The text below is part of a talk delivered by the author at the American Center in Kampala late last year. Its reproduction here is a result of the ongoing social media campaigns highlighting the terrible state of roads in Kampala and our deteriorating healthcare sector. In a small way, the text also pays tribute to Ugandan artists Chris Ogon (at the Daily Monitor) and Dr. Jimmy Spire Ssentongo (at the Observer although now increasingly popular for his social commentary on Twitter). Like others before them, they continue to hold the torch for progressive Ugandan society–tackling issues many in our middle class and in political office would rather not talk about.
PART I: Bobi Wine and Eddy Kenzo
The year is 2010. And Uganda is set for an election the following year in which the incumbent Yoweri Museveni is seeking a fourth elective term of office (sixth if you consider the two unelected terms served from 1986-1996). A then-upcoming artiste—earlier on affiliated to popular musician Bobi Wine’s “Fire Base” crew, Eddy Kenzo, had just released Stamina, an infectious song whose message and dance moves captivated partygoers and politicians alike.
It was then rumoured that the song had been commissioned to be used on president Yoweri Museveni’s campaign rallies. Indeed, fellow musician Bebe Cool had already established himself as a staunch supporter of the president and was a constant fixture on Museveni’s campaign trail.
To the surprise of many, and trying to leverage the growing rap scene that had produced poets such as Ganda language rapper Ernest Nsimbi alias GNL Zamba, the president’s campaign team released a production of Runyakitara traditional folklore Mpenkoni, more popularly known as Another Rap, featuring a rapping President Museveni.
While the president was using music to woo the youth and recruiting artistes to hype his crowds, Bobi Wine was on the fence.
With the 2011 election fast approaching, however, Bobi Wine would find his moment in the song Obululu, released in late 2010. Through the song, he cautioned people to remain peaceful in an election that was already tense.
This would not be the first time Bobi Wine was using a national event to venture into social commentary. In 2005, as the country was gearing up for the 2007 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM), Bobi Wine had composed Ghetto, in which he addresses issues of a common person that politicians only consulted when they needed votes.
When we commissioned the Ugandan arts journalist Andrew Kaggwa to write a profile on Bobi Wine ahead of his imminent presidential bid in July 2019, I asked the writer to go beyond Bobi Wine the “politician” and trace the roots of his anti-authority activism that started in the ghettos of Kamwokya in the 90s.
Kaggwa did not disappoint. In a 2500-word piece, he traced the origins of Bobi Wine’s activism. Kaggwa describes Bobi as:
An artist who had styled his career as one filled with a lot of responsibility to the downtrodden, when he wasn’t declaring himself a president of the underprivileged people of the ghettos, he was rallying fellow artists to grow up and end the fights.
Few who confront Bobi Wine as a political party leader today reference this background and fewer still give enough credit to him for his deep-rooted interest in the plight of the downtrodden that was a hallmark of his music for almost two decades before he ventured into politics.
Many will recall the lyrics in Bobi Wine’s 2012 single, By Far.
My father said there’s more politics
In the music industry than in the Parliament
Forgive them father,
They don’t know who dem deal with, anyway!
We ah bad man, we don’t fear intimidation
That’s why we sit top of the nation
From Dangala Kamwokya where we come from
This is a new one for you…
While his politics today may seem divisive, I think Bobi Wine as an artist stands tall as a consistent champion of the interests of the poor; a champion of justice, and truly a national symbol of resistance.
PART II: Chris Ogon, Spire Ssentongo, Kwiz-Era
In mid-2019 the LéO Africa Institute publication, the LéO Africa Review, ran a mini-series “When Art Speaks” focusing on emerging arts voices in Uganda and the role of artists as voices for human rights.
As editor of the publication then I hosted a panel of Ugandan artists Chris Ogon, Hillary Mugizi (Ezi), Daniel Lagen, Alex Kwizera and Rita Asekeny.
Ogon, a cartoonist with the Daily Monitor, stands out for his critical commentary on national politics using his cartoonist pen. “Art is the best form available for one to express him or herself,” he told our writer then.
In a media environment that is increasingly censored from the centre (and self-censoring within the newsrooms), cartoonists like Ogon at The Monitor and Spire Ssentongo at the Observer stand out as critical voices that continue to hold public officials to account.
My own suspicion is that, aided by social media, Ogon or Spire’s cartoons probably attract more views than the headlines in the papers where they are published. And to me this speaks to the significance of the two artists.
They are brave enough to draw on paper what your brave journalist cannot put in words in the newspaper.
To borrow the words of veteran Ugandan journalist Charles Onyango-Obbo, describing the art forms of the likes of Byron Kawaddwa and Robert Serumaga (to whom we shall turn next) cartoonists like Ogon and Spire Ssentongo in their caricatures make “stinging statements about our politics, assessments of important social moments and movements and testaments about the national economy and mood…” in ways that a writer journalist would not lest he lands himself in jail, or worse exile.
They discomfort the powerful to a perhaps greater extent than the flowerly text of a Stella Nyanzi without attracting similar wrath.
PART III: Byron Kawaddwa, Robert Serumaga and Alex Mukulu
A popular story is told about Robert Serumaga, a Ugandan playwright and one-time Minister in the short-lived administration of Professor Yusuf Lule in 1979.
It goes thus, during the 1975 Organization of African Unity (OAU)—precursor to the African Union today—Robert Serumaga’s Abafumi Theatre Company was invited by Amin to entertain visiting heads of state. The play, Amayirikiti (The Flame Trees), featured a scene in which the actors on stage dramatized a hapless citizen being bundled into the boot of a car by soldiers and driven off. The scene was apparently in reference to what was happening in South Africa, but Amin’s secret police were quick to decipher a few days later that the play was not about goings-on in South Africa, but Amin’s terror at home.
As soon as the OAU summit was brought to a close the search was on for Robert Serumaga, who luckily had managed to escape alongside members of his theatre company to neighbouring Kenya.
Serumaga’s contemporary Byron Kawadwa, artistic director of the National Theatre, was not as lucky.
His popular play Oluyimba lwa Wankoko (The Song of Mr Cock), in Luganda, had been staged at Festac ‘77 also known as the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture, in Lagos, Nigeria.
Written as a social satire, the play was deemed as a spoof on Amin’s regime and upon return from Lagos Byron Kawadwa was picked from the National Theatre in Kampala by Idi Amin’s agents, thrown into the boot of a car and his body was dumped in Namanve forest a few days later.
According to one of the troupe members interviewed by the Monitor newspaper a few years ago, following Kawadwa’s death the group never met again—marking the beginning of a sad chapter in Uganda’s theatre industry that has not recovered since.
Playwrights like Alex Mukulu have tried to revive theatre in Uganda by staging social satires but the number of theatregoers has been dwindling over the years. Stand-up comedy and music shows now attract larger audiences, perhaps a testament to the changing times.
Where Serumaga and Kawadwa pioneered Theatre of the Absurd, today’s generation of comedians who grace the National Theatre seem to have found a soft spot in Ugandan minds for licentious content peppered over with tribal jokes.
PART IV: Concluding Thoughts and Tribute to the Online Activist
Majority of the 12 million internet users today were born prior to 1986. The figure is certainly bigger if you stretch this to include those who were too young to witness the NRA’s march onto Kampala in January 1986.
Little wonder a large section of these young Ugandans—what a writer friend rightly calls “Museveni’s babies”—find President Museveni’s references to the country he found in 1986 a constant pet peeve.
The so-called Museveni babies often resort to social media to channel their aspirations as well as frustrations with the affairs of the country presently.
At the forefront of this zeitgeist are artists like Chris “Ogon” of the Daily Monitor, whose cartoons add flavor to an otherwise increasingly self-censoring print media; while other artists like Alex Kwizera and Hillary Mugizi (Ezi) are exploring new interactions between art and social media. Both command a huge following on social media, and their art overtime has tilted towards social commentary.
The social movement all these and many other young people in the Arts represent today may still be formless, undefined, and may not make a dent on Ugandan society in any significant way, but it is nonetheless worth our attention.
Some Ideas are "R-evolutionary"! 