Abstract
The political history of post-colonial Uganda is about as fascinating as that of any post-colonial state. The styles of key political figures, including Milton Obote and Idi Amin Dada, who have had the privilege of leading the country, are central to this fascination. Yet, since becoming Uganda’s leader in 1986, President Yoweri Museveni appears to have outdone his predecessors so much so that an entire generation cares little of the country’s history before Museveni. In 2021, the Ugandan people are scheduled to go to the polls in a presidential election. Following the success of a bill in parliament to expunge an upper age limit to contest for the office of president, the seventy-five -year-old Museveni is set to seek an additional mandate. Unlike in his previous electoral contests, however, Museveni faces the challenge of a man less than half his age. Thirty-seven year-old Robert Kyagulanyi is among the most successful popular musicians in East Africa. Kyagulanyi has since exploited his success and fame to become an elected Member of Uganda’s Parliament. Barely two years after the artist materialised as a politician, the Ghetto President, as he is popularly known, has declared his intention to run for the office Museveni occupies, against Museveni. Since Museveni permitted electoral contests for the presidency of Uganda, he has remained defiantly invincible. How does Kyagulanyi propose to undo this, and why does he think he can, to the extent of daring? Drawing on a socio-biographical analysis of the celebrity MP, some strategic interviewing and student-participant observation, the article engages the dynamics inherent with some of these issues.
Introduction
In 2021, the people of Uganda will go to the polls in a presidential election. The incumbent president, Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, is certain to run after the country’s parliament passed a bill expunging an upper age limit to contest for the office of president. Several scholars have drawn attention to how the previously perceived “to be” reforming and promising country has retrogressed in recent years. Moses Khisa juxtaposes this retrogression, among other factors, with Museveni’s insistence on ruling for life, and claims that this ambition has in turn led to the erosion of basic democratic institutions, the securitisation of politics, the criminalisation of political competition and an upsurge in contentious politics across the East African country (Khisa, 2019). Presently, Museveni’s “strategic choices” (Swinkels, 2019) to remain in power are at odds with Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, better known as Bobi Wine, a popular musician and MP representing the Kyadondo East Constituency of Wakiso District in Uganda’s Central Region. Bobi Wine’s mantra has been one of simplicity: grateful for Museveni’s glories of the bush wars and insistent that absolute power corrupts absolutely irrespective of the individual, and as such Uganda must eschew strong men and instead build strong institutions, once and for all. The circumstances surrounding Wine’s emergence as an independent candidate and victorious MP have been documented elsewhere (e.g. Mutyaba, 2017). Yet Wine claims he had no choice but to participate in the forthcoming presidential election as an independent opposition candidate against the perennially victorious electoral fortune of Museveni (Aljazeera, 2019). Considering the unravelling bulge of the youth demographic in Uganda, wherein “there is…huge...following for…leaders [like Bobi Wine since] 78% of Uganda’s population is under age 30” (Ford, 2019), the 2021 presidential election holds the prospect of some novelty. Wine’s deployment of his music, the Internet/social media for activism causes and now for a presidential cause, is to be understood as a positioning of the MP to navigate a treacherous terrain in a strongly regulated and visibly oppressive country (Ashaba and Taodzera, 2019). It has been severally argued that there is a preponderance of “legitimate” weapons at the disposal of the state as enshrined in the Constitution and across the country’s existing laws. The Computer Use Act and the Regulation of Interception of Communications Act, for example, are still very much constitutive of “humane” options for the state’s self-preservation against online freedom in Uganda (Kakungulu-Mayambaya and Rukondo, 2019; Rukundo, 2018). Two years after his election as MP, much of which was constituted by speculation of a potential presidential bid, Wine recently cleared the air and announced that he would be running for the much coveted and historically engaging office of president of Uganda, against Museveni. In a country with the world’s second youngest population where the median age of sixteen is three years under the median age in Africa (Ford, 2019), Bobi Wine’s pitch for running for the office of president is neither unexpected nor farfetched: “We came to the conclusion that we should challenge this regime as a generation,” he stated while declaring his presidential intention (Pilling, 2019; Titeca, 2019). Beyond the generational base and ethos of his bid/campaign, there is a sense in which Mr. Wine stands out even among the young generation: A twenty-six year-old middle school history and religion teacher, Timothy Ssimbwa, describes Wine as “ordinary; he grew up in the ghetto…Since he’s ordinary, he’d be a good leader” (Ford, 2019). This piece proposes to engage with the dynamics of Bobi Wine’s rise, apparent exceptionality resulting from the “ordinariness” of one in his circumstance and realistic chances of ousting President Museveni through the ballot in 2021. The analysis is etched on primary empirical material including strategic interviews and participant observation in the city of Kampala, Uganda. It draws from relevant theoretical tracts in conceiving a framework themed on the relation between Bobi Wine’s background, music, activism and philanthropy – each bringing a fragment into constituting the overall appeal of the popular musician cum politician. The article explores Wine’s standing in Uganda and adopts a critical socio-biographical analysis, which examines selected figures’ socio-cultural relationships with their communities/environments, as its conceptual framework. The article conveys excerpts from interviews, findings from participant observation and the discourse analysis of a song of Wine’s: “Freedom” (2017a). The considerable opposition from within Uganda’s popular music scene to Bobi Wine’s politics is also assessed. The section “Activism in Uganda” offers a summary of activism in Uganda and seeks to delineate the distinctness of Bobi Wine’s in the country.
Activism in Uganda
Protest is a form of activism. A popular musician with one protest song in the body of work, who lays claim to activism, is not unusual. Yet activism, as understood in popular parlance across Africa, is more. Activism is the practice of deploying direct vigorous action/campaigns in order to bring about change in a given socio-political space. Activism is one of those categories that constitutes a perennial challenge to the academe; for it is not uncommon to find academics who insist on a disciplinary definition and identification for any treatise on activism. Much like with music or fashion, the academe appears to have been unprepared, thus, overwhelmed by the spate of activism, particularly in recent times. This suggests that there ought to be an interrogation at the heart of each activism and activist’s sincerity. If the academe is intended to interrogate society, it behoves asking why the academe appears to be failing in defining a fragment for “activism” within any of media and communication studies, political science, celebrity studies or cultural studies. At status quo, proffering a definition for the term “activism” results in one that floats across disciplines. Identifying this snag that exists at the core of the comprehension of activism is necessary in order to proceed with the objective here, which is to locate Bobi Wine’s music, philanthropy and perceived lifestyle as an amalgamation in executing activism and running for the office of president in Uganda. The article suggests that the collection of the many fragments of Mr. Wine have the potential to equate to what ought to be known as activism in the strict sense, that is of actual activism being of an ongoing characteristic as against opportunistic activism being adopted and deployed in staccato. After all, activism ought to interest the sociologist, the journalist, the media critic, the political scientist and even the anthropologist. Activism ought to be a way of life such that an activist is perpetually living activism until the sought is gotten, particularly since there is little value in being an activist on several fronts, as compared to living an activism on all of one’s fronts. It is noteworthy that Mr Wine’s socio-political activism began with his music. Paraphrasing the inventor of afrobeat, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, whose activist ethos tended to a way of life before his passing in 1997, Wine has criticised his early days as a popular musician wherein he used the tool to teach “nonsense” to his listeners. Following his awakening, however, he insists that his music must be deployed only for the purposes of teaching some sense, particularly in respect of socio-political justice for Ugandans and for other Africans governed by dictatorships. Having had a difficult upbringing, Wine’s metamorphosis appears seamless. He has taken well to the appellation of “The Ghetto President” becoming an advocate, in a perpetual activist’s sense, for the rights and better living conditions for the millions across Uganda’s slums- slums in which Wine was himself raised and for which he is sufficiently versed to speak.
The history of activism in Uganda presents an interesting subject matter. An influential volume reflecting on the emerging trends of digital activism through social media in Africa included a chapter on the dwindling popularity of the leadership in Uganda, along with such countries as Ethiopia and Zimbabwe where the personnel of leadership has changed since the volume’s publication in 2016 (Chibita, 2016; Mutsvairo, 2016). The literature on activism in Uganda has included subjects such as the perennially contentious issues on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) relations and challenges; Land Rights (Schefer, 2019); HIV/AIDS; theatre for drawing attention to generate awareness; agri-food research, among others (e.g. Das, 2007; Edmondson, 2011; Farley, 2014; Lyons, 2012). On the issue of LGBT in a country with an Anti-Homosexuality Law, it is noteworthy that Mr. Brian Wasswa, an activist for the rights of LGBT people was attacked and killed on October 4, 2019 (Human Rights Watch, 2019). In 2017, the Jobless Brotherhood broke new ground in civic activism by smuggling two live pigs into the Ugandan Parliament as symbols of the greed of the ruling class who had remained unmoved in spite of a 61 per cent demographic in unemployment (Larok, 2017). Uganda’s young climate activists were in the news recently making a case for the need for the continent to take a collective stand against pro-global warming practices of which Africa contributes the least but is nonetheless the most vulnerable (Mercado, 2019). Student movements, which dominated through the twentieth century, also gained renewed momentum recently with Bobi Wine’s “People Power” movement. “People Power is not a political party, but a movement driven by young people. Its only ideology is embodied in the name itself” (Ford, 2019). Strikingly reminiscent of the Pan-African wave of the 1960’s and of the student activist groups that served as key opposition against Milton Obote’s and Idi Amin’s regimes, Julius Kateregga, is the current president of the Makerere University Students Guild. Kateregga ran for election as a People Power candidate (Ford, 2019). Yet, in spite of the rich terrain of activism practices in Uganda, the literature has yet to include material covering the deployment of activism as a rallying centre and eventual launching pad for a presidential run. The seamless transition, in Bobi Wine’s metamorphosis, from musician to activist/conscious musician to politician, makes for the overarching contribution of this article. Indeed, the amalgam of Bobi Wine, his music (as would be seen), his protégés (as the make-up of the participant observation and an interviewee exemplify) and the transnationalism of his cause show the extent to which people are using new media to speak into each other’s political realities. Across different African countries, citizens are engaging in shows of solidarity reminiscent of the independence and anti-apartheid struggles of previous generations. Together with literature sceptical of the mobilising potential of new media, the emergence of young rallying characters under 40, such as Bobi Wine, in several African countries has been tentatively conceived as Pan-Africanism for the digital age (Nyabola, 2018).
Uganda gained independence from Britain in the early sixties and the East African nation of a little over 40 million inhabitants has had a chequered history of political leadership in fifty-seven years of self-governance. Although there has been a mix of coups d’état and electoral ascensions of power (in the case of Milton Obote), the current president Yoweri Museveni is only the ninth individual to be Uganda’s head of state. Contrast this with say his Nigerian counterpart at the present time, Muhammadu Buhari, who is the 15th President of Nigeria, and the differences in the mode of governance since “re-democratisation” in both countries assume improved comprehension. Indeed, while re-democratisation in Nigeria after 1999 meant that a single leader had a maximum of two terms of four years each; Uganda’s authoritarianism has perpetuated Museveni in office since he assumed the reins in 1986 with correspondingly necessary constitutional alterations. Despite the presence of institutions such as parliament, the judiciary and an electoral system, at least in form if not content, Uganda is effectively a hybrid state slanted towards presidentialism (Ssentongo, 2018; Tripp, 2010). To place the Ugandan story in a more vivid perspective, it is plausible that President Museveni is the materialisation of what might have been in Nigeria had any and or all of the self-succession bids of Generals Ibrahim Babangida, Sani Abacha and Olusegun Obasanjo been successful. That Museveni has been in office longer than the combined period all three aforementioned leaders were in office, is suggestive of the calibre of opposition suppression Museveni presides over. Activism against Museveni’s rule and policies must therefore be viewed critically and respectfully. As has been the norm in Paul Biya’s Cameroon, for example, the Ugandan government shut down the Internet during the last elections in 2016 amid allegations of vote rigging. In order to further illustrate what leadership under Museveni has entailed, in July 2018, the government introduced a social media tax in a move seen by many as a gimmick to discourage online dissent. Leading the protest march against the tax through #ThisTaxMustGo whilst also illustrating a new wave of dissent against Museveni’s penchant for maximum rule was MP Bobi Wine (Ashaba and Taodzera, 2019; Mutyaba, 2018). It is also significant that whereas there have been several dissenting popular musicians through Museveni’s reign in Uganda, none has yet sought to challenge for the office Museveni occupies until Bobi Wine. The subsequent analysis centres on Bobi Wine’s political philosophy/activism, philanthropy, music and rhetoric while offering a window into his chances at the presidential election in 2021 vis-a-vis the implications of the election for the East African sub-region and for the larger African continent.
The Activism, Philanthropy and Music of Bobi Wine Among Ugandans
This section seeks to comprehend the appeal of Bobi Wine as accruing from his activism, music and politics. The section relies on excerpts from interviewees resident in Kampala, Uganda and on participant observation among a demographic of young students in Kampala’s largest private university. It is essential to establish the nature of the terrain within which Bobi Wine has resolved to continue to operate. Beyond the well-known “People Power” hymn behind his movement, Wine’s unspoken alternate mantra is without doubt to “live and die in/for Uganda” (Titeca, 2019):
More than 120 of [Wine’s] concerts in 2017 were cancelled by security forces, who use teargas and water cannons to break up his rallies. A draft censorship law, often referred to as the “anti-Bobi Wine law”, demonstrates the threat the authorities consider him to be. The law places various restrictions on artists and filmmakers, including making them seek government approval for song lyrics and for when they want to perform abroad. (Jennings, 2019)
Considering that Uganda has become a space where an artist may be granted permission by the state to offer his/her art to his/her audiences, or to be prevented from offering some of his/her artistic components to his/her audiences abroad, Wine’s resolve to shun the lure of asylum and several other means to relocate to a western capital ought to be properly unpacked. Indeed, this resolve is to be understood within the backdrop of the average African’s proclivity for the un-African and of Wine’s conviction to live in Uganda not minding the economic challenge this poses to growing his craft. Wine’s resolve conveys a charter to continually sensitise Ugandans – particularly young Ugandans – through several means including music. In order to gauge the impact/effects of Wine’s work, it was necessary to interrogate a section of his audiences, specifically a section of young Ugandan students. Thus, between January and February 2017, I was required to teach a Journalism and Media Studies freshman class on the module “Introduction to Online Journalism” at a large private university in Kampala, Uganda through a much accelerated format. In order to animate conversations and to highlight the reality of popular music as journalism in Africa, I tasked the students to engage with mini projects of Ugandan popular musicians of their choice who had demonstrated some form of online journalism. The outcome was instructive as it showed the depth of the vast popular music terrain in Uganda. But more than that, Bobi Wine was the popular musician who emerged with the most frequency among the project’s choices of popular musicians by the students. It was overwhelming to the extent that I had to alter the rules of the project, after making them, by insisting that not more than two students may focus on one popular musician. Since this episode, and since Wine’s election in July 2017, the activist’s approaches to the common man’s cause have revealed just why he is a favourite – including experientially with freshmen students of an “Introduction to Online Journalism” course – among the youth in Uganda. Unsurprisingly, as Bobi Wine resonates with the Ugandan commoner, so he does in the academic literature of studies on Ugandan and East African popular music. Indeed, scholarship referencing Bobi Wine’s works is wide and varied. For example, Sanga (2010) highlights the activism of Wine’s hip hop in terms of youth empowerment with respect to globalisation; Mbabazi (2012) examines digitisation in Wine’s music; Magishagwe (2014) focuses on Wine’s humanitarian work; while Malande and Masiolo (2013) are concerned with Wine’s juggling of idioms in his music to advance political agenda. The emphasis here is on the seamless transition between Bobi Wine as activist musician and Bobi Wine as activist politician. MP Bobi Wine has spoken of his encouragement/motivation thus:
[Museveni] wields a lot of weapons and a huge budget. However, I’m always encouraged by the fact that more ferocious, intimidating and authoritarian leaders have led Uganda. But the way they were overpowered was even laughable. So that should encourage this generation – Bobi Wine. (Angopa, 2018)
At the risk of rehashing public knowledge, it is worth stating that Wine ran for parliament as an independent candidate, defeating a number of candidates including the candidate of the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM). It is instructive that Wine holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Music, Dance and Drama from the prestigious Makerere University, Kampala. Since he began his music career in 2000, he has made several politically conscious songs that speak to power and poor conditions in the country. As a piece of informative digression, it was earlier noted that another African musician with an activist ethos was Fela Anikulapo-Kuti who studied music at Trinity College. Of Fela, I have argued elsewhere that when compared to those that came after him, he is celebrity activism personified (Osiebe, n.d.). The extents to which Bobi Wine is able to measure up to Fela’s feats remain to be seen. Winning a presidential election would undoubtedly make for a weighty advance considering that Fela ran unsuccessfully for Nigeria’s presidency. Perhaps the biggest challenge, yet, faced by Wine since becoming an MP was the alleged attempt on his life which resulted in the death of his driver during bye-elections in the city of Arua (Ford, 2019). Before the tragic episode, the constitutional amendment bill sponsored by Museveni’s NRM on age limit to run for the office of president spurred the activism in Bobi Wine through his speeches, his social media posts and his music. Hitherto, the constitution stipulated a cap age of seventy-five, although this had been so amended to expedite Museveni’s previous election bids as it helped to exclude rival politicians who nursed ambitions to challenge him. Wine was easily the most vocal MP against the bill intended to facilitate Museveni’s election in 2021. Considering the majority NRM in parliament, Wine offered opposing viewpoints that may resonate for long in Uganda and among Ugandans. At some stage, Wine went as far as refuting and publicising an alleged $8,000 bribe paid to each MP to support the bill towards Museveni’s life presidency (Dahir, 2017).
There is, it would appear, a synergy between Wine’s rhetoric and his collective charter as demonstrated by certain charity causes of his. Wine’s connectivity is such that he maintains a website at <http://bobiwine.ug/> which is strikingly not a vehicle for music promotion and events’ booking as is the artistic/entrepreneurial wont. Instead, the website bears the caption ‘
In closing the discussion, it would constitute inaccuracy to ignore the substantial opposition and antagonism that MP Bobi Wine faces in Uganda. For example, his fellow musician, Bebe Cool, although widely perceived as a Museveni mole, has been consistent in his emphasis that Bobi Wine is but a making of the media and of no actual substance. Bebe Cool has assured his audience that MP Bobi Wine is only an empty barrel who can never be president of Uganda. It is apparent that there is no love lost between the two, and Bebe Cool has clearly made it his charter to establish himself as a voice against Bobi Wine’s continual rise in political capital. Meanwhile, in October 2019, President Museveni made a direct and unequivocal move to counter Bobi Wine’s momentum by appointing musician Mark Bugembe, also known as Buchaman, as presidential adviser on ghetto affairs (Athumani, 2019). Athumani reports of how “[Buchaman], who took over the unofficial title of ghetto president when Wine became a lawmaker, rejects the criticism that Museveni is using him” (Athumani, 2019). But beyond Bebe Cool and Buchaman, the bulk of the (musical) celebrities in Uganda seem to be in solidarity with one of their own – MP Bobi Wine – to the extent that Jose Chameleon has vowed publicly that Bobi Wine must be president of Uganda. Perhaps more significantly, Kizza Besigye, President Museveni’s perpetual electoral opponent, has presented Bobi Wine as a presidential candidate towards the 2021 election. This contrasts with the view of Odonga Otto, the veteran opposition MP for Aruu County Constituency in Pader District who belongs to Besigye’s Forum for Democratic Change. Otto offered that Wine is not conversant with national issues, is unconvincing in his plans for fiscal policy, and yet to learn from previous opponents of Museveni such as Besigye. While Otto concedes that Wine could put up a contest, he believes Museveni is vastly too meticulous and ruthless to permit any slip ups to an “amateur” in Bobi Wine (Matavu, 2020). It is unclear if Otto has motives beyond the surface of his comments, but his observation on the incoherence of Wine’s policy plans aren’t farfetched to keen listeners of Mr. Wine. Yet, Wine has been described as presidential by the famed Ugandan journalist Shaka Ssali (Ssali, 2018). What these developments suggest is that there is likely to be a coalition of Museveni’s constant opposition with a youth demographic driven by Bobi Wine’s audacity and resonant music. Invariably, time would tell what direction Uganda and Ugandans elect to go as the twenty-first century seizes to relent in hitting the ground running. “We must say what we mean and mean what we say. Let me say that again. We must say what we mean and mean what we say. We must learn to put country first” were the closing words by MP Bobi Wine while addressing a gathering of the Democratic Party in Makerere, Uganda. To put Wine’s message differently, citizens and politicians who are prone to social media posturing must be made to understand that such posturing necessarily have to be met by a manifestation of real life values and stellar practices. As is his preoccupation most times, Wine’s singles “Dembe” (2016) and “Freedom” (2017) speak directly to the issues he applies his office as an MP debating. While “Dembe” was an initiative for peaceful elections, the highly censored “Freedom” is a moving call to Uganda’s youth population that defined the charter of the cause to be free of President Museveni’s stranglehold of the nation (Mutyaba, 2018; Titeca et al., 2018). Indeed, “Freedom” is a direct address at President Museveni wherein Wine minces no words in pleading with Museveni’s elderly lieutenants to talk to their principal. Wine expresses knowledge and appreciation for Museveni’s efforts in fighting a bush war while pointing out that the purpose of the war has since been abandoned in preference for the practice of what the fight was against. Wine advocates the leader’s consideration over the fact that babies who were unborn when he rose to Uganda’s number one seat have themselves since become parents under his hypocritical and now redundant leadership. The musician-MP insists, in “Freedom,” that the people are unambiguous and unanimous on the non-alteration of the Constitution which he describes as the people’s sole remaining hope. In the singer’s estimation, the oppression accruing from a Museveni presidency has grown worse than what accrued from apartheid. As a consequence, he asks: “what was the purpose of the liberation when we can’t have a peaceful transition? What is the purpose of the Constitution when the government disrespects the Constitution? What is my freedom of expression when you judge me because of my expression?” (Wine, 2017a). For additional reach and effect, Wine shouts out cities and provinces across the country urging the people across these locations from Kampala to Jinja, from Kabale to Kaseese and from Karamoja to Kyandodo, to each and all play their part in the movement to reclaim freedom.
Concluding Remarks
It is a pointer to the fact that activism could/should co-exist side-by-side with civility that Wine has stated that he would be honoured by an invitation from the presidency (Aljazeera, 2019). Wine has also spoken highly of President Museveni’s intelligence and repeatedly said that the erstwhile guerrilla represented a mentor at the time the latter emerged as a rebel leader while he was in the age group the former presently occupies. Indeed, Wine has said severally that Museveni’s methods towards his materialisation as Uganda’s leader in 1986 make very much for the sort of activism which he, Wine, champions presently. Yet, Wine has insisted that the president has fallen prey to the absolute corruption which absolute power conveys, and that the only guaranteed means to check this, even if he, Bobi Wine, were to emerge in a position of power, was term limits. Media/political heavyweights in Uganda such as Kizza Besigye and Shaka Ssali have come out to state their support for Bobi Wine at the country’s next presidential election. Bobi Wine’s metamorphosis from a self- and materially- obsessed rasta man, into a cleaner shaven and consistently conscious reggae/dance hall star, and into a Member of Parliament as an independent, is remarkable. A conservative principle of activism is the wont to have actual activists in activism non-seasonally, while political leadership is left, preferably, to non-activists equipped in statecraft. Yet, the peculiarity of the Ugandan scenario has thrown up elements of celebrity, garnished with the ethos of activism, and the clout of an MP, as Bobi Wine exemplifies. For any opposition to muster a sustainable tempo so as to begin to resemble a force capable of challenging Museveni’s socio-psychological grip, such opposition is expected to be characterised by an amalgam of qualities hitherto unknown in the country’s electoral space. As it unravels, it is hoped that Wine’s candidacy would eventually be guided by the proper valences of electoral consciousness (Osiebe, 2019). His music, as in “Freedom” for example, appears to have set the agenda fundamentally for any incoming leader of Uganda. An incoming leader who’s written several manifestoes of governance and of nationhood should have no qualms adopting workable models towards the rapid development direly needed by Ugandans and in Uganda. The celebrity footballer, George Opong Weah, may have been elected President in Liberia; however, it is barely parallels with what is happening in Uganda where a dictator has someone standing up to him with the clout of music and self-expression. Wine would be well advised to explore proper electoral/governance valences and extend a soft-landing cum olive branch to President Museveni. Recent examples such as transpired in The Gambia and in Zimbabwe where the outgoing despots were offered deals with certain dignities and privileges, may be pointers to the way to go in Africa where sit-tight leaders have proliferated to scourge degrees, with Uganda and Museveni being particular. In the event of victory at the election, therefore, Wine could deploy populist gestures for his predecessor such that life after office isn’t marketed as a frightening one considering it’s been over three decades in power. Extending some courtesy to Museveni, who is getting desperately nostalgic as the six day jungle march stunt revealed (BBC News, 2020), could resolve impending conflict and keep the peace. It remains to be seen if indeed the Ghetto President can substitute the “Ghetto” in his appellation for “Uganda” through the keenly anticipated presidential poll next year.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The author thanks the editorial team of
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This project is funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, Germany Research Foundation) under Germany’s Excellency Strategy - UBT, Africa Multiple.
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