A rapper’s quest to be president
The dirt road running through this ramshackle village is packed with a rapturous crowd of cheering young men and women. Car horns shriek. Dance music blares from sound systems. Pandemonium reigns as Bobi Wine, rapper-turned-politician, pushes through the mob.
“People power,” chant his supporters.
“Our power,” echo others.
As security men carve a path for him through the adoring throng, Mr. Wine, in his signature red beret, acknowledges the adulation with a smile and a clenched-fist salute. But today he makes no fiery speeches that might provoke a response from the Ugandan government, with which he has often clashed. He is simply here to plant a small tree in memory of his driver, who was shot dead exactly one year earlier, and his demeanor is as grave as his admirers are boisterous.
On a continent where the median age is 19 but where dispossessed young people generally play little role in politics, Robert Kyagulanyi (who goes by the stage name Bobi Wine) has seized the imagination of a generation. And he plans to use that energy to propel himself to the presidency of Uganda.
His popularity has already swept him into Parliament, where he has been a member since 2017. Now he is preparing an audacious bid to topple Yoweri Museveni, one of Africa’s towering “Big Men” who has been in office for 33 years, in 2021 elections. His fame and appeal have crossed borders, garnering him fans well beyond Uganda.
“Bobi Wine has emerged as a figurehead for a generation of thwarted aspirations,” says Ben Shepherd, an Africa expert at Chatham House, the London-based think tank.
And as the enduring strongmen blamed for dampening those dreams leave the stage – from Algeria to Zimbabwe – could Mr. Wine be the man to herald a newly empowered youth movement in Africa to reinvigorate democracy?
He would like to think so. “Young people are standing up” from Sudan to
