Bobi Wine has shaken up Ugandan politics

restricted and the government has met opposition supporters with deadly force on multiple occasions. Most tragically, following Bobi Wine’s arrest in mid- November, nationwide protests erupted during which state security forces killed at least 54 people.

In response to these abuses, in early January, Bobi Wine and two other co- claimants filed a 47- page complaint to the International Criminal Court against Museveni and nine of his regime’s security officials, accusing them of gross human rights violations dating back to 2018.

GENERATIONAL DIMENSION

Uganda’s changing demographics have a great deal to do with Bobi Wine’s electoral appeal. The East African country of 46.5 million people has one of the world’s youngest populations, with a median age of 16.7. Just over one in five Ugandans are between the ages of 15 and 24 and 77 percent of the country’s population is under the age of 30.

Although these young people have benefited from reforms to public education introduced by the Museveni regime, they see little hope for the future. By some estimates, youth unemployment in Uganda is as high as 70 percent. Frustrated young people can, therefore, easily identify with Bobi Wine, who grew up in the Kampala ghetto of Kamwokya. Like him, they have only known life under Museveni. He was not even four when Museveni first came to power in 1986.

Bobi Wine has skilfully appealed to this demographic. He frames his political movement in generational terms: the “Facebook generation”, which he represents against the “entrenched interests of the ‘ Facelift generation’ of the Museveni regime. He has been able to speak to – and articulate – the deep sense of anger and grievance that young Ugandans feel towards the Museveni regime. In so doing, Uganda’s “Ghetto President” has come to be the face and voice of young people’s collective desire for generational political change.

POPULISM

In the final weeks of the campaign, Museveni derided Bobi Wine as a populist politician. While this adjective was intended to dismiss his young adversary, there is some truth to this label. In my research, I argue that Bobi Wine’s inclusionary brand of populism has also been a key to his political success.

His use of populist rhetoric has effectively forged a new collective sense of identity among his mostly youthful supporters around the nodal point of “the people” and in antagonistic opposition to the country’s political elite .

But Bobi Wine’s brand of populism is novel because his conception of “the people” is defined not in ethno- nationalist terms ( as with right- wing politicians in the US or Western Europe). Rather it’s defined largely in generational ones. This has helped him to build a burgeoning political coalition across ethnoregional lines. If Bobi Wine’s brand of generational populism proves successful, its repercussions could be felt across Africa. It could serve as a model for opposition politicians who are operating in countries with similar demographic characteristics and facing many of the same political obstacles.

( The Conversation)