Bobi Wine: The People’s President, review
Bobi Wine: The People’s President
UK release: 1 September 2023
Directors: Christopher Sharp, Moses Bwayo
Starring: Barbie Kyagulanyi, Bobi Wine
Review by Rachel Hasse
Bobi Wine: The People’s President is an observational documentary which follows musician and politician Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu through his five-year throes to overthrow Ugandan President turned dictator Yoweri Museveni; not with the violent coup d’état the white western gaze would have us believe is synonymous with the transfer of power in African countries but through the democratic ballot box.
His campaign for a parliamentary seat in 2017, his pursuit to protect constitutional article 102 from the hands of Museveni, who would directly benefit from the removal of a law stipulating a presidential age limit, his presidential pilgrimage across Uganda in 2020 and his reflection in the aftermath of a journey that nearly cost him life and limb and saw him lose loved ones are all chronicled; moments of triumph, terror and tragedy felt through the screen.
Directed by Ugandans Moses Bwayo and Christopher Sharpe, with the former given first-hand experience of state repression and governmental crackdowns on expression when arrested and shot whilst recording, the film premiered at Venice Film Festival in September 2022, did a tour of other prominent international festivals before theatrical release by National Geographic this summer.
The documentary forces the viewer to consider long held conceptions about the continent before the opening credits even roll. How can a country with its supposed propensity for autocracy (there has not been a peaceful transfer of power since independence in 1962) have a people’s president?
The scenes: outdoor rallies filled with people as far as the camera lens can stretch, diagrams mapping the considerable topography Wine traversed and the resounding reception he received in remote places, are examples that prove the film’s title is no paradox; Bobi really does have popular support, from the centre to the periphery and everywhere in between.
He is something akin to a political ‘Pied Piper’ leading the silent and oppressed to a place where they can find their voices and power. He has the hopes of a nation, where the median age is 19 and the majority of the population is under 35, pinned to his back, with many seeing him as the only thing, besides mortality, that can save them from the rule of a near octogenarian.
Central to Wine is his humanity and care for those around him. This is seen in the exuberant joy he emits when his supporters are released after a five-month military detention, demonstrated when he cries into the shoulder and offers reassurance of their resilience to a wounded friend and displayed as he agonisingly deliberates with wife, Barbie, whether it is best that their children return home to them and the associated dangers, or remain in America, safe but devoid of their emotional support. It is the balance needed in a film whose subject matter necessitates it to depict needless violence and wanton death, excerpts that upend the notion that power, or the quest for it, must always make monsters out of African men. Black men can be familial, male African leaders are not always strongmen in army fatigues but can be soft too. Another trope trounced!
The documentary starts and ends with footage of Wine crafting and creating in the studio, the 121 minute running time interspersed with the melodies and lyrics from his songs; it is no surprise that music is a constant accompaniment given what music means to him and what his music and its embodying message means to others.
There is a long diasporic tradition of people using music as a medium to make their voices heard, call for change, raise awareness of societal injustice and hold political leaders to account. Wine, with his Afrobeat activism, joins the likes of Billie Holiday, Sam Cooke and Public Enemy in the esteemed company of the conscious.
The icon he undoubtedly draws the most comparisons to is Bob Marley, not only due to their shared moniker and that he himself has cited Marley as one of his biggest inspirations, but because of similarities in sound. The Guardian’s reference to Wine as a ‘reggae star’ may be a bit of a stretch but elements of the genre created in 1960s Jamaica can be heard in his discography alongside dancehall and Ugandan Kidandali.
With the ‘pidgin patois’ that has suffused his music since the formation of his career in the early 2000s, perhaps it can be argued that Wine is an unheralded pioneer of a fusion sound that permitted cultural crossover and fostered linkups between Davido & Popcaan, Kranium & Wizkid and Byron Messia & Burna Boy; collaborations released to critical acclaim and commercial success.
Wine and his National Unity Platform have united the opposition and Ugandan people around the disposal of Museveni, and he has built an intercontinental bridge with his music; president or not, he sure is a man of the people.