment and persecution by the government. He has been arrested multiple times and has reported assault and torture, which he was reportedly nearly killed in 2018.
More than 50 people have died during the election campaign, most of them hit by live bullets fired by security forces who no longer bother to pretend they are not shooting to kill. Security Minister General Elly Tumwine has been widely reported to warn that “the police have the right to shoot and kill citizens if they go beyond a certain level of decency.” Indecency, apparently, has become a capital crime.
Analysts believe that Museveni has now turned to naked violence because he has run out of more subtle options to stop Wine, who is drawing large crowds to his rallies.
The European Union refused to send observers to the polls for fear that this would legitimize them. It complained that the Museveni government had failed to implement any of the 30 recommendations it offered to correct the flaws it identified in the 2016 elections. These included legal reforms, equitable access to the media, public participation in the selection of the commissioners of the Electoral Commission and make the commission independent of executive control.
So the political playing field for January 14 is tilted against Wine and other opposition candidates. Perhaps he could lose even a fair fight, as he and Kizza Besigye, a veteran of four failed attempts to topple Museveni through the polls, have failed to form a unified opposition coalition. Kizza Besigye seems overly jealous of his hard-earned reputation as the main opposition challenger to back Wine, even though the latter has a better chance this time.
But Museveni is clearly not taking chances. He is well aware that the younger generation is not as respectful as their parents to the NRM’s claims of legitimacy due to their armed struggle, says the African Center for Strategic Studies. The Pentagon think tank says this is clear from the lengths Museveni has taken to crack down on Wine and his party.
For several countries in southern Africa, Uganda today presents an all too familiar image. Many in that region are also burdened by the dead weight of former titled liberation movements that justify their grip on power for little more than their tattered liberation credentials.
Zimbabweans would surely hear an ominous echo in the warning from the commander of the Armored War College, Brigadier General Deus Mande, last year that the Uganda People’s Defense Force would never allow Wine to be its commander-in-chief. Other senior officials and officials have said the same.
Another echo from Zimbabwe, and some other African countries, is that the judiciary is also almost entirely partisan. No judge has dared to overturn any of Museveni’s dubious measures to subvert the constitution and cling to power.
However, a former senior Ugandan official defends Museveni. He says that Wine’s generation does not appreciate what he has done for the country, as they did not experience turbulent Uganda before Museveni. “In large part due to the success of universal education under Museveni, millions of young people have been educated with high expectations, but unemployment remains high, exacerbated by Covid. Bobi Wine hopes to take advantage of these problems by promising to create jobs for young people. “
He justifies the security crackdown on Wine protests by saying they are violating Covid-19 regulations, which allow maximum gatherings of just 200 people. Perhaps this is also the forgiving regional view, as there does not appear to be an external bailout at hand. Like the late Robert Mugabe, Museveni is apparently now a respected and seemingly untouchable elderly statesman.
When this writer interviewed him in 1997, he dismissed the Organization of African Unity (OAU) as a “criminal syndicate.” It referred not only to the domestic crimes of many of its members, but also to the way in which the organization closed ranks against anyone who threatened to control the power of any member of the exclusive club.
Museveni bitterly recalled how the OAU had refused to help him when he was in exile fighting Amin and Obote. And how the OAU member states mostly refused to grant him refuge. And now, in another ironic echo of those early days, the African Union (AU), successor to the OAU, has been silent on Uganda’s slide into unapologetic state violence and growing instability. DM
Peter Walker, ISS consultant.
