Bobi Wine’s house is heavily surveilled.
Motorbikes whiz back and forth in the street in front of his gate with a trained curiosity before a large riot truck full of masked police officers fills the narrow road.
The relentless monitoring gives way to calm as we enter his high-walled home.
I walked down the same garden path with him in 2018 when Wine was starting to shift the fanbase he built as a musician into explosive political popularity as a member of parliament, voicing opposition to President Museveni and the ruling party.
Even then, the government was quick to crack down on his young, growing support base in the protests he led against a social media tax imposed by the government.
What has changed since then?
“What has changed is that it has gone from bad to worse. There is more impunity. There is more violence every day as people are being abducted and they go missing. Some have been missing for years,” he responds.
The crackdown intensified in the lead up to Uganda’s 2021 election when at least 54 people were killed and hundreds were disappeared by the security forces.
Now, Wine’s National Unity Party says that 300 of their supporters and party officials have been detained in the weeks building up to this election as he runs against Uganda‘s long-time ruler President Yoweri Museveni for the second time.
As we speak in Wine’s garden, the military is fully deployed to the streets of Kampala, there is a total internet blackout and the permits of at least nine local human rights organisations have been suspended – all while Ugandans vote for who they want to see govern the country for the next five years.
Listen to The World with Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim every Wednesday
“Even my deputy president in charge of western Uganda has been picked up, and I’m told she’s being detained in a military barracks – so it is crazy what is happening,” Wine says.
“This is supposed to be an election, but besides switching off the internet, our agents are being picked by security to ensure that the election happens in the dark.”
President Museveni denies long-time allegations of election rigging and told me that it is the opposition that rigs the election.
“They try but they can’t overturn us. We are too popular,” he says.
Read more:
Uganda’s president on shutting down the internet
Pop star politician aiming to end president’s 40 years in power
At President Museveni’s last rally in Kampala, thousands of people wearing his face on bright yellow T-shirts filled the Kololo airstrip, where he was inaugurated after his first presidential election win in 1996.
Foreign media are barred from filming inside the rally, but through the bars, a young man holding up a foam finger turns it into a thumbs down and yells “Bobi!” to us.
In the narrow road by the airstrip, a man faithfully wipes the face of President Museveni clean on a large billboard before moving on to polish the face of his son, General Muhoozi, the current chief of the Ugandan People’s Defence Force (UPDF).
If the opposition can’t beat President Museveni’s loyal following, then why target Wine so aggressively?
“Bobi Wine breaks the law, that is why. There are other people in opposition – you don’t find us having problems with them. But if you take each case, you find that he is breaking the law,” the president says.
“He says I break the law, but I’m not arrested. Why am I not arrested and charged?” Wine replies.
“If I break the law, the only law that I break is to stand and challenge a 40-year-old dictatorship.”
