OBBO: Wine is city’s superhero...Besigye: An old martyr

To the northeast of the Ugandan capital Kampala, there is a frenetically busy market town called Kalerwe.

Over the Christmas holiday and into the New Year, it was even busier. There is an insane roundabout that is always chock a block. In many places such roundabouts will have monuments of long-forgotten heroes, or some tacky sculpture of some animal.

The Kalerwe one has two peculiar “monuments”. One is a big armoured vehicle with a menacing plough attached to its front. The other is an anti-riot water cannon. The difference is that these are the real things, with heavily armed police seated around waiting to spring to action.

They have been there for nearly 10 years and have become a fixture. They are a sore symbol of the iron fist that President Yoweri Museveni government’s has deployed against the opposition to his long rule that has grown over the last 18 years.

They are also a dramatic illustration of the regime’s abject inability, when challenged, to offer an imaginative solution except death, injury, or jail, to the many demands of one of the world’s youngest nations and fastest growing populations.

Kalerwe and the wider area around is opposition territory. To the masses there, deep down the permanent police presence with such firepower must feel like an occupation every morning as they troop to their daily struggles.

Kalerwe has erupted into deadly anti-regime violence several times in the past. It was mostly in support of ever tormented and opposition leader and long-term Museveni’s rival—Dr Kizza Besigye. In the last two years, allegiances have shifted somewhat, and their new hero is musician-turned MP Robert Kyagulanyi (more commonly known as Bobi Wine).

With his “People Power” movement, Wine is the Kampala regime’s new nightmare; and he has many scars, handcuff marks on his wrists, and trips behind bars to show for it.

Besigye’s home is not too far from Kalerwe. For nearly 10 years, there has been a police cordon around his house, and spikes at the front of his gate, to prevent him leaving, and guests entering, as he serves out the longest on-off “house arrest” ever imposed on a Ugandan politician.

There have been countless scuffles, broken windscreens, and casualties at Besigye’s gate and fence. Wine too lives in what has become a revolutionary zone.

I inquired about why the militant youth are gravitating towards Wine, and away from Besigye who has put in longer hours in the trenches against Museveni.

The answer was surprising. I was told that while Besigye’s bravery and long history of combat with the Museveni government was admirable, it had resulted into a stalemate.

“He tries to come out of his gate, they stop him, there is a scuffle, they hoist his car on tow truck, return him home, and it happens all over the next time,” I heard.

“Bobi Wine is more elusive. He escapes, he hides, and they keep chasing him around, that’s smart,” they told me. In other words, Wine is like a character in a video game or a superhero in a movie. Besigye is an old school martyr.

The young ones clearly prefer the slippery and subversive superhero. Now if he could only zap the Kalerwe armoured cars with a laser from his eyes, they’d adore him forever.

Charles Onyango-Obbo is curator of the “Wall of Great Africans” and publisher of explainer site Roguechiefs.com.