The EconomistMarch 21st 2020 Books & arts 712 Mr Wine says he refused that gig; he lat-
er stood in a parliamentary by-election,
and won. Other singers started pulling on
the signature red beret of his People Power
movement. Among them was Mr Chamele-
one, aptly changing colours, who an-
nounced plans to stand for Kampala mayor
himself. Meanwhile, Mr Cool made himself
rather uncool by sticking with the ruling
party. Bottles were thrown at him on stage.
He says the country needs the leadership of
army men, not “failed” artistes; he would
feel “so disrespected”, he bristles, were Mr
Wine to become his president.
For others, politics offers a different
sort of opportunity. Musicians earn little
from selling songs, which are widely pirat-
ed, so rely instead on concerts and product
endorsements for their income. Election
season is a “time for them to make money”,
says Balaam Barugahara, the country’s big-
gest promoter, who recruits singers to per-
form at nrmrallies. Murals of Mr Museveni
and his son grin from behind his desk.
This time, a chorus of singers say they
will stand for parliament. Many have genu-
ine frustrations with the country’s sclerot-
ic politics, but for some an element of fi-
nancial calculation is involved, too.
Running for office usually plunges candi-
dates into debt; rather than doing so in ear-
nest, some musicians may be hoping to
make themselves enough of a nuisance
that a mainstream candidate will decide to
buy them off. “So many artistes have pos-
tured to be speaking truth to power but in a
real sense they were trying to elevate their
premium,” Mr Wine lamented to a posse of
performers at his home.
Mr Museveni is a generous patron. In
recent months he has signed up an unlike-
ly roster of talent, from Buchaman, former-
ly the “vice-president” of Mr Wine’s crew,
to Bosmic Otim, the biggest star in the
country’s Luo-speaking north. The latter
once wrote lyrics that associated Mr Wine
with Nelson Mandela, and speculated
about the responsibility of Mr Museveni’s
forces for massacres. But after encounters
with state security and a presidential hand-
shake, his latest track is called “I support
the government”.
Radio djs avoid political tunes, fearing a
phonecall from above. The choice is be-
tween “playing the song” and “staying in
business,” says Isaac Mandev, a program-
mer at a Luganda-language station. Mr
Wine is now blocked from performing in
public; he and his supporters are arrested
and beaten when they congregate. On a
steeply tilted playing-field, his chances of
winning the election are slim. All the same,
a good rhythm is irresistible. At the parlia-
mentary Christmas party of 2018, when the
ghetto president grabbed the mike to sing
“Kyarenga”—a smash hit about a poor man
wooing a woman away from a richer sui-
tor—even nrmstalwarts got up to dance. 7
T
o marktheendofitsdecades-oldban
on cinemas, the government of Saudi
Arabia held a fancy opening for the first
commercial one in Riyadh. Ministers, in-
fluencers and at least one royal were invit-
ed to watch the Marvel superhero film
“Black Panther”. In it a young prince called
T’Challa finds himself suddenly in charge
of Wakanda, an isolated kingdom rich in a
precious natural resource. But he must
fight off a challenge to the throne from a
ruthless relative called Erik Killmonger. In
the end T’Challa prevails and opens up Wa-
kanda to the world.
Sound a little familiar? The man who
ended the cinema ban, Muhammad bin
Salman, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia,
has a bit of T’Challa in him. The young
crown prince, often known as mbs, is try-
ing to open up his isolated, oil-rich king-
dom. Tourists and foreign investors are
now welcomed as part of a drive to diver-
sify the economy. Conservative clerics
have been muzzled and the vice police
curbed, as the Saudis tone down their aus-
tere brand of Islam. Archaic restrictions,
such as the ban on cinemas and another on
women drivers, have been lifted. But, as
Ben Hubbard intimates in his book “mbs”,
Prince Muhammad arguably has a lot of
Erik Killmonger in him, too.
The prince is the sixth son of the 25th
son of the founding king of Saudi Ara-
bia—so he was not exactly predestined to
rule. Moreover, he was not an especially
impressive young man; he never studied
abroad, ran a company or served in the
army. Abdullah, the previous king, saw him
as “an upstart whose experience fell far
short of his ambitions”, the author writes.
The critique still feels apt. Yet Prince Mu-
hammad was the apple of his father Sal-
man’s eye—and a series of deaths in the
family pushed Salman all the way up the
royal ladder.
When Salman became king in 2015 he
put his son in charge of the economy and
defence, but there were still other royals
between Prince Muhammad and the
throne. That didn’t last long. King Salman,
who is now fading, made him deputy
crown prince that April. Two years later
Prince Muhammad pushed aside his older
cousin, Muhammad bin Nayef, to become
crown prince. The royal court claimed the
move was consensual. Reportedly, how-ever,MuhammadbinNayefwaslured to a
palace and denied medicine until he abdi-
cated. He was under house arrest until ear-
lier this month—when, according to Mr
Hubbard, who reports for the New York
Times, he was taken into custody by securi-
ty officers. (Senior Saudi officials had de-
nied Muhammad bin Nayef was under
house arrest; one described the claim as
“not true at all”.)
For a while Saudi-watchers in the West
were entranced by the bold and ambitious
prince. But recently his rash and ruthless
side has been getting more attention. Saudi
Arabia’s intervention in neighbouring Ye-
men, a brainchild of Prince Muhammad’s,
has created a humanitarian disaster. His
decision to lock up hundreds of Saudi ty-
coons in a luxury hotel until they handed
over chunks of their fortunes alienated
outside investors. He in effect kidnapped
the prime minister of Lebanon in 2017, then
started a pointless feud with Canada. The
world’s richest man, Jeff Bezos, thinks the
prince hacked his phone (though mbsde-
nies it). World leaders are confounded by
all this. “Are his dangerous acts the youth-
ful faults of an inexperienced ruler? Or do
they spring from deep in his character and
serve as harbingers of things to come?”
asks Mr Hubbard.
The book ends with the grisly tale of Ja-
mal Khashoggi, a columnist who was killed
and dismembered inside the kingdom’s
consulate in Istanbul two years ago. Prince
Muhammad denies ordering the murder.
Few observers believe him; after all, Saudi
dissidents are routinely jailed and tor-
tured. To prevent such incidents from hap-
pening again the prince set up a committee
to reform the intelligence service. Natural-
ly, he put himself in charge of it. 7Muhammad bin SalmanThe prince
MBS: The Rise to Power of Mohammed
Bin Salman.By Ben Hubbard. Tim Duggan
Books; 384 pages; $28. William Collins; £20The head that wears the crown