Bobi Wine: The People’s President – Uganda’s charismatic ‘president of the ghetto’ under pressure

Christopher Sharp, an English filmmaker of Ugandan descent, and the Ugandan cinematographer Moses Bwayo shadowed Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu for some seven years after the musician set his sights on Ugandan politics.

Best known by his stage name, Bobi Wine, Kyagulanyi came to prominence as a pop star, rapping out socially conscious sentiments over Ugandan kidandali music and reggae backbeats. His professional swerve into politics, initially as an elected member of the Ugandan parliament and then as an anti-corruption presidential candidate, has made international headlines and waves. “I’m president already. I’m president of the ghetto,” says the charismatic contender, who is originally from Kamwokya, a slum in Kampala.

It’s a bold move to make against the incumbent president, Yoweri Museveni, the sometime national hero who helped unseat Idi Amin and Milton Obote. Museveni has ruled Uganda since seizing control in the mid-1980s. On the back of a recent constitutional change to the upper age limit, he claimed a sixth consecutive five-year term in office in 2021.

Wine and his National Unity Platform party have contested those results at great personal cost. Many party members are arrested and killed. The presence of a camera crew does little to deter police brutality. The crackdown makes for a visceral spectacle, a thundering full stop to earlier, vibrant scenes of lively street demonstrations. The besieged rapper turned politician and his family subsequently seek asylum in the United States.

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This National Geographic documentary has a charming hero and a sadly overlooked heroine in Wine’s cool-headed, intellectual wife, Barbara. Access and subplots are occasionally inconsistent against the political turmoil. Still, what it lacks in context and shape it makes up for with a sense of urgency and indignation.