April 2020 | Rolling Stone | 27
FROM TOP: BY COURTESY OF BOBI WINE; BADRU KATUMBA/AFP/GETTY IMAGES; JOHN MUCHUCHA/AP IMAGES/SHUTTERSTOCK
and poverty is the norm, Museveni has
reason to be concerned.
“Museveni recognizes his govern-
ment is corrupt and incompetent, and
people are yearning for change,” says
Daniel Kalinaki, general manager of ed-
itorial at the Nation Media Group and a
political columnist at the Daily Monitor,
Uganda’s largest independent newspa-
per. “He’s never faced someone like
Bobi, who represents a real threat, a
generational threat.”O
N A SATURDAY morning in
mid-December, rain pools out-
side the large, stately white
house where Wine lives with his fam-
ily, on the northern edge of Kampala.
The first few times I knock
on the door, there’s no re-
sponse. After 15 minutes, he
opens the door in a white
terry-cloth bathrobe, rubbing
sleep from his eyes.
“Oh, man, I’m so sorry,”
he says, an embarrassed
smile creeping from the cor-
ners of his mouth. “I just
woke up.” He got in late last
night from Zimbabwe, where
he was performing. “Just give
me five minutes to get ready.”
The house, which is sur-
rounded by well-kept gar-
dens, rows of banana trees,
and a high cement wall, is
quiet. Wine recently sent
his wife and kids on vaca-
tion to a location he’d rather
not reveal. “We’ve had some
threats against my family,”
he says.
Inside, the house is open, spacious,
and relatively Spartan, save for a li-
brary just off the kitchen. There, fami-
ly 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. On the top shelf is a soc-
cer ball with an inscription commemo-
rating the life of Thomas Sankara, the
charismatic revolutionary, often known
as “Africa’s Che Guevara,” who became
president of Burkina Faso in 1983,
then was assassinated four years later.
Alongside it is a portrait of Haile Selas-
sie, the Ethiopian emperor believed by
Rastafarians to be God on Earth. Selas-
sie was also, incidentally, assassinated.
Without his wife, Barbie, a social
worker, at home, Wine is a little out
of sorts. “I couldn’t find my shoes. I
couldn’t find my socks,” he says as he
emerges from his bedroom. He’s wear-
ing a blue blazer, a black button-down,
and black pants, along with, lo and be-
hold, matching shoes and socks.
We pull out from the side gate of
his property, Wine steering his whiteToyota Land Cruiser down the thin,
muddy road. Today, he is traveling
with an assistant and two bodyguards.
He’s got the surreal challenge of cam-
paigning without being able to tell the
public where he’s going to be. If he did,
he says, “I’ll find the military and the
police deployed there to beat anybody
that shows up to say hello to me.” (The
police have claimed that Wine’s meet-
ings are unlawful.)
His demeanor turns serious.
“They’re so scared of my interaction
with the people. That explains why my
concerts were banned. It explains why
churches are cleared out when I show
up. The regime is very scared of ordi-
nary citizens. As much as they’re op-
pressing us, they’re very scared of us.”
Wine’s first stop today doesn’t have
any political significance: Basil’s Den-
tal Clinic, to get a wisdom tooth pulled.
“I want to go to my Christmas meals
in better shape,” he jokes. As he walkstoward the clinic, Eddy Mutwe, one
of his bodyguards, laughs. “He’s still
got that Kamwokya swagger,” he says.
Wine is slender, with delicate features,
and tends to walk with a distinct strut,
taking long, graceful strides, his shoul-
ders slightly hunched and his head
tipped forward, perhaps the product,
as Mutwe suggests, of his upbringing in
Kamwokya, a Kampala slum.
After the dentist, Wine and his en-
tourage head there, to a place they call
“the barracks,” their de facto head-
quarters. 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 sur-
rounded by an eight-foot wall — but
Kamwokya itself is an important part
of Wine’s story.
It’s the ghetto, but not just any ghet-
to. For those who care about Ugan-
dan music, Kamwokya is Compton.
Or Queensbridge. Descending a slopefrom the main road, a man hones a ma-
chete on a sharpening stone powered
by an old bicycle. Small stalls line the
road with locals selling green bananas,
watermelons, pineapples, and beans.
Goats and chickens amble around, un-
bothered. An army of boda bodas — the
motorbike taxis that are the only effec-
tive way to navigate the city’s epic grid-
lock — zip up and down the street.
Wine grew up and began making
music here. The walls of liquor stores,
family restaurants, even a local po-
lice booth, are tagged with graffiti that
reads, “Free Bobi,” “Free Bobi Con-
certs,” “People Power.”
A few buildings down from the bar-
racks is a dirt road that leads to Dream
Studios, built by Wine’s older brother,
Eddy Yawe, in 2002. Yawe studied in
Holland and the U.S., where he learned
music production. He opened Dream
at a time when the paucity of decent
recording facilities in Uganda was lead-
ing artists like Bebe Cool and Jose Cha-
meleone to uproot to Kenya. The place
is basically just three soundproofed
rooms and a large mixing desk, but in
Kampala it was a revelation.
Wine was one of the first artists Yawe
recorded here. As Wine’s songs gained
traction locally, others noticed. “Most
of the musicians turned around, and
instead of going to Nai-
robi, they came here,”
Yawe tells me. “Bobi
and Bebe Cool formed a
group.” They added oth-
ers and christened them-
selves Fire Base Crew,
which became, for a
time, Ghetto Republic of
Uganja.
This was the big
bang of modern Ugan-
dan pop. Through-
out the 1990s, Congolese artists had
been dominant on Ugandan radio and
TV. In the early 2000s, that changed.
“Bobi Wine, Bebe Cool, Jose Chame-
leone, these guys created the revolu-
tion in music,” says Douglas Lwanga, a
music promoter and TV host. All three
artists were big fans of dancehall stars
like Buju Banton and Shabba Ranks,
as well as South African reggae icon
Lucky Dube, and injected their influ-
ence into the Ugandan mainstream.
In 2007, as Uganda prepared to host
the Commonwealth Heads of Govern-
ment Meeting, the regime swept ven-
dors, beggars, and hustlers off Kam-
pala’s streets in an effort to polish the
city’s image. Wine took it personal-
ly. He hadn’t just been writing songs
for and about these people; he felt he
still was one. “You don’t displace your
people to appease foreigners,” he says.
“You don’t hide them away.” He re-
leased a song called “Ghetto,” whichWINE’S WORLD Top: Wine performing in his younger days. Above:
Wine was arrested on his way to a press conference to announce a show
cancellation. Right: Museveni has been Uganda’s leader since 1986.
“[My] primary objective is to end the Museveni dictatorship,” Wine says.