Bobi Wine at his Kyarenga concert in 2018. PHOTO/COURTESY
Barely a year into Parliament, Bobi , the crew leading light, became public enemy number one for taunting President Museveni through his revolutionary music and vowing to oust him.
Following the chaotic Arua by-election in August 2018, where Bobi’s driver Yasiin Kawuma was shot dead and Bobi and his allies tortured and detained, the hostility between the State and the man once their ghetto ally, heightened and reached irreversible levels.
The State was determined to muffle Bobi’s revolutionary tenor, but gave him one more chance at the 2018 Enkuuka festival. But Bobi remained unyielding and persisted in doing what he was stopped from doing – singing politics.
“President [Museveni] swore that Bobi would never perform again in Uganda because he chose politics,” Mr Juma Balunywa, a renowned promoter, says. Enkuuka, the Buganda year-ending event in Lubiri, attracts between 45,000 and 60,000 revellers.
Since Bobi entered Parliament, he used the event to criticise Mr Museveni’s regime. But in 2018, he did it with unrestrained abandon.
“‘I allowed Bobi to perform because the Kabaka had requested me. But he chose to embarrass me in front of the Kabaka. I’ll never let him perform here again’,” Mr Balunywa quoted an angry Museveni in a meeting with performing artistes, where he compensated promoters with Shs1.8b for Bobi’s cancelled concerts.
Six years later, Bobi’s return to the local stage remains an illusion despite a High Court ruling in 2020 that declared the police was wrong in blocking Bobi’s concerts.
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