28 | Rolling Stone | April 2020
The Mix
directly accused the government of be-
traying its citizens. Around this time,
friends began calling Wine “the Ghet-
to President.”
Beside Dream Studios, down a nar-
row alleyway, is a cramped room
where Wine lived as a young artist. A
young boxer lives there now and he in-
vites me in. The room has just enough
space for a bed and desk, with a sheet
hanging between them. Outside the
room is an alcove, the back wall of
which is dominated by a huge paint-
ing of the Rastafarian Lion of Judah,
wearing a crown with the words “Fire
Base” on it. Wine once identified as
Rastafarian, but his beliefs are more
fluid now. “I’ve been so many things,”
he says. “Catholic, born-again Pente-
costal Christian, Bahá’í, Rasta. I’m still
all those things because I’ve got deep
respect for them.”
Wine landed in Kamwokya by mis-
fortune. He was born in 1982 during
the Bush War. The conflict had begun
one year earlier, when following a dis-
puted 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 be-
fore, during an increasingly unpopu-
lar stretch from 1966 to his overthrow
by army general Idi Amin in 1971.
Before the Bush War, Wine’s family
had been politically active and relative-
ly well-to-do. “My family was an ally of
Museveni,” says Wine. “My grandfa-
ther was killed in the Museveni liber-
ation wars. His house was burned to
the ground. My father was arrested
by Obote’s regime, and sentenced to
death. But thanks to the crazy corrup-
tion, my mother bailed him out.”
Wine’s father went into exile in Tan-
zania. A veterinarian by trade, he had
three wives and at least 34 children —
polygamy remains legal in Uganda to
this day — but took only his first wife
and some of his older children with
him into exile. Wine’s mother, a nurse,
moved Wine and several of his siblings
to Kamwokya, where her father lived.
When the war ended, Museveni
emerged as the country’s president
and began immediately sidelining po-
tential opposition in the name of na-
tional unity. Wine’s brother Steven
was arrested for treason and ended
up serving seven years. “My mother
always warned me we were better off
staying out of politics,” Wine says.
Nonetheless, it is, to some extent,
the family business. During the 1996
election, Yawe released a song sup-
porting Museveni’s opponent. He was
arrested, he says, then beaten and tor-
tured. “They tie a rope on your testi-
cles, then [attach] a car battery and say,
‘Stand up.’ ” Yawe ran for an MP seat in
2011, which he says he lost due to “mas-
sive cheating,” and ran unsuccessfully
in 2016 as well. He’s been arrested mul-
tiple times, but will run again in 2021.
Wine largely resisted getting entan-
gled in electoral politics until the past
few years. The 2016 elections were a
turning point. To build enthusiasm for
his candidacy, Museveni recruited a
host of top artists, including Cool and
Chameleone — and paid them hand-
somely — to record a song called “Tu-
bonga Nawe,” which translates as “We
Are With You.” Wine says he rejected
an offer of half a billion Ugandan shil-
lings — about $135,000 — to participate.
“He has always sided with the down-
trodden, but that was a special mo-
ment,” says Yusuf Serunkuma, a doc-
toral fellow at Kampala’s Makerere
Institute of Social Research and a po-
litical columnist for the weekly news-paper The Observer. “All his colleagues
in the industry sided with the govern-
ment. He singly chose not to.”
Museveni won the election, but
something in Wine shifted: “I knew it’d
be much more effective if I didn’t only
explain, I demonstrated. So I decided
to run for office.” He shakes his head
and laughs. “And, maaan, it opened a
huuuge can of worms.”I
T DOESN’T take much rain in Ugan-
da to turn the country’s system of
largely dirt roads into muddy wa-
terways. Today’s floods will be respon-
sible for at least five deaths in Kam-
pala. In a rural area of the Mukono
district, about an hour east, the rain
has stopped, but some local men are
barefoot, guiding cars and boda bodas
through rushing reddish-brown wa-
ters. When the volunteers spot Wine
in his Land Cruiser, they break into
smiles and run toward the car.
“His Excellency!”
“Bobi!”
“People Power!”
They reach in and fist-bump with
Wine. As the Land Cruiser pulls from
the impromptu river, Wine turns to
me. “That’s how it is when peopleare sure they’re not going to be beat-
en up or arrested for showing us love,”
he says. Wine is on his way to what he
calls “the last rites” for a friend’s fa-
ther. The man, an influential figure in
the community, died last week, and
the event is like an Irish wake.
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.
When the hysteria settles, he climbs a
small staircase and gives a speech, re-
minding everyone “not to forget why
we’re here: to make this a better Ugan-
da for the next generation.”
When he finishes, the sound system
restarts, and he sings along to “Tuli-
yambala Engule,” a song he released
that’s based on the traditional Chris-
tian hymn “When the Battle Is Over.”
His version has lyrics about the coun-
try’s dysfunctional health system and
a reminder for listeners to get their ID
cards so they’re allowed to vote. This is
as close as Wine gets to playing a con-
cert in Uganda these days.
When Wine first ran for Parliament
in 2017, Museveni’s NRM party poured
money into the race in support of his
opponent. Wine won in a landslide any-
way. It didn’t take him long to grow dis-
enchanted with Parliament. First, it
rubber-stamped Museveni’s self-serv-
ing (and unpopular) effort to overturn
the Constitution’s age limit for presi-
dential candidates. When Wine was
repeatedly blocked from performing,
Parliament passed a resolution de-
creeing that he should be allowed to
play. “But police said they don’t have
to listen to Parliament,” he says. “It
was then I knew Parliament was impo-
tent.” He decided to run for president,
but only as a way of achieving a larg-
er goal. “The primary objective is to
end the Museveni dictatorship, return
the rule of law, make sure the indepen-
dence of the three arms of government
is observed.”
Uganda, a landlocked country of
roughly 45 million people, is still a
young nation. It was a British colony
until 1962, and like many former colo-
nies, its borders were somewhat hap-
hazardly drawn to include kingdoms,
tribes, clans, and ethnic groups that
didn’t necessarily share much history
or culture. English is the official lan-
guage, but more than 40 other lan-
guages are more commonly spoken in
their regions.
Wine has been arrested more
than 20 times since he ran for Par-liament, according to his lawyer, but
one incident stands out. On August
13th, 2018, both Wine and Museveni
were campaigning in the northwest-
ern city of Arua in support of oppos-
ing candidates in a parliamentary by-
election. The government claims Mu-
seveni’s motorcade was pelted with
rocks, leading to altercations between
police and protesters. In the ensu-
ing chaos, Wine’s driver was shot and
killed. Wine says he retreated to a hotel
where he was eventually discovered by
soldiers who knocked down his door
with an iron bar, then beat him with it.
According to Wine, he was bun-
dled into a vehicle, where the abuse
persisted. “They squeezed my testi-
cles,” he recounted weeks later. “They
started hitting my ankles with pis-
tol butts.... They used something like
pliers to pull my ears.... Then they
hit my back and continued to hit my
genitals.” Eventually, he says, he was
bashed in the head and lost conscious-
ness. At least 34 others were arrest-
ed, and many were abused, includ-
ing the opposition candidate who won
the election. Wine was charged with
possession of a firearm, a charge that
was quickly dropped. Then he was re-
arrested and charged with treason.
After being detained for nearly two
weeks, he was released.
The brutality left lasting scars.
“They broke my skull here,” he says,
pointing to a spot over his eye. “Every
once in a while, it swells by itself. My
back has never completely healed. Psy-
chologically, I don’t think it will ever go
away.” The episode was clarifying. “It
educated me on how low this regime
is willing to sink to remain in power.”
The incident was international news.
In an open letter, artists like Chris Mar-
tin, 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.
Wine knows he’s not the only one
suffering persecution. Kizza Besigye
has stood against Museveni in the past
four elections at great personal cost:
He’s been repeatedly jailed, charged
with rape and treason, and for a time,
forced into exile. Ziggy Wyne, another
member of Wine’s Fire Base Crew, was
allegedly tortured to death by authori-
ties in August (the government claimed
he died in a motorcycle accident). At a
press conference in March, Wine de-
tailed the death or disappearance of 10
other People Power supporters and the
imprisonment of dozens more.
At least a half-dozen other artists
have announced intentions to run forOf Wine’s many
arrests, one stands
out. “They broke my
skull here,” he says,
pointing to a spot
over his eye. “My back
has never healed.
Psychologically, I
don’t think it will
ever go away.”