In Uganda, an opposition is attempting against all odds to unseat an authoritarian who has held firmly on to the reins of power for nearly 40 years. Led by the charismatic rock-star-turned-activist Bobi Wine, it has employed non-confrontational Gandhi-like tactics in an effort to defeat the regime in the forthcoming 15 January presidential election. We live in an age of geopolitical turmoil and distraction.
Around us is a “new normal” – war in the centre of Europe, populist politics, visceral nationalism, xenophobic reaction to immigration, trade wars, the decline of UN authority, the weakening of international law, difficulties in distinguishing fake from real news, and the emergence of an illiberal world order shaped more by the needs of autocrats than the values of democrats. But there is hope. And it comes from an unlikely place – Uganda – where an opposition is attempting against all odds to unseat an authoritarian who has held firmly onto the reins of power for nearly 40 years.
The opposition, led by the charismatic rock-star-turned-activist Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, better known by his stage name Bobi Wine, has resorted to nonconfrontational Gandhi-like tactics in defeating the regime in the forthcoming 15 January presidential election. Wine recently contributed to aPlaybook for Democrats, which outlines how democrats can use media and other democratic tools to unseat authoritarians like ageing Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni. The former general overthrew the government of Milton Obote in taking office 40 years ago this month.
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Multiparty democracy, which was reintroduced in Uganda in 2006, has been steadily eroded as Museveni has sought to stay in power. In the run-up to the January 2021 election more than 50 people were killed in a process that unsurprisingly was widely believed to have been rigged. Uganda may be nominally a democracy, but it is run by people who wear the same old boots.
Ahead of the 2021 poll, Wine was arrested for allegedly violating Covid-19 protocols and released, only to be rearrested. In an eerie repeat of the fate of Dr Kizza Besigye – the veteran opposition leader who stood against Museveni in 2001, 2006, 2011 and 2016, every occasion being marked by fraud and violence – following the contentious 2021 poll Wine was placed under house arrest and his home surrounded during the counting process. Already this time, the regime has increased its harassment of the opposition, interfering with rallies, hindering Wine’s movements and randomly firing teargas at opposition events, if nothing else to remind Uganda’s 46 million people who is in charge.
In the run-up to the poll over the next two weeks we can expect worse as Museveni’s son, also a general, Muhoozi Kainerugaba, stamps his particularly brutal brand on the proceedings. Known for his Tweetstorms, including his threats tobehead Wineorhang Besigye, who has been imprisoned on treason charges for more than a year, members of his Patriotic League of Uganda are manoeuvring into positions of power. For all of the familiarity of violence, patronage and interference, the succession race makes this election a little different.
If Muhoozi were to take over, Western actors would wish they had spoken up sooner rather than too late. Never mind his rants against Wine and others. In March 2022,he expressed support for the Russian invasion of Ukraine, tweeting that “the majority of mankind (that are non-white) support Russia’s stand in Ukraine”.
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