By Tirthankar ChandaPosted on 27-08-2018Modified on 27-08-2018 at 19:23

Under pressure from artists around the world who signed a petition demanding the release of Ugandan singer and MP Bobi Wine, detained since August 14 and charged with treason, a court in northern Uganda has released him on bail on Monday. . Idol of the Ugandan youth that he made dance on the catchy rhythms of his engaged songs, the singer has imposed himself, since his election to Parliament a year ago, as a major figure of the opposition. President Yoweri Museveni's virulent detractor, he has campaigned for the retirement of the latter in power for 40 years. Bobi Wine has become the enemy to tear down the aging and desperate regime, more concerned with perpetuating power and exploiting the country's wealth than dealing with unemployment, poverty and corruption. Portrait of the artist who makes Kampala tremble.

He calls himself "ghetto president" or "ghetto president", referring to the slum in central Kampala where he grew up. His nickname also refers to his commitment to the poor in his country. This engagement, the Ugandan singer Bobi Wine , Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu of his real name, has been expressing it for fifteen years through musical compositions tinged with Afrobeat and African reggae, which make young people dance with lyrics denouncing poverty and poverty. social injustice.

His tracks are titled "Obululu Tebutwawula", "Tugambire Ku Jennifer" or "Dembe" and are mostly protest songs in luganda that point to discrimination and exploitation by the economic and political elite. They call on people to play a more active role in the fight against corruption and neglect. In one of his latest clips titled "Freedom" or "Freedom", the man imagines himself behind bars, singing on a reggae rhythm: " When the going gets tough, the tough must get going, especially when leaders become misleaders "(" It's hard for hard guys to get along, especially when the guides are training you on dead ends ").

A premonitory clip since from August 14 and for two weeks, the artist elected MP a year ago, found himself behind bars on charges of illegal possession of firearms. As Bobi Wine enjoys enormous popularity in his country because of his music, the announcement of his detention triggered spontaneous demonstrations in the streets of Kampala, but also in neighboring Kenya where the artist is well known.

Mobilization

At the same time, all over the world, the personalities of cultural, political and associative life have mobilized. The petition demanding the release of the artist was initiated by Rikki Stein, the manager of another great dissident singer, Nigerian Fela Kuti. It has been signed by men and women as prominent as Wole Soyinka, Femi Kuti, Angélique Kidjo, Toumani Diabaté and many others including non-African musicians who have sometimes shared the platform with the Ugandan singer.

Under pressure, Kampala had to back down. The court dropped the initial charges against Wine, while presenting new charges charging the treasonable star, a charge punishable by death in Uganda. Bobi Wine and 32 other opposition supporters are now implicated in a stone-throwing campaign against President Yoweri Museveni's convoy while traveling in northwestern Uganda. The head of state had come to support the candidate of the National Resistance Movement (NRM), the party in power, to a partial legislative election.

Pending his new hearing before a civilian magistrate scheduled for August 30, the singer-deputy was released Monday, August 27 by a court in the north of the country where he was detained. His family is worried about his health as a result of the brutality he claimed to have suffered during his detention. His family and lawyers say he was beaten and tortured in detention, charges denied by the authorities. Already the day before her arrest, Wine had tweeted the photo of her driver shot dead by the police, explaining that the bullet that killed her driver was meant for her.

Proponents of Ugandan politician Robert Kyagulanyi, known as Bobi Wine, recently arrested, set fire to tires and wooden paddles blocking traffic in the center of the capital, Kampala, Uganda on August 20 2018. © STRINGER / AFP

ubuesque

According to observers, the end of this politico-legal case for the least ugly is that the growing popularity of the singer worries the regime, especially the head of state. " Force is to acknowledge that the burst of Bobi Wine has shaken the NRM which holds the reins of power in Kampala for three decades , writes freelance journalist Michael Mutyaba in African Arguments . That's why the police reacted with such violence against him last week . "

Heading his country with an iron fist since 1986, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni , 74, is in his fifth presidential term. He has just amended the Constitution and removed the age limit of 75 years to be able to run for the presidential election of 2021. The applicant repeats at will: " How could I leave a banana plantation that I planted and who is starting to bear fruit? "

To continue in power, the man has successfully neutralized the traditional opposition, as evidenced by the defeat of the historical opposition candidate Kizza Besigye in the four successive presidential elections since 2001. This former personal physician of the autocrat Museveni, became one of the regime's most fervent opponents, paid a high price for his dissent. He had to endure arrests, physical aggression and other indignities, which led him to exile himself.

" Violence is the usual lot of opponents in Uganda ", decrypts under the seal of anonymity another specialist in Ugandan politics. Which would explain, according to this expert, their lack of taste to continue the fight. They are all the more frustrated that the party in power systematically rigs elections, changing the results with impunity in their favor. And the expert continues: " Now, Bobi Wine is an atypical opponent in the Ugandan context. He is protected by his celebrity. Idol of young people because of her songs that speak to them of love, girls, but also of their company blocked because of the aging leaders and without any vision. "

Relatively young himself, only 36 years old, Wine stormed politics a little over a year ago by running for a partial legislative ballot in the capital. On June 29, 2017, he was elected MP with 77% of the votes. In the space of twelve months, he changed the political situation by sponsoring the anti-Museveni movements both in the very precincts of Parliament where he opposed the constitutional amendment removing the age limit of presidential candidate, just as in his public meetings where he openly demands the overthrow of the regime.

Posters featuring Bobi Wine bloom across the country during the June 2017 partial election contest. © Isaac Kasamani / AFP

The meetings of the dissident MP are punctuated by his campaign slogan, "people power - our power", which has become the trademark of the politician. His activism earned him to be treated by the head of state, not without a certain condescension, " the unruly MP, our grandson, this Bobi Wine ".

Like a novel

The story of the social rise of this child from slums to Parliament, through music studios around the world, reads like a novel. Born in 1982, Bobi Wine grew up in Kamwokya, one of the largest slums in Kampala . His father, Jackson Wellington Ssentamu, is an African-style patriarch, with three wives and thirty children. But it was this polygamous father who had fought himself during the civil war tearing Uganda apart in the 1970s and 1980s, who introduced the young man to the history of ideas in Africa by telling him about Pan-Africanism. , fights of Mandela and Martin Luther King. He wanted his son to study law. A good student, he graduated from Makerere University where he was more oriented towards artistic studies, specializing in music, theater and dance.

From an early age, son Ssentamu also had the dream of becoming a singer. It is at the death of his mother when he is 15 years old, that he seriously embarks on the musical career. To forget his grief? Still, is that success came quickly, with the song "Akagoma" meaning "The Drum", recorded in 2002.

In the context of the Ugandan music industry, which was struggling at the time to emancipate itself from the domination of Congolese music in order to promote local singers and Ugandan musical resources, the song "Le Tambour" became a tube and launched the career of its author. The young Bobi Wine has built its reputation by producing flashy clips based on Jamaican reggae in which alternate cars, sequins and girls almost naked. They will make his fortune, making him the first millionaire artist of Kampala, whose life and female conquests are now spread in local tabloids. His talent is rewarded with the "Pearls of Music Awards", the most prestigious Ugandan national award that Wine has won by no less than four times.

General view of Kampala, Uganda. © Thomas Trutschel / Getty Images

Despite the success, the young man does not forget his slum of childhood and adolescence, where he enjoys a real popularity thanks to his music, but also because of his charitable actions. He pays for the studies of idle young people who hang out in the streets, and helps them to give free rein to their musical talents in studios that he finances. At the same time, he changed the themes of his own music, renouncing frivolous subjects and becoming a true champion of the fight against social and political injustices. He no longer sings to entertain, but to offer what he calls " edutainment, " a contraction of education and entertainment. His songs target the powerful and their apathy towards the condition of the left-out. They particularly affect the youth who represent, in Uganda, one of the youngest countries on the African continent, between 75 and 80% of the population.

The 2011 and 2016 elections, tainted with suspicion of fraud and won by the ruling power, are a turning point in political and social life. The country is in the throes of violence and authoritarianism, having experienced for almost two decades an average growth of 7%. Museveni and its economic management in Uganda are highlighted as models of good governance by international organizations and the major powers, who turn a blind eye to the corruption that plagues the country, gaudy inequalities and rising authoritarianism.

The re-election in 2016 of Yoweri Museveni to the presidency, a post he has held for four decades, is a turning point for Bobi Wine regularly asked by his young admirers to embody their aspirations at the highest summit of the state. A year later, in favor of a partial legislature in the popular district of Kyadondo East , on the outskirts of Kampala, the singer took the step and presented himself to the deputation. He cuts his dreadlocks and is dressed in a sober suit, he campaigning not hesitating to go door-to-door explaining, as he did in the columns of the French bi-monthly magazine "Society Why " music was not enough " " to change things ".

He will be, as we know, triumphantly elected, with nearly 80% of votes. The rest belongs to history.

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