GULU, UGANDA
Lina Zedriga thought she was done with politics. As a lawyer and activist, she had fought for women’s voices to be heard everywhere in Uganda, from land disputes to peace negotiations to parliament. And now she wanted to go home to the north. Become a catechist. Keep goats. Rest.
One day in February she changed her mind.
Bobi Wine was in court in Kampala, the Ugandan capital, accused of organizing an illegal protest. The singer-turned-politician, whose real name is Robert Kyagulanyi, is the leading opposition candidate for president in elections early next yea.
Ms. Zedriga, who was there to watch another case, saw Mr. Wine leave the courthouse into a throng of raucous fans. Suddenly the police fired tear gas. Elsewhere that day one of Mr. Wine’s supporters was killed in a road accident – knocked dead by a police car, said Mr. Wine, which the police deny. “We went for the burial,” recalls Ms. Zedriga, “and one of the messages this young girl left was let me not die in vain.”
Since 1986 Uganda has been led by Yoweri Museveni, a former rebel. He has won five elections, on a steeply tilted playing field, and retains some genuine support. Most Ugandans expect him to triumph again in 2021. But Mr. Wine’s candidacy is sparking excitement. At 38, he is half Mr. Museveni’s age. His People Power movement has drawn in student radicals, seasoned politicians, and the young strivers of the city, who scrape a living selling vegetables or riding motorbike taxis
