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Yoweri Museveni won in recent Ugandan elections, potentially extending his presidential rule to 41 years. The elections were marred by numerous allegations of rigging, professional misconduct and intimidation. At the end of that was his completely brutalized opponent, pop star turned politician Robert Kyagulanyi, also known as Bobi Wine.
The question is, what’s the next step?
Museveni’s political party – the National Resistance Movement – has been the ruling party in Uganda since 1986. But its popularity has now bottomed out in urban areas of the country, especially among the youth.
Kampala, like most urban Ugandans, has long been a stronghold of opposition and Museveni’s urban challenge was clear even before Bobi Wine entered the political arena in 2017.
It’s hard for anyone to know exactly how much Wine and its national unity platform are in command across the country. But what is clear is that Museveni was rejected in the capital. The Wine party won nine of the 10 parliamentary seats in Kampala, the 10th being retained by its incumbent, an independent MP. Museveni’s party also won only 8% of the votes cast in Kampala mayor.
Among the many challenges facing the President, mobilizing young people living in urban areas is one that will clearly not dissipate. Uganda has one of the youngest populations in the world, with a median age of 17. Moreover, between 2015 and 2020, its urban growth rate was higher than in any other country in the world. Given that disaffected urban youth are so essential to the support base of the National Unity Platform, urban opposition is likely to worsen and grow after this controversial election.
On the one hand, Uganda is in uncharted territory. The defeated opposition candidate comes from the growing demographics of dissatisfied city dwellers, and his party has swept the board in Kampala and surrounding neighborhoods like no other opposition party before.
On the other hand, there is a feeling of déjà vu. Museveni’s party also failed to win a seat in Kampala in 2016.
So what did Museveni do in an attempt to regain political domination in urban areas after the previous elections? And what does this mean for the future?
Our research explores this. It focuses on the National Resistance Movement’s attempt to dominate Kampala over the past two decades, and in particular since 2010.
It shows the extent of the strategies and tactics used against urban opposition. Wads of cash, institutional restructuring, exemptions from taxes and regulations, militarization and open terror in the streets were among them. But they all failed to prevent the people of Kampala from voting against him.
Uganda is at a crossroads. It is clear that Museveni is running out of tactics and that the status quo will no longer be enough. Either the country’s young and urbanized population needs to be taken much more seriously by the regime, or Museveni is leading the country on the path to total military dictatorship.
Two decades of changing strategies
Media attention has naturally focused on the brutal repression of the opposition. Nonetheless, we can see that Museveni’s long campaign to regain support for Kampala was multifaceted. It included efforts to manipulate institutions and co-opt urban youth, as well as to coerce.
Since the early 2000s, Museveni has made efforts to convince the large number of informal workers in Kampala. He built support among the market vendors, carpenters, salon operators, restaurateurs and transport workers in the city by constantly intervening to prevent the city council from implementing taxes and regulations. It also flooded workers’ associations with microfinance programs and other sporadic favors. It may even have yielded results with increased support in the 2011 election.
But it became evident between 2011 and 2016 that his drive to transform the city through the new authority of the capital of Kampala also made him unpopular with informal workers. Many found themselves at the forefront of “clean-up” operations in the city streets.
Heading into the 2016 election – when the politically charged music of Bobi Wine was already shaking the president – Museveni even co-opted a dozen other big Ugandan pop stars in his own campaign song.
That didn’t stop his very low vote share in Kampala in 2016. He then went overdrive to buy influence among urban youth and opposition figures. He created an informal “ghetto fund” and “brown envelopes”, allegedly diverting money from official government projects, and sent “socialites” and “philanthropists” to the city’s slums to distribute money. money and consumer goods.
Wine’s home neighborhood in Kamwokya was a particular target for Museveni. His State House acolytes wrote gigantic checks to youth organizations – documents that took place largely outside official channels.
In this regard, Museveni’s attempt to gain support in urban areas in the 2021 election was not just about repression. But it has always failed.
Look ahead
What will Museveni do next?
The fierce urban opposition did not prevent him from claiming a “large margin” of victory. After all, more than three-quarters of Uganda’s population still live in rural areas, and Museveni has always dominated rural Uganda.
Given this, it is possible that he is simply abandoning his efforts to gain urban support, instead adopting a strategy of containment towards Bobi Wine and his urban followers.
There are, however, at least two good reasons to believe that this is unlikely.
The first is Uganda’s extreme urbanization trajectory. The problem of urban opposition, if ignored, will only grow. The balance of voters is moving away from Museveni, and he knows it.
The second is that abandoning the cities to the opposition will mean maintaining very high levels of urban militarization and repression, especially as Bobi Wine (now released) will surely try to continue to mobilize his base.
This level of continued brutality is unlikely to be what the regime wants. Museveni likes to show people who’s boss in public, viciously and periodically; but not continuously. Its relationship with Western donors is always appreciated, and full military rule is not a good option.
He could try to come up with something new to offer city dwellers – like big transport and housing projects or industrial jobs.
But for reasons related to land tenure, corruption and city politics, Kampala is a notoriously difficult context in which to deliver these types of projects. This is why the regime has always fallen back on informal favors and populist gestures. Obviously, these are no longer sufficient to stop the rise of urban opposition.
Tom Goodfellow receives funding from the Center for Effective States and Inclusive Development, the Economic and Social Research Council, and the Global Challenges Research Fund.
Paul Isolo Mukwaya receives funding from the Center for Effective States and Inclusive Development, the Economic and Social Research Council, and the Global Challenges Research Fund.
By Tom Goodfellow, Senior Lecturer in Urban Studies and Planning, University of Sheffield and
Paul Isolo Mukwaya, Senior Lecturer, Makerere University
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