BOBI WINE: THE PEOPLE’S PRESIDENT
Directed by Moses Bwayo and Christopher Sharp
Certificate: 15
☆☆☆☆

BOBI Wine, ghetto hero, singer-turned-politician, has become a figurehead for a movement for democracy in Uganda.

In Bobi Wine: The People’s President, we follow his story from emerging as a voice against the despotic regime of President Yoweri Museveni through his protest songs, to becoming a genuine political force and potentially the nation’s next President.

This documentary, filmed over a number of years, offers a close-up study in terms of a plot – the rise of a ghetto voice, and the state’s attempts to stifle him – but not so much in terms of revealing Bobi Wine’s political plans. We know he wants to end state oppression and violence, introduce freedoms, good jobs, health and education.

How such aims would be achieved are ignored – instead we follow Bobi as he is arrested, beaten, poisoned, nearly shot, and his followers are attacked.

Wine (real name Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu) has always used his music to highlight life in the ghettoes and his supporters were passion about his music – and are now just as enthralled by his politics.

We get a too-brief glimpse of Bobi’s back story. We learn he is an orphan, born in a ghetto in Kampala, and met his wife Barbie at university.

How he journeyed from shanty town to nurturing his talent, making a career and putting himself through university is sadly left untold.

Instead, the story begins with Bobi fully formed, already a popular singer who represents something for the working-class Ugandan.

Directors Moses Bwayo and Christopher Sharp have captured the excitement and danger, making for a sense of history being made. The bravery of the opposition is obvious as bullets fly randomly into party offices and activists’ homes.

While the documentary may not give us a fulsome idea of what life in Uganda would be like if Wine was president, it shows how awful the regime of Museveni is.

The film is at the front and centre – when police fire on campaigners, we see it.

When Wine’s driver is shot and killed – the assassins were hoping to murder Wine – we are there. When his supporters are beaten, the camera is witness.

Bobi Wine appeals to the young, the poor, the vulnerable. Three quarters of Uganda’s population are under 35 and you can see why Museveni tries every trick in the despot’s book to keep him off the ballot papers. He is an inspiration.