Bobi Wine has been shot at, tortured, beaten, and bombed in his quest to unseat Uganda’s dictatorial president Yoweri Museveni. But before he became the leader of the opposition in the East African nation of over 47 million people, he was the country’s biggest musical icon.
Born and raised in the Kamwokya slum in the capital city of Kampala, Robert Kyagulani began making music under the name Bobi Wine in the 1990s, rising to fame for charismatic lyricism and a style that incorporated influences from Afrobeats and dancehall. After an encounter with an unscrupulous policeman opened his eyes to Uganda’s corruption, he decided to shift his music’s focus.
“I decided to change my music from entertainment to edutainment. I started speaking for the ghetto people,” Kyagulani tells GRAMMY.com.
In the 2010s, Kyagulani took things even further by entering politics, winning a seat in Uganda’s national parliament and opposing the efforts of authoritarian president and former general Museveni. After the president successfully removed constitutional age restrictions to set himself up as president for life, Kyagulani decided to leverage his stardom and run for president to unseat Uganda's dictatorial leader and prevent him from winning an illegitimate sixth term.
Nominated for Best Documentary at the 2024 Oscars, Bobi Wine: The People’s President shows Bobi and his National Unity Platform struggle against an increasingly violent backlash from the regime in the leadup to the 2021 election. The documentary was directed by Moses Bwayo and Christopher Sharp.
Even before deciding to run, Kyagulani had been arrested and tortured by the regime. But things would get even worse as the campaign went on. Staffers were abducted by the military and police, which used COVID restrictions as a pretext to clamp down on dissent. Kyagulani sent his children out of the country for their safety. In one scene, he’s dragged from his car while giving an interview to international journalists; in another he and his staff barely survive a grenade explosion.
After all this, it’s a miracle Wine is still alive. In the three years since the election, in which Musuveni declared victory after taking down the country’s internet, Kyagulani says the film has been “a lifeline,” and that the international attention it’s received has held back the regime. Speaking to GRAMMY.com from Los Angeles ahead of the Oscars, Kyagulani says he’s adamant about what he’ll do when the regime eventually falls.
“When I become president – because I know someday I will – the first thing I will do in the first 100 days is to make sure I don't stay president.”
This interview has been edited for brevity.
When you began to use music to address the political situation in Uganda, who did you take influence from? Who, as in artists, musicians, political thinkers, who did you want to channel to send your message out to the people in Uganda?
It was not only musicians, it was also people in sports like Muhammad Ali, and activists. But most importantly musicians like Bob Marley and even Tupac. They had an influence on the people. They had the ears of the people. While politicians struggled to speak to people and get people to act, the musicians would actually get people to act.
African music has become especially popular in America recently because of the Afrobeats movement and figures like Burna Boy and WizKid. How do you feel that your music fits into that larger movement, especially coming from East Africa, which is a totally different side of the continent?
I'm very, very glad that African music is finally getting the attention of America and the West, the most important population, the one that makes decisions that can save and destroy us. So I only wish that the African artists of today use the opportunity and the attention they have to speak out for the people of Africa, so that we don't only become known as entertainers.
Can you talk about the ways that you have used music as a tool for political action? You've used it to attack corruption in Uganda and gain supporters, but you've also used it to spread awareness of COVID-19, as you did in the documentary. How does that fit in with your evolution from an entertainer to a politician?
Before, I was singing about cars and money. For a long time I was a young man like any other. But something happened to me, I got into a situation where I was bullied and harassed and humiliated just because I had a nice car. And this was being done to me by a security officer. So when this happened to me, I remembered how I had watched it happen to other people while I was not speaking out.
Since then, I decided to change my music from entertainment to edutainment. I started speaking for the ghetto people. I realized that my music is not only for entertainment — in any case, I was very successful. I had made a lot of money and changed my own life. But I thought there should be a bigger meaning to my music, there should be a bigger cause to my music. There should be bigger benefits, not only financial benefits to me, but also transformational benefits to the ghetto back home where I come from.
I wanted to inspire others and show them that this microphone that we have, this platform that we have, is a very powerful platform that can change the world if politicians have not represented the common people.
The artist doesn't have to get a degree to speak for people. They don't have to be members of Parliament to speak for people. You will find one artist can have a bigger following than a president or a minister. So I thought we could use that platform to speak for our people, to speak about corruption, to speak about behavioral change and transformation, but most importantly about freedom — especially in Uganda, where the president has been in power for almost 40 years, and he does that through arresting political opponents, killing activists, and jailing opponents. Nothing could speak for them more than the music.
I do want to ask you a little bit about the sound that you have pursued because it contains elements of Afrobeats and hip-hop, as well as dancehall, reggae, and calypso. Where do you take the deepest influences from?
I would say Afrobeat, because Afrobeat just means a beat from Africa. But even Afrobeat differs between West Africa, East Africa, to North Africa which has more of an Arab influence. So my music is more of a fused Afropop, but I also get a heavy influence from Jamaican music, from reggae and dancehall, especially the dancehall of the ‘90s, which is when I started singing. So it's a fusion, it’s where Africa meets the Caribbean.
Uganda is a very big country, it's a place of many different groups, ethnicities, and languages. How do you think music plays a part in crossing those divides and uniting people, especially for a political cause like you've pursued?
Music is very powerful, especially in our generation (Bobi is 42 years old), where it is hard to limit it. The media takes music across borders. There's always been music like mine that speaks for the people, music like the great Fela Kuti from Nigeria, Philly Lutaaya from Uganda, and many others. But now that we have new technology such as social media, musicians have played a great role.
During the #EndSARS protests in Nigeria to end police brutality, when the artists came out the government listened to the people and sanity was restored. So music continues to play a big role in Uganda alone. Now, the artists are the new advocates of society, and it’s good that they are usually grounded, and people are more represented through the music. But I must also say that many artists, after discovering the power of music and how much it can influence society, have unfortunately decided to exchange it for money.
Since the dictators recognize how powerful music is, now a huge amount of Ugandan taxpayer money is going to a group of artists whose job is to sing against the freedom of the people of Uganda, to campaign against any kind of change, and make sure that they paint a rosy picture for the region.
There were a lot of very difficult moments captured throughout the film. What was it like to have cameras following you when you were in dramatic or difficult situations with your family, for instance?
Well, of course, we did not give complete access to the cameras, but with time, we completely forgot the cameras existed. These people, the cameramen that followed us across the world, they became friends. And later, they became comrades in the struggle. When we were beaten (by the police), they were not scared. They were beaten, they were jailed, they were tortured. One of them, Moses Bwayo, was shot in the face. And right now he cannot live in Uganda, he’s seeking political asylum in America. So it was equally hard for them.
They realized that they are not only filming a politician, or a person pursuing a certain goal. They're filming the revolution happening right in front of their faces. Sometimes we kept teasing ourselves, saying that the revolution will be televised, because there was always a camera around. But we completely forgot about the cameras, everybody was just in the moment.
A lot has happened since the end of the documentary, which ends as the 2021 election is wrapping up. Can you summarize what happened after?
After the election, the cameras went away, but the action continued. It became even more vicious. At the time, the camera was our only security. We probably all would have been killed, but whenever [the police and army] saw a camera, they tended to restrain themselves, especially because most of the footage ended up on social media.
After the election, the cameras went down, the international attention shifted somewhere else, somewhere more important and active. But the aggression back in Uganda continued. Abductions continued. Many of my friends are missing — three of them were abducted only three days ago. There are those that were abducted three, four weeks ago and they’re still missing. Hundreds of families are reporting their loved ones abducted for having supported me in the election.
The crackdown continues because the regime has never seen such an immense uprising of young people. They’re trying to avoid it. They’re trying to nip it in the bud. So the murders continue.
I’m glad that now, through this film, we’ve had the attention of the world. That helps us. For example, I was always getting put under illegal house arrest. Whenever I go back home, often I’m pulled off the plane, put under military detention or house arrest. In fact, on the day this film was announced as an Oscar nominee, I was under house arrest. Me and my wife and children had just escaped out of my house and we were hiding from the military when the announcement came out, the government saw in the international media that the film might be nominated. Three hours later, the military withdrew from my house and they let me free. So this film for us is a lifeline.
*Bobi in the studio | Southern Films*
Do you have any plans to attend the Oscars? Have you been invited?
Yes, I’m already preparing my nice African suit! I’ll be there with my wife; I hope the government of Uganda does not block me from attending.
You’re in Los Angeles now, you could feasibly stay there until the Oscars.
Yeah, but I don’t want to live in fear! It’s my right to enter and leave [Uganda] any time I want.
Do you think in hindsight, there was any chance of winning the election in 2021? Or do you think that the crackdown from Museveli would have come no matter what?
We won the election, even though he took down the entire internet. Do I think there was a chance for General Museveli to respect the voice of the people and hand over power peacefully? There would have been a chance, only if the international community stood with the people of Uganda, only if the UN stood with the people of Uganda, if all the world democracies say we are not going to respect a country that disrespects democracy. But unfortunately, that has not been the case for a long time.
And I hope this film also touches the morality of Western leaders, and tells them to stand by the values that they profess. That would earn us democracy. And democracy should be supported everywhere, not only in Africa. You don't take democracy for granted because you can very easily lose it.
Obviously, the main goal of the 2021 campaign was to remove Museveni from office. But did you think at all about what you would do as president? What policies would you have pursued, and what would you try to do for the people of Uganda?
Definitely, yes the main agenda was to remove General Museveni, because it is the only roadblock to the new Uganda, the free Uganda. When I become president — because I know someday I will — the first thing I will do in the first 100 days is to make sure I don't stay president. We want to reduce the power of the president to damage the country, and we’ll put that power in institutions, re-empower the Parliament and the judiciary so that they’re not in the pockets of one person.
And of course, we will try to attack corruption, because corruption is the biggest problem, and re-divert our resources to schools and health care. In Uganda, we lose 200 children and 20 women giving birth every day, according to statistics from the Ministry of Health. Three hundred children are projected to die every day under the age of five in Uganda. The healthcare system is [so] terrible that the ministers and the political elite get their medical attention in America, in Europe. No politicians in Uganda or political elites get their medical attention from Uganda because the hospitals are messed up. So we want to fix the hospitals, and also fix the schools and fix the roads. [We want to] make sure we have the rule of law and respect human rights, make it not a crime to disagree with that. And the rest will come.
We have a manifesto that explains this entire program, talking about what I think a new Uganda would look like. But in brief, I can tell you, it will be the coolest country in the world, with the coolest president, who respects young people, who respects innovation, who presents his country not as a failed state but as a model for Africa. We would love [to be] a country that relates very well with the international community. Imagine a president of a country coming to Hollywood to give a performance. That is what Africa will be known for, not for child labor, not for [poor] maternal health, not for corruption, not for wars. No, we want to have Uganda as a model for [the continent].
Ugandans are very smart, but many of us have had to run away from Uganda out of fear for their lives or their employees. I want to bring back all those people and have them build our country. We will have better trust in the world. We have big resources, we have gold, we have oil. We have the youngest population in the world! Man, you would see a transformed country! You would see Wakanda! For me, my main goal is to build a Wakanda, in Uganda.
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