Bobi Wine, the main challenger to President Yoweri Museveni’s 40-year rule in Uganda, drew vast crowds as he brought his campaign to the capital Kampala on Monday ahead of January’s election. Wine, whose real name is Robert Kyagulanyi, is a 43-year-old singer turned politician who has become hugely popular among Ugandan young people but faces a deeply entrenched political machine led by the 81-year-old Museveni. Tens of thousands swarmed around Wine’s motorcade as it moved around Kampala’s suburbs for the first time since he confirmed his second run for the presidency. Wine said he began the day at the Luzira maximum security prison just outside the city, where several officials and supporters of his National Unity Platform are being held. “The time has come for the dictator to go,” Wine told a roaring crowd in one suburb, who waved placards, banners and flowers in his party’s red and black. “I have just been to Luzira and I met some of your parents, brothers and sisters, your uncles and aunties who are in prison because they hold different political opinions and support the change we want,” he said.”(They) told me they are in prison but their spirit is not broken and the call for change is not negotiable, but a must,” he added. Hundreds of heavily armed police and military personnel manned the route, which passed through the streets despite an earlier police order to keep rallies to designated zones to avoid blocking roads. Police used teargas at one location in a bid to prevent them from reaching the next campaign stop, an AFP journalist saw.Wine lost to Museveni in 2021 elections that were marred by widespread reports of irregularities and severe violence from security forces.He has been arrested numerous times and has alleged torture in police and military custody. Museveni’s son and Ugandan army chief General Muhoozi Kainerugaba has repeatedly threatened to behead Wine on social media.The president’s campaign has focused on “protecting the gains” of his four-decade rule and “driving Uganda to high middle-income status”. Currently, around one in six people live in poverty in the East African nation.Museveni remains popular for having liberated the country from brutal dictatorial rule in the 1980s, but is accused of increasing authoritarianism of his own in later years. Last year, another long-time political rival, Kizza Besigye, was abducted in neighbouring Kenya and brought to Uganda where he faces a trial for treason and the potential death penalty.
