Patronage,Repression,and Co-Optation: Bobi Wine and the Political Economy of Activist Musicians in Uganda

Abstract

In recent decades, musicians have figured prominently on Africa’s political stage. Popular Ugandan musician Bobi Wine moved beyond protest singer and ventured into politics by entering parliament in 2017 and challenging long-term President Yoweri Museveni at the presidential polls in 2021. To push for social change, Wine created the People Power movement and built an alliance with fellow musicians. This article studies Wine’s movement and his alliance with musicians by taking a political economy approach. I posit that the political activism of musicians reaches its limits when a sitting government can easily threaten the economic base of its oppositional challengers. Alliances become fragile once the government can demonstrate that challenging a ruling elite has severe consequences for one’s livelihood whereas aligning with the government ensures economic prosperity. The article uses ethnographic data, interviews, and newspaper articles to demonstrate this argument.

Introduction

This article examines the efforts of popular musician-turned-politician Bobi Wine ¹ to challenge President Yoweri Museveni’s long-term rule in Uganda and to lobby for social change in the East African state. The study analyses Wine’s endeavour to mount a credible challenge to Museveni by focusing on an important period between 2017 and 2020, when Wine sought to build an alliance with other activist musicians to push for transformative policies. In 2017, Wine won a parliamentary seat in a by-election, then built a coalition with like-minded activist musicians, and established his People Power movement in 2018 to mobilise for social change. In mid-2020, the movement was transformed into the National Unity Platform (NUP) to challenge Museveni at the general elections on 14 January 2021. Museveni’s National Resistance Movement (NRM) used patronage, repression, and co-optation to contain Wine’s endeavour to form an alliance with other activist musicians and build a movement once it became clear that the young politician would appeal to a large part of the electorate. Closer to the election in 2021, the NRM intensified the use of one of these tactics, namely repression. In fact, a range of political commentators agree that patronage and repression played a key role in maintaining the NRM’s dominance in the presidential and parliamentary elections in January 2021 (Byaruhanga, 2021; Kiyonga, 2021; Mufumba, 2021; Onyango-Obbo, 2021).

Uganda’s 2021 elections were marred by irregularities and violence. After Bobi Wine was arrested in November 2020 for allegedly violating COVID-19 regulations during his campaign, NUP supporters took to the streets. Police and security forces responded with lethal force, leading to at least fifty deaths (Bagala, 2021). Closer towards the polls, journalists also became subject to repression, while Uganda’s security services arrested and abducted opposition supporters (Bagala, 2021; Wandera, 2021). On election day, government authorities ordered an internet shutdown, which lasted for at least several days after the poll had taken place (Bwire, 2021). According to the official results provided by the Electoral Commission, incumbent Yoweri Museveni won a sixth term in office with 58.4 per cent of the vote, while Wine gathered 35.1 per cent (Electoral Commission, 2021b). Wine subsequently claimed that the poll was rigged ² and was placed under house arrest. Although he initially challenged the official election results at the Supreme Court, he later withdrew his petition over concerns that the court was biased. Instead, he called for peaceful protests against the sham election and demanded the release of missing opposition supporters.

As becomes evident, the tactics of patronage, repression, and co-optation play an important role in maintaining the NRM’s dominance in Uganda. The present article focuses on the early stage of Wine’s efforts to mount a credible challenge to Museveni by building a coalition with like-minded activist musicians to lobby for transformative politics, and closely studies the dynamics at play. Alliances with other groups and individuals lend credence to forces pushing for social change (Mueller, 2018), but activist musicians also face restrictions in lobbying for transformative politics and building alliances. The literature on music and politics described co-optation and repression as factors that limit musicians’ activism (see for instance Olukotun, 2002; Schumann, 2013). Furthermore, recent studies on protests and movements in Uganda have illustrated that the NRM contains these oppositional activities through patronage, repression, and/or co-optation (Branch and Mampilly, 2015; Philipps and Kagoro, 2016). Here, I explore how the sitting government, Museveni’s NRM, has reacted to the challenges of Wine and his coalition and how in turn the NRM’s response to these challenges has impacted Wine’s alliance. The article highlights the variety of tactics of such regimes to contain its challengers but also studies the reactions of such activist musicians to these tactics.

Musicians played a vital role in the politics of colonial and post-colonial Africa (Fosu-Mensah et al., 1987; Tracey, 1954). They continue to do so in contemporary Africa. Gunner (2019) identified different usages and roles of political music. It can be used as “a resource that knowledgeable citizens draw on at times of pressure or celebration, or even of mourning,” as a frame for identification, or as a “veritable arsenal of energy for those struggling for a better order” (Gunner, 2019: 2). In her study on hip-hop in Africa, Clark (2018: 72) noted that the continent’s artists have not only provided this arsenal of lyrical power to criticise societal grievances but have also taken a more direct role in opposing non-democratic regimes, for instance by creating movements and staging protests. ³ Regarding the cases of Burkina Faso and Senegal, Touré (2017) has offered a decidedly optimistic account of these musicians and their alliances with fellow artists and civil society groups, and posited that these can serve as a crucial corrective compensating for a weak opposition.

Musicians who move from careers as protest singers into the political sphere to organise opposition against a regime make themselves a subject of the study of opposition politics. Oppositional challengers rely on resources to mobilise and push for social change as well as to avert co-optation. Arriola (2012, 2018) has identified the significance of financial resources for the mobilisational and electoral success of opposition parties and coalitions. Using a political economy framework, he argues that African countries that adopted the sweeping economic liberalisation policies of financial institutions in the 1990s depoliticised access to credit and thereby allowed entrepreneurs to more readily support opposition parties and their party- and coalition-building efforts. Paget (2019) has recently employed this framework to analyse the rise and success of Tanzania’s main oppositional party Chama cha Demokrasia na Maendeleo (Chadema) and has related this to the existence of such powerful financiers.

My argument uses the main thrust of these theoretical propositions to make sense of the dynamics of Wine’s movement and his alliance with other activist musicians. I argue that the political activism of musicians reaches its limits when a sitting government can easily threaten the economic base of its oppositional challengers – that is, when the livelihood and status of musicians are at stake. Alliances become fragile once the government can demonstrate that challenging a ruling elite has severe consequences for one’s livelihood, whereas aligning oneself with the government ensures economic prosperity.

By focusing on Wine’s alliance and the effects of patronage, repression, and co-optation on his coalition, I aim to provide some tentative answers as to whether the optimism concerning musicians’ alliances (Touré, 2017) is also justified for Uganda. I further try to contribute to the politico-economic approach to the study of opposition politics by analysing the ways in which governments can re-politicise accumulation and thereby constrain the scope of opposition. The article further complements Osiebe’s Osiebe (2020) more introductory paper on Wine by taking a closer look at People Power and Wine’s alliance with fellow musicians.

The article is divided into four sections. In the next section, I develop the argument in more detail and provide a note on methods and data. The empirical section of this article first introduces Bobi Wine and gives some context on his movement, the alliance, and ideological standpoints. I then shed light on the government’s response to Wine’s challenge before closely studying the dynamics of what I call “activist musicians’ alliance.” The conclusion relates the NRM’s efforts to undermine the power of its oppositional actors to the recent results from the general election on 14 January 2021.

Music, Protests, and Oppositional Politics: A Political Economy Perspective

Musicians build alliances with fellow artists in order to push for social change; artists and their alliances can then be considered to be part of the oppositional forces (Touré, 2017). To understand the dynamics in this oppositional field, I draw inspiration from political economy literature that has identified financial and organisational resources as a central determinant of successful group engagement in social conflict (see Dahl, 1971: 48–61; McCarthy and Zald, 1977: 1216). Arriola (2012, 2018) presents a theory that looks at the politico-economic conditions of opposition politics and coalition-building in Africa. He argues that in those countries where leaders maintained a tight grip on the financial sector following economic liberalisation in the 1990s, business is “induced into remaining politically aligned to the regime without having to be explicitly told to be loyal; their economic self-interest silently guides their political behaviour” (Arriola, 2018: 94). However, where states pursued a more radical agenda of economic liberalisation, a diverse banking sector emerged and entrepreneurs had access to depoliticised credit. Businessmen were thus more willing to support oppositional challengers. Building on this framework, Paget (2019) showed in the case of Tanzania’s main opposition party Chadema that financiers who had benefitted from such liberalisation reforms supported the building of its nationwide party structures. It was in part this organisational infrastructure that made the past electoral successes of Chadema possible (Paget, 2019: 698, 705–706).

Although I draw inspiration from this political economy framework, I shift the focus to those entrepreneurs who move beyond the role of solely acting as financiers of oppositional activities and venture directly into the political sphere. I understand activist musicians as those entrepreneurs who take on a more active role in politics, while I consider musicians largely to be entrepreneurs. Generally, musicians have benefitted from the political and economic liberalisation in the 1990s, as these reforms opened up new channels to distribute and promote music through newly created TV and radio stations. Also, consumer demand for cultural products has increased considerably (Schneidermann, 2014a: 12–13). However, musicians as entrepreneurs probably depend less on access to credit and more on the uninterrupted potential to generate income by selling their music. This is different from classical entrepreneurs, who depend more heavily on loans to finance new production facilities, for instance.

While this framework establishes the larger politico-economic conditions of successful group engagement in social conflict, I connect the approach to studies from area studies and comparative politics that have examined the political role of musicians in society as well as the dynamics of oppositional actors within authoritarian or hybrid regimes. It is important to relate these research strands, as, in the case of Uganda, oppositional actors such as activist musicians and their alliances operate within authoritarian contexts. Hence, they are also subject to government strategies that are generally employed to stifle criticism of the regime.

As Gunner (2019), Englert (2008a), Allen (2004), and Fosu-Mensah et al. (1987) all have noted, apart from fulfilling other important functions, ⁴ political music can be used as a form of protest but can equally be manipulated by a regime to produce or renew its legitimacy. In a case study on musicians’ activism during military rule in Nigeria in the 1980s and 1990s, Olukotun (2002) analysed the crucial role musicians played in voicing and amplifying civil society’s dissatisfaction with military rule. The regime sought to silence critical artists by prohibiting them from playing their music or forcing artists underground. At the same time, Nigeria’s military ruler tried to gain the upper hand in this field of contention by organising a two-million-person march, a public mega-event that also deployed “artistic resources by the state in the search for hegemony” (Olukotun, 2002: 209). Other scholars have pointed to similar dynamics in countries such as Nigeria in the 1970s (Labinjoh, 1982; Langley, 2010; Sithole, 2012), Zimbabwe (Eyre, 2001), Tanzania (Englert, 2008b; Reuster-Jahn, 2008), Ivory Coast (Schumann, 2013, Schumann, 2015), Angola (Moorman, 2014), Kenya (Mutonya, 2004), Cameroon (Nyamnjoh and Fokwang, 2005), and Uganda (Schneidermann, 2014a; Schneidermann and Diallo, 2016). Schumann (2013) has illustrated that a government’s strategy towards musicians can also shift from co-optation to repression once musicians are no longer considered a necessary tool with which to legitimise its rule.

The literature on protests and movements in Uganda has shown that the strategies of patronage, repression, and co-optation are also employed to contain other oppositional activities. Branch and Mampilly (2015: 115) have emphasised the NRM’s key strategy of “a blend of co-optation and force” to manage the political landscape in Uganda. The authors described this as one of the dilemmas of Ugandan politics that restricts the scope of the opposition. Concerning the repressive component of this strategy, they point to the “Walk to Work” protests in 2011, during which the security forces cracked down on demonstrators, thereby thwarting efforts to mobilise continuously. The authors also observe that the movement failed to mobilise other parts of society, most notably the rural population, as it lacked an agenda that went beyond simply criticising corruption and the NRM. Kagoro (2015) has further analysed the strong coercive capacity of the Ugandan state, in which the military, the ruling party, and the presidency are fused, something Branch and Mampilly (2015: 138) term “militarised rule.” As Kagoro (2016) argues, this fusion helps to keep the NRM in power despite the formally liberalised political field in Uganda. In their study of protest dynamics in one of Kampala’s markets, Philipps and Kagoro (2016) illustrate how both the NRM and the police also heavily relied on co-optation and patronage to undercut oppositional momentum. Key figures that could turn locally perceived or real grievances into protests were simply included in patronage networks and co-opted.

Based on these studies, I argue that the political activism of musicians reaches its limits when a sitting government can easily threaten the economic base of its oppositional challengers – that is, where the livelihood and status of musicians are at stake. Alliances then become fragile once the government can demonstrate that challenging a ruling elite has severe consequences for one’s livelihood whereas aligning with the government ensures economic prosperity.

Although I use diverse evidence to illustrate these dynamics, the article mainly draws on data from ethnographic fieldwork conducted from January–March 2020 in Kampala, Uganda. The empirical part of this article is based on a field diary kept during my fieldwork. I combine these data with semi-structured interviews that were conducted with key participants of the movement. Respondents later provided me with further contacts that shared useful insights into the movement and the alliance. I also interviewed journalists, NGO staff, personnel from the diplomatic field, and the police. Together with other primary sources such as newspaper articles, I triangulated the available data in a reiterative-interpretative process.

Since research in non-democratic regimes can be a delicate endeavour, especially research that concerns issues of regime stability, ⁵ I decided to anonymise the majority of my sources due to concerns for the safety of my research participants. ⁶ Research on oppositional actors falls into the category of a regime’s stability and therefore, in my view, justifies the anonymisation of a large number of my sources.

Bobi Wine and People Power: Navigating Between Revolutionary Symbols, African Political Thought, and the Old Policies of President Museveni

After graduating from Makerere University in 2003 with a diploma in Music, Dance, and Drama, Wine could not find a job in the formal sector and instead turned to making music. Produced by his elder brother Eddy Yawe, Wine’s career in Uganda’s music scene soon took off. Wine is now one of the most famous Ugandan artists, blending reggae and afrobeat. He shifted from music to politics in 2017 when he ran as an independent candidate in a parliamentary by-election in Kyadondo County East, a constituency in Wakiso district, which borders the district of Kampala, and also won.

Wine grew up in Kamwokya, one of Kampala’s more impoverished neighbourhoods. His family is closely connected to politics; his father was a district councillor for the Democratic Party – to date one of the main opposition parties – in Uganda’s central region during the 1980–1986 bush war (Pilling, 2019; Schneidermann and Diallo, 2016: 115). The family lost its status over a conflict with the NRM at the end of the bush war. Bobi Wine’s brother Nyanzi Fred Ssentamu was a local councillor 1 for Kamwokya until 2021. Eddy Yawe, Wine’s elder brother and also a successful musician and music producer, tried to venture into politics in 2011 and 2016, when he ran for parliament in Kampala’s urban region. However, he lost in both elections (Schneidermann and Diallo, 2016: 117). Mikie Wine, one of Bobi Wine’s younger brothers, himself a professional musician, also planned to venture into politics in 2021.

After taking power in 1986, rebel-leader-turned-president Yoweri Museveni introduced a “no-party democracy” and effectively banned all political parties with the declared aim of curbing sectarianism and ensuring peace and stability (Kasfir, 1998). Uganda’s “no-party democracy,” in which non-partisan candidates ran in presidential and parliamentary elections, remained in place until the first multi-party elections in 2006 (Carbone, 2008). Despite this political liberalisation, Museveni’s NRM has continued to dominate Uganda’s political arena and consistently won a majority in parliament and the presidency. ⁷

After his election to parliament, Wine formed a movement called People Power in mid-2018. David L. Rubongoya, the Executive Secretary of People Power, described the movement as “a non-violent […], political movement in Uganda which aims at ending the Museveni dictatorship of 34 years […] and of course establishing a government of the people for the people that works basically for their interests.” ⁸ At this point, the movement did not issue any membership cards or collect any fees. ⁹ However, a formalised coordination structure for mobilisation in Uganda and abroad existed. Wine’s fellow artists such as Nubian Li, Ronald Mayinja, Dr. Hildermann, and actor and TV presenter Mary Flavia Namulindwa, had official coordinating functions, ¹⁰ while further popular musicians with whom Wine allied, such as Jose Chameleone and Eddy Kenzo, did not have any official role within the movement. In mid-2020, the People Power movement was then transformed into a political party, the NUP.

What does this movement and now political party stand for? A visit to the headquarters in Kamwokya, Kampala, gives a first impression of the ideological references that Wine makes. The grey walls of the compound were covered with six-foot portraits of world-renowned African intellectuals and politicians. Nelson Mandela’s likeness depicted in a map of the African continent was at the centre of the assembly of these intellectuals. Next to the portrait of an optimistic-looking Mandela was a motto written in Rastafari colours: “A winner is a dreamer who never gives up – Nelson Mandela.” The likenesses of Malcolm X, Bob Marley, Marcus Garvey, Haile Selassie, Muammar al-Ghadaffi, and Che Guevara also adorned the walls. After some additional office space had been constructed on the compound in mid-February 2020, the likenesses of former Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, pan-Africanist Kwame Nkrumah, Martin Luther King, and Thomas Sankara joined the wall. Opposite Sankara and Nkrumah, there was now a mural of Bobi Wine with a raised fist, wearing a white t-shirt, red jacket, and red beret.

In 2019, Bobi Wine had given a concert in Johannesburg and later met with South African opposition politicians; among them was Julius Malema, the leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF). The partly revolutionary borrowings described above, most evidently the red beret but also the central reference to Mandela, evoke comparisons with Malema’s EFF. Asked whether Wine would support Malema’s leftist policies and also had plans to redistribute wealth and income to tackle poverty, for instance through land expropriation as the EFF advocated, he responded:

My brother Julius Malema and his people have their own challenges. They are not grappling with dictatorship. For us, we are fighting with lawlessness, dictatorship, corruption. […] Here, people are poor, because some of them are [pauses] obscenely rich. People are unemployed because jobs are kept for people even when they are in their nappies. The injustice, the inequitable distribution of opportunities here. You know, you cannot get opportunities because you come from the wrong tribe, or from the wrong family. The corruption that is here [pauses]. We live in an immensely rich country. But the policies and the decisions that are in place do not provide for a solution. ¹¹

So far, the main thrust of the campaign of Wine’s movement and his party has been to denounce Museveni as a dictator. He has criticised President Museveni mainly for the lack of political freedoms, public goods, and the persistence of corruption. However, Wine also praised Museveni and the NRM for its “Ten-Point Programme,” formulated in 1986 shortly before taking power. Museveni outlined his central policies in this programme, identifying ten key aspects that would facilitate a broad-based and inclusive post-war government. It emphasised “that the immediate problem of Uganda is not economic, but political” (National Resistance Movement, 1986). Re-establishing peace and security, a broad-based and inclusive government based on democratic principles, and rooting out corruption to provide public goods were the cornerstones of the Ten-Point Programme. The economic component of the manifesto stipulated state industrialisation of certain key industries (iron and steel, chemical products, construction and engineering) but demanded to “let private enterprise deal with the rest” (National Resistance Movement, 1986). However, the advocated mixed-economy approach did not address the question of how other sectors of the economy would eventually industrialise.

Wine had indicated that his movement’s policies would not differ substantially from the 1986 NRM Ten-Point Programme, as he mainly identified the lack of implementation of these policies as the key reason for Uganda’s current socio-economic issues (France 24, 2019). This point was reiterated by his executive secretary.

[T]here is nothing bad in that “Ten-Point Programme”. The first one [goal] was restoration of democracy, ending corruption, ending the misuse of power, ending the misuse of the gun, all those were very good points. And, I think, if all those were implemented, Uganda would be fine. So, the problem of Uganda has not been the question of policy. It’s just been the failure of, [pauses] you know, [pauses] governance. It’s a question of governance, governance, governance. ¹²

NUP’s manifesto starkly resembles the NRM’s Ten-Point Programme and places a strong emphasis on eliminating corruption, downsizing the government and its institutions to finance an expansion of education and health services (National Unity Platform, 2020).

Containing Oppositional Challengers by Threatening Their Economic Base

Building on his familial background in politics and his network in the music industry, Bobi Wine initially assembled an extensive array of internationally successful but also locally based musicians that subscribed to his movement. However, this alliance proved to be short-lived. While the next section will discuss the dynamics of this alliance more closely, this section first analyses the government’s approach to the leader of this alliance, namely Bobi Wine. As a presidential challenger with his movement and now party, Wine remains the central figure of this alliance and has received most of the government’s attention.

Wine has produced several songs that are critical of the NRM and the status quo in Uganda. However, the NRM has mainly taken issue with his critical stance towards the ruling elite since he entered parliament in 2017 and challenged the regime by staging protests in 2018 and 2019. The government’s main approach to Wine has been to ban his live concerts and other mass political events. Since the primary source of income for established musicians in the Ugandan music industry is live shows, ¹³ the prohibition of concerts has thus had a severe impact on Wine, as I will now elaborate. More importantly, this approach has ramifications for artists that are aligned to Wine, as their economic base also becomes threatened.

As only artists signed to international labels gain a significant portion of their income from royalties – Ugandan music is readily available from street shops – every major Ugandan artist has a substantial number of live shows each year. Apart from the main act, several other famous musicians give guest performances during these events. Usually, these major shows attract a large number of fans, which makes them highly lucrative.

Wine’s concerts have traditionally taken place at his property, the One Love Beach, in Busabala by Lake Victoria. Police have blocked these shows since Wine turned from a musician into a politician. Up to October 2019, more than 125 shows of Bobi Wine were reportedly blocked (The East African, 2019). Only on rare occasions has he performed. The police usually argued that Wine’s concerts did not meet the necessary safety requirements (Abdallah and Abdallah, 2018). Organisers of such events must provide a detailed plan of crowd and traffic control to show that adequate security measures are being taken to protect the public. These requirements are mainly stipulated in the Public Order Management Act (Republic of Uganda, 2013). Passed in 2013, the law leaves room for interpretation due to its vague nature. The police can easily invoke a security narrative that associates these live performances but also other mass events of oppositional forces with criminality and violence, which then gives them legitimate reasons to block these events. ¹⁴ Although it cannot be ruled out that crowds might turn violent, or that some of the fans might engage in violent or criminal behaviour, it is noteworthy that the law transfers vast powers to the police to monitor and block public meetings or events.

The law has been used to curb other oppositional events. In one extreme case, the organisers of the Ugandan Fees Must Fall protests had requested permission for a demonstration at Makerere University in October 2019. However, the police decided to ignore the request for this event. When protesters nevertheless went ahead and staged a protest without having acquired the permission of the police, the demonstration was immediately stopped (NTV Uganda, 2019).

Although live performances no longer take place at Wine’s property, the site at Lake Victoria, comprising a restaurant, bar, and football field, is still open to the public. Today, this business can hardly sustain itself due to the absence of live shows. ¹⁵ Blocking these concerts impacts Wine’s income ¹⁶ ; his sources of income have thus shifted. His parliamentary salary, interviews on international news cables, ¹⁷ and the rent he collects from his properties have become more critical. ¹⁸

Although Wine was not allowed to give live performances on his property, his music was still being played across Ugandan TV and radio stations at the time this research took place. Wine’s song “Kyarenga” (“It is too much / It is unbearable”) a critique of socio-economic conditions in Uganda, was even being played on government-owned TV stations. ¹⁹ Moreover, Wine was a regular guest on radio programmes.

Artists who have aligned themselves with People Power and Wine have faced the same government strategy of repression. Since fellow musicians cannot fall back on a parliamentary salary or lucrative contracts for interviews, depriving these artists of the opportunity to give live performances has severe implications, as the following examples illustrate.

Lucky Bosmic Otim, a musician from Northern Uganda, served as People Power’s youth co-ordinator in the Acholi sub-region. He was not only a vocal critic of President Museveni but also attacked musicians who were aligned with the NRM. The government then blocked his national concerts and prevented him from travelling abroad to perform. Also, the security forces reportedly put pressure on him. Otim resolved his precarious situation by meeting President Museveni and shifting his allegiance to the ruling party (Lucima and Wandera, 2020: 14, 34). Otim explained his decision to a journalist:

Unless I sing, my family will not eat; will not have an education, so I decided to become free again since People Power is not catering for my family’s welfare. Anybody who cannot support you in your most difficult hour, that is not your person (friend). (Owiny, 2020: 12)

Shortly after having crossed over to the NRM camp, a significant performance by Otim at a show in Northern Uganda was then cleared by the security forces (Kwo, 2020).

Other artists who openly campaigned for Bobi Wine and praised him as the next president of Uganda have faced a similar situation as Otim. A young popular artist described that he had once sung for President Museveni at a government-funded show several years previously but had seen a sharp decline in bookings for concerts since openly supporting and campaigning for Bobi Wine as a presidential challenger. ²⁰

The examples are representative of the strategies and decisions of musicians weighing up whether to engage in politics or not, as a person who is close to Bobi Wine and NRM musicians alike explained:

As long as you don’t speak about politics, you can still make a lot of money. This is why the other [popular] artists do not want to come out and support Bobi [Wine] publicly, even if they support him privately. ²¹

This statement, but also the examples of Wine, Otim, and another young popular musician described in the previous paragraphs, show that the NRM government regulates musicians’ political activism by threatening their economic base. Blocking these concerts deprives Wine and other activist musicians not only of income but also of a crucial channel for addressing larger audiences on issues that the NRM government might deem politically sensitive. It furthermore precludes other artists aligned to Wine from using their shows for political mobilisation. Apart from repression, the NRM also relies heavily on patronage and co-optation to control activist musicians.

The Crumbling Alliance: Patronage, Repression, and Co-Optation Lead to Disintegration

Bobi Wine initially succeeded in bringing together various artists supporting his thrust for social change. This alliance comprised several significant artists from the Ugandan music scene but also included less well-known musicians. They all shared discontent with the socio-economic conditions in Uganda and subscribed to the ideas of People Power.

Bobi Wine, Eddy Kenzo, Jose Chameleone, and Bebe Cool all play key roles in Uganda’s music scene. All four of them possess their own recording studios and music labels with which several other popular but less successful artists are under contract. Despite the fact that these four leading artists are politically aligned to either the government or the opposition, they have frequently collaborated on a number of songs.

While Bebe Cool supports the NRM, Bobi Wine represents the opposition. Wine initially succeeded in building an alliance with Jose Chameleone and Eddy Kenzo, who openly supported Wine’s presidential ambitions and subscribed to his movement. However, Chameleone’s and Kenzo’s allegiances have proven to be fluid.

In 2015, Jose Chameleone had joined Bebe Cool in praising the government in the 2016 presidential elections. Both artists were the lead musicians of the song “Tubonga Nawe” (“We are with you”) showcasing their support for the ruling party NRM. The song also featured various artists signed to their respective labels. As a gesture to thank these musicians for their support, President Museveni allocated them 400 million Ugandan shillings (UGX). Although the money donated in return for the song was meant to support the entire music industry in Uganda, it was nevertheless explicitly given to those musicians who praised President Museveni and therefore caused conflicts in the music industry over the question of fair distribution (Kigambo, 2015; see also Schneidermann and Diallo, 2016: 99).

However, in 2019, Jose Chameleone turned away from the NRM. Bobi Wine had persuaded Chameleone to support his People Power movement openly (Nakayo, 2019). Eddy Kenzo also joined Bobi Wine and his People Power movement after Wine was attacked and imprisoned in 2018 during a campaign event in Northern Ugandan that turned violent. Eddy Kenzo then released several songs in which he criticised the government over the status quo. With Chameleone and Kenzo, Wine’s alliance had become rather significant in 2019. However, Kenzo jumped ship shortly after he had pledged his support to Wine. After a meeting with President Museveni in late 2019, Eddy Kenzo said that he no longer supported Wine and People Power and would stay away from politics. President Museveni not only promised to support Kenzo’s projects in the music scene financially but also acknowledged Kenzo’s talent and hardworking character (Museveni, 2019; Okello, 2019). Chameleone also distanced himself from the People Power movement (and later the NUP), having initially joined the Democratic Party to run for mayor of Kampala in 2021 but eventually standing as an independent candidate. ²²

In general, artists who have chosen to cross over to the NRM cite “fear, risks to their lives, poverty and need for survival of their families” (Lucima and Wandera, 2020: 34) as their reasons for changing sides. Musicians who had criticised President Museveni were later approached by the NRM and promised financial rewards if they shifted their allegiance. Ronald Mayinja, one of the sub-coordinators for musicians in Uganda, had criticised the government at a show at which President Museveni himself was present; “his life has been threatened a couple of times with some people approaching him to meet the President” (Lucima and Wandera, 2020: 34). Mayinja is a particularly interesting case to illustrate the tactic of repression and co-optation. Wine had appointed Mayinja as one of his People Power sub-coordinators managing the alliance with fellow musicians. After receiving personal threats, Mayinja stopped supporting Bobi Wine and created his own movement called Peace for All. Since he had been interested in running for a seat in parliament in his home constituency in Gomba, he then announced his plans to build a party ahead of the general elections 2021 (Lule, 2020). However, only months later he once again pledged his support to Wine and even became a member of his party, the NUP (Wamala, 2020). This was not the end of the story. He again distanced himself from the NUP after being offered the opportunity to record a song praising President Museveni. In “Muzeyi Akalulu” (“Museveni, the vote is yours”), Mayinja “heaps praise on Museveni as the best president he has ever seen in Uganda” (Kazibwe, 2020), claiming that Museveni is God’s gift to Ugandans and announcing that he would be prepared to mobilise for the NRM. Mayinja justified this changeover: “I got a client from NRM who asked me to do an advert for them and that is what I did” (Kazibwe, 2020).

Bobi Wine has also found it challenging to convince other artists to stay within his movement and later his party, as activist musicians who had criticised the NRM were later approached by the government and promised financial rewards if they shifted their allegiance to the NRM. Hassan Ndugga, also a formerly staunch People Power supporter and musician, explained to journalists that money was his main motivation for coming home to the NRM.

I have joined NRM because I want to become rich. Those criticizing me have never given me even a single penny, not even Bobi Wine, apart from praising me. I don’t want to die poor. (Lucima and Wandera, 2020: 34)

Just like Hassan Ndugga, further famous musicians such as Big Eye and Pastor Wilson Mugembe have also stopped supporting People Power in favour of the NRM.

However, there are also artists and producers who have resisted those offers. For example, a music producer has chosen to keep up his support for Bobi Wine despite the negative effects it has had on his economic situation.

There is a certain guy who gave me an idea. [He said:] “Now, you know, you know a lot about Bobi Wine. Now, when I take you to Museveni you become [exclaims] rich immediately – when you just sing Museveni and talk everything about Bobi Wine, you’ll become rich.” I told him: “You go, you go! Bobi Wine has brought me from far. You go.” Even though I don’t have, I will get money one day. That money is not good. They give me because of talking about Bobi Wine. I don’t want that. I told him to leave me. ²³

An artist who was close to Bobi Wine reported a similar incident in which financial rewards were offered in return for keeping a distance from People Power.

[My manager] again came to me and was like: “There is a deal happening and hey, you can be paid, man.” I ask him: “For what? Yes, I can be paid, I want the money, but for what!” He was like: “Hey, but you just leave those Bobi Wine things and don’t talk about them and just do your thing.” I was like: “Now, do you think is that okay, for you?” He was like: “Hey, we need money, you know. We need to do expensive videos. We need to do… You don’t want to draw your thing, you don’t want to make your thing go. You need a beautiful house!” ²⁴

This “deal” included not only money but also a car, as he went on to explain. Another artist described how after releasing a song that openly questioned whether President Museveni was at all aware of the issues of the more impoverished neighbourhoods of Kampala, he was subsequently offered an opportunity to sing for the president which meant being paid a significant amount of money. ²⁵ Wine himself has also been approached several times to cross over to the NRM. Almost all critical figures around Bobi Wine have been approached by Museveni or his aides and asked to shift their allegiance to the NRM. ²⁶

In efforts to further divide the alliance, the NRM has also directly co-opted some of Wine’s former fellow musicians into the ruling elite. Bobi Wine had publicly branded himself as bringing the “Ghetto” – a signifier for the impoverished urban settlements in Kampala – to parliament. In Kamwokya, where Wine grew up, people call him the “Ghetto President.” To push back Wine’s popularity among the youth, Museveni established two NRM empowerment offices for the youth in Kibuye and Katwe. These offices are headed by two former close allies of Wine – Buchaman and Full Figure – who have both been co-opted by the ruling elite to ensure the NRM’s presence in the “Ghetto” and also to give inhabitants a direct link to the president. In addition to Buchaman and Full Figure, Catherine Kusasira, another famous musician, also serves as a presidential envoy to mobilise the youth for the NRM. By appointing presidential envoys, President Museveni has tried to portray himself as relating to the issues of the more impoverished neighbourhoods. A graffito on one of the walls of the recently established Kibuye empowerment office reads: “M7 man of ghetto [sic!]” (Shaban, 2019).

Buchaman belonged to a core team of musicians performing at Wine’s concerts, the two having collaborated on several songs. He also served as the former vice-president of Wine’s recording label Firebase Records. However, after Buchaman and Wine had fallen out with each other, Buchaman was later appointed as the NRM’s presidential advisor on “Ghetto Affairs” for Kibuye. According to a DJ and music producer who is close to both musicians, switching allegiance has improved Buchaman’s economic situation as well as his reputation. Inhabitants now address him too as “Ghetto President.” However, as the DJ and music producer goes on to explain, the appointment of Buchaman as presidential advisor created controversy over who is the real “Ghetto President.”

[W]hen you hear Bobi Wine [pauses] still claims to be the “Ghetto President”. Buchaman is also the “Ghetto President”. That is separation among ourselves, ’cause we all come from the ghetto and all these systems are divide and rule. If you divide them, you can rule them. If we are separated [pauses], united you stand strong. Divided you fall. At the end of the day, we as the ghetto youths are the ones who are going to lose. And most of the times, they’ve [referring to the NRM] been keeping us behind. It’s only in these times when they need our votes, is when they are trying to put us on the front line. ²⁷

The second NRM empowerment office in Katwe is headed by Full Figure. Full Figure was one of the most outspoken critics of Museveni before she crossed over to the NRM and even hailed Bobi Wine as the next president of Uganda. However, after she too had fallen out with Bobi Wine, Museveni appointed her as the presidential advisor on youth affairs. The resources she then received were intended to mobilise support among the youth for the NRM. ²⁸

The appointments of Full Figure, Buchaman, and Kusasira are far from symbolic, as these leaders in their respective communities offer residents of the individual neighbourhoods a direct channel to the government through which to voice their grievances and seek help. ²⁹

The combination of the strategies of repressing key musicians, enticing artists to change their allegiance by including them in patronage networks, and co-opting former allies of Wine directly into the ruling elite eventually led to the disintegration of Wine’s alliance.

Conclusion

This article has focused on musicians as forces for social change. By concentrating on Ugandan artist Bobi Wine and his alliance, this article has illustrated musicians’ agency in mobilising for social change and the NRM’s strategy for containing these efforts. My argument has drawn inspiration from Arriola’s (2012, 2018) political economy framework for the study of opposition politics and combined these propositions with further literature on protests and movements in Uganda (Branch and Mampilly, 2015; Philipps and Kagoro, 2016) and music and politics (see especially Olukotun, 2002; Schumann, 2013). I have argued that the political activism of musicians reaches its limits when a sitting government can easily threaten the economic base of its oppositional challengers – that is, when the livelihood and status of musicians are at stake. Alliances become fragile once the government can demonstrate that challenging a ruling elite has severe consequences for one’s livelihood, whereas aligning with the government ensures economic prosperity.

Although Wine succeeded in allying with fellow musicians, the resulting activist musicians’ alliance proved to be short-lived. Oppositional challengers require financial resources to effectively engage in social conflict. As I have shown in this case study, the NRM has deprived Bobi Wine and the other activist musicians of a crucial income-generating activity, namely live performances. Foremost, Wine himself has been affected by this strategy. However, fellow artists who openly embraced Bobi Wine and his People Power movement have also been targets of this repression. Several of Wine’s supporters have shifted their allegiance or abstained from politics, as this ensures a continuous flow of income from concerts. Fellow artists could not easily fall back on other income sources that could compensate for the loss of shows. The cases of Lucky Bosmic Otim, Ronald Mayinja, and Hassan Ndugga are indicative of this strategy of repression and patronage. Depriving Bobi Wine of crucial resources by banning his concerts has also made it difficult for him to keep activist musicians within his movement, key collaborators having been enticed by the NRM to change sides. Wine has lacked the resources to keep these artists within People Power. The NRM has further destabilised Wine’s alliance by co-opting two of his former key allies – Buchaman and Full Figure – into the ruling elite. Although some individuals have continued to keep up their support for Wine despite the negative impact on their economic situation, it is evident that Wine’s alliance has disintegrated.

Wine later transformed his People Power movement into the NUP party to challenge Museveni at the ballot box on 14 January 2021. In important respects, 2021’s presidential election resembles previous polls under multi-party politics in 2006, 2011, and 2016 – not only in terms of the tactics that were used to contain the opposition but also regarding the election outcomes. Bobi Wine’s election result of 35.1 per cent in this year’s presidential poll resembles the election outcomes of 2016 and 2006, in which the main contender, the FDC’s Kizza Besigye, gained 35.6 and 37.4 per cent, respectively. Although NUP has won fifty-seven seats in Uganda’s 11th parliament (Electoral Commission, 2021a) – a significant number and unprecedented for an opposition party – Wine’s and NUP’s support base presently seem to lie overwhelmingly in only one region, Uganda’s Central region. Notwithstanding the fact that, overall, the opposition did make inroads into the electorate (the other opposition parties more or less retained their number of seats in the parliament compared to the previous legislative period ³⁰ ), the ruling party holds 316 out of 499 elected seats and therefore still has a comfortable majority in parliament. Compared to the previous parliament, the NRM’s majority has decreased from 71 per cent in 2016 to 63 per cent today (Electoral Commission, 2021a). The NRM also held a majority of less than 70 per cent in parliament, whereas it represented 67 per cent of the delegates in Uganda’s 8th parliament (2006–2011).

Especially since the election in January 2021, Wine has dedicated his time mainly to his political involvement and focused less on music – partly because of the demanding political schedule, but also because, at the time of writing, his long-time collaborator Nubian Li and one of his producers, Dan Magic, still remain in prison. ³¹ How and to what extent NUP can capitalise and mobilise on a constant basis beyond its strongholds remains to be seen. In general, seemingly competitive elections with a significant share of the vote going to the main oppositional contender are characteristic of all previous elections in Uganda, but should not distract from the fact that the NRM has consistently stressed that as a former rebel movement it will not cede power to the opposition.

In general, observers concur that repression, patronage, and co-optation have played a decisive role in staving off the oppositional challenge from Bobi Wine. The relevance of the political economy argument that I have illustrated here also becomes clear when one considers the ultimate pre-election period and the difficulties Wine’s party encountered in terms of funding. Shortly after its foundation, the NUP vetted candidates for parliamentary posts and initially endorsed 427 flagbearers. Technically, the party could have fielded candidates in almost every electoral constituency. However, slightly more than half of these endorsed candidates were actually nominated for the parliamentary elections. Wine cited the nomination fees of three million UGX as a factor hindering the nomination of all endorsed candidates (Mufumba, 2020). As a new party with no representatives in parliament, the NUP party was not eligible to benefit from public funds for political parties. Instead, it relied heavily on foreign sources. According to a recent report by the Alliance for Finance Monitoring (2020: 26), 60 per cent of the NUP’s funding came from the diaspora in the United States and the United Kingdom. The resources from the diaspora played an essential role in the establishment of the party and its campaigning.

Touré (2017: 74) has described similar alliances and movements in Burkina Faso and Senegal as transformative forces. The NRM reacted to Wine’s efforts to push for social change by employing strategies it has also used to keep other oppositional challengers in check: patronage, repression, and co-optation. It remains to be seen what the trajectory of Wine’s NUP party will be in the mid to long term. Notably, Wine lacks an alternative programme that goes beyond a general critique of the NRM, corruption, and the shortage of public goods. Although earlier protests and movements had successfully mobilised Ugandans in urban settings, such as the “Walk to Work” protests in 2011, repression was not the only reason they broke down; mobilisers also failed to come up with a programme that could have ensured continuous mobilisation of people by including widespread grievances in a popular political programme that could relate to urban and rural settings alike (Branch and Mampilly, 2015: 140–145). The similarities of Wine’s People Power programme or the NUP manifesto and the NRM’s policies could be taken as an indication that despite the will to act as a force for social change, Wine’s movement might also run into difficulties when it comes to mobilising people continuously, as it is yet to develop a popular programme.