Bobi Wine’s escape dilemma

If there is anything one does not prepare for, it is challenging an autocracy with years of experience.

The activists, lucky to emerge as icons of the struggle, find themselves surrounded by hounds and comrades. Of course, it is difficult to read the secrets buried deep in the hearts and minds of supposed associates.

And some positions – especially being an icon of a struggle – comes with immense amount of information. Most of it entirely useless as is fabricated by hangers-on. And a lot of genuine information but with entirely disguised intentions. Bobi Wine is on the run, but on whose intelligence did he base to start his run?

My intention is not to dismiss the intelligence he received, but to critically examine the good intentions or the comprehensiveness of the source that delivered this intelligence. This is possible against what has happened ever since he got tipped off.

The more I have examined the intelligence against the foregoing events, the more it becomes apparent that Bobi Wine found himself in a difficult position. In a dilemma. First, the source delivered authentic intelligence: He was to be arrested. But the plot involved having him on the run.

In fact, having him on the run for the next months after the election is way safer for the state than having him in jail. But he’ll be arrested at the end or all intentions to arrest him would have lost their political bite.

If Minister Chris Baryomunsi’s words should be taken seriously, Bobi Wine is not a wanted man. But the UPDF commander in chief, Gen. Muhoozi Kainerugaba tells us Bobi Wine is a wanted man running from justice.

Indeed, with the night raids to his house – and the assault of his wife – surely there is a manhunt ongoing and former presidential candidate, Robert Kyagulanyi is on the run. I want to believe Gen. Kainerugaba more than Minister Baryomunsi.

Not because Kainerugaba is nobler, but because he has power to sanction manhunts and arrests. But I want to believe the minister as well. The minister plays a useful political function.

Indeed, what appears like a contradiction between two men – the minister contradicting CDF – is a productive, useful contradiction. One side of the government appears reasonable and this makes it difficult to generate collective anger against the government as a whole. Maybe against one man.

WOULD THEY ACTUALLY ARREST BOBI WINE?

Had Bobi Wine decided to stand his ground and be arrested, of course, he would have been arrested. Why? Last week, The Observer asked to know what Bobi Wine’s crime was to warrant a manhunt.

While the question was largely rhetorical, it is my sobering conclusion for the same reasons Col. Kizza Besigye is in jail, Obeid Lutale, Eddie Mutwe, Alex Waiswa Mufumbiro among others, are the same reasons for which Bobi Wine is being hunted. I don’t mean the charges laid down in their court documents.

But that these are political prisoners. Because of our collective failure to build a movement around our political prisoners, Bobi Wine will be arrested and life for those on the outside will continue as usual.

The system has been emboldened over the years. Consider for example, there is no concerted, serious and ceaseless activism around Col. Kizza Besigye and Obed Lutale kidnap – and continued incarceration even when the military tribunal was judged as illegal by the Supreme Court.

National Unity Platform (NUP) have struggled to build a movement around their very prominent political prisoners, Alex Waiswa Mufumbiro, Eddie Mutwe among many others.

That the leading opposition political party treated its arrested supporters on the campaign trail like footnotes and continued with its campaigns despite endless vulgar arrests is telling about the future political prisoners.

With these subtly unacknowledged failings, I find Bobi Wine left alone, against a very emboldened and over- confident enemy. If those after him finally pick him up, they might keep him behind bars just like they have done to all others.

Besides being visited by friends and allies, there will be barely sustained effort on the outside to have him released. I cringe to imagine that recently- elected NUP legislators and leaders across different political levels will fear to use their platforms to fight for their jailed leader.

Of course, they’ll performatively do some things. But not actual radical ideas such as boycotting their offices before not until their leader was released.

STATE IS SAFER WITH BOBI ON THE RUN

If the state feared and planned so much for the immediate aftermaths of the elections, they prepared for one man’s movements. Should they keep him under house arrest as happened in 2021 or should they simply arrest him and take him to Luzira Maximum Prison.

Either way, those scenarios looked ugly for the regime. It thus seems reasonable that the attempt – just the attempt – to arrest Bobi Wine is the calculation itself. It is safer than arresting him.

The public struggles to understand why their leader is running, and the state claims the man is on the run – and one cannot accuse the state of anything (except of course, the raids on his house).

He does not only leave his base without direction, but also confused. Look, if security forces were really hunting down for serious criminal, they would launch a more serious manhunt.

There would be roadblocks and columns of soldiers sniffing and looking everywhere. They have done neither except raiding his house to escalate the tension and confusion. It becomes evident that the otherwise authentic intelligence he received was simply part of the complex script.

It would have been stupid to sit there and wait for his arrest. Running is no cowardice. But being on the run or exile achieves the very end that the Museveni machine sought to achieve in the first place: the immediate post-election period is left leaderless – fronts confused and disjointed.

yusufkajura@gmail.com

The author is a political theorist based at Makerere University.