Tensions high ahead of key poll

Bobi Wine, the embattled reggae singer who is presenting the greatest challenge so far to Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni’s 35-year stranglehold on power, has urged SA and others to speak out about the violent persecution he is suffering during his campaign for Thursday’s presidential elections. Last week one of his security team was ‘deliberately’ run over and killed by a military vehicle. Others in his entourage have been shot or assaulted. He himself has often been arrested along with 126 members of his team while campaigning. ‘I want to request and encourage the international community to kindly keep their eyes on Uganda because we are part of the global family and we wouldn’t want to be slaughtered in the dark,’ Wine told the Daily Maverick. Musevemi has twice altered Uganda’s constitution to stay in power – in 2005 to remove the two-term limit and again in 2018 to remove the 75-year-old age limit on presidents.

The Guardian reports that Museveni has claimed that Wine is ‘an agent of foreign interests’ promoting homosexuality. ‘He gets quite a lot of encouragement from foreigners and homosexuals,’ he said. Traditionally, homosexuality was tolerated in Uganda but in recent years evangelist pastors with a large following have whipped up hatred of gay people, turning it into a political issue. If Wine were to win a majority of the votes, and the electoral commission permitted him to declare victory – by no means a certainty – it is unclear whether the institutions of state would accept the result. The military, the police and the ministries are loyal to Museveni. Stratfor, the US security think tank, believes Wine 'represents the most significant challenge to Museveni, 'whose failure to address growing youth unemployment and disillusionment with the current ruling elite is placing the country on a long-term trajectory of political unrest'.