ISAAC KASAMANI/AFP/GETTY IMAGESThe Mix
26 | Rolling Stone | April 2020
RS REPORTS
W
HEN BOBI WINE was
26, he bought a brand-
new Cadillac Escalade
with spinning 24-inch
rims. He was already a major star in
Uganda, and the car, he says, was the
first Escalade sold in all of East Africa.
Wine’s music is a sunny blend of Jamai-
can dancehall and a local Afrobeat style
called kidandali, but his persona back
then was pure hip-hop. Local media
reveled in tales of his trysts with vari-
ous women and beefs with fellow stars.
One night, as Wine tells the story, he
took his Escalade to a club in Kampa-
la, the country’s capital, and was con-
fronted by a man who bristled at the
singer flaunting his wealth in a country
consistently ranked as one of the poor-
est on Earth. The man approached the
car, and slapped Wine across the face.
Wine, a talented boxer, eagerly jumped
from his SUV. Then the man drew a
gun, put it to Wine’s head, and pum-
meled him mercilessly.
The man, Wine says, was a soldier
who worked with Uganda’s head of
military intelligence. In other words,
well-connected and accountable to
almost no one. At the time, Wine’s
music leaned on party songs, love bal-
lads, and braggadocio. He occasional-
ly wrote about Uganda’s entrenched
problems — poverty, sanitation, the
AIDS epidemic — but generally turned a
blind eye to the system enabling them.
After all, he was thriving in it.
Initially, Wine was aggrieved by this
beatdown. But he was friends with
generals, with businessmen, with pol-
iticians. He’d seen them inflict similarwrongs on others while he’d stood by
and done nothing. The more he reflect-
ed on it, maybe he deserved it.
The incident redirected Wine onto
the path where he stands now, at 38,
a politician challenging the kind of in-
justice and impunity that slapped him
in the face 12 years earlier. Wine, who
was born Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu,
won a seat in Uganda’s Parliament in- Last year, he announced he’d run
against the country’s 75-year-old auto-
crat Yoweri Museveni in early 2021 to
become Uganda’s next president.
Museveni has been the country’s
leader since 1986. His tenure has been
marked by widespread government
corruption and ruthless suppression
of his political opposition. In the coun-
try’s last presidential contest, in 2016,
his main challenger was arrested on
election day.
Since Wine — who has been known
as “the Ghetto President” for more
than a decade — emerged as a challeng-
er to Museveni, he has been prohibited
from performing publicly. The govern-
ment banned the red berets that are
a trademark for supporters of Wine’s
People Power movement. Wine has
been arrested repeatedly and endured
brutal treatment in government custo-
dy. In 2018, his driver was murdered in
what some believe was an attempt to
assassinate Wine, or at least serve him
a dire warning. (A spokesman for the
Ugandan government did not respond
to a request to comment for this story.)
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 hyper-
bolic, 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. In a country where nearly 70
percent of the population is under 25Bobi Wine, one of Africa’s
biggest music stars, wants
to kick-start a democratic
revolution. Can he survive
till election day?
By DAV I D PE I SN E R
Uganda’s ‘Ghetto President’
PEOPLE POWER
Wine protesting
in Kampala