Eddy Kenzo, Bobi Wine, Bebe Cool … musicians who turn to politics

By Musinguzi Blanshe, The Africa Report —

Popular musician Eddy Kenzo (aka Edrisah Musuuza) was appointed to be Uganda’s new senior advisor on creatives. It’s part of President Yoweri Museveni’s efforts to draw more musicians into his entourage. When did Uganda’s music industry become so embroiled in politics?

Over the past decade, politics has consumed a generation of musicians, deeply dividing Uganda’s music industry, which analysts now predict has a bleak future. President Yoweri Museveni’s main political nemesis, Robert Kyagulanyi, aka Bobi Wine, is a musician turned politician. The two men will be the main faces in the 2026 presidential election.

Eddy Kenzo, a 2015 BET award winner, got his appointment months after Museveni chose the singer’s girlfriend and legislator Phiona Nyamutoro as state minister in charge of minerals. Last year, Kenzo was elected president of a federation of musicians aligned to the government.

As the industry has become more political, Kenzo has often said he did not want to be dragged into politics that divides fans. “People who supported me to be who I am are Ugandans who were not divided,” he said four years ago.



Yet Kenzo has officially stepped into the political arena, in a position that will likely impact his music career, by alienating fans he dearly cherished. “We might not see him performing as much for the ordinary person, especially in central Uganda, where there’s a lot of resistance against the regime,” says Andrew Kaggwa, a creative industry writer.

Central Uganda is the political support base of Wine, who won the region in 2021 when he was Museveni’s main challenger in the presidential election.

The day music turned political

From the early 2000s to mid-2010s, three musicians – Wine, Moses Ssali (aka Bebe Cool) and Joseph Mayanja (aka Jose Chameleone) – dominated Uganda’s music industry. They competed fiercely against one another on the music scene and the annual Battle of the Champions. As their popularity skyrocketed, they inspired many more young musicians.

But the generation of Cool, Wine and Chameleone “had always been political … it’s just that none of them threatened power,” says Kaggwa. He adds that even when they committed crimes, they easily got away with it using their money and influence. They sang at political rallies, enjoyed sponsorships from corporate companies and turned their feuds into money-making ventures as their musical battles became popular.

Ahead of the 2016 elections, things changed as 12 musicians, mostly Uganda’s celebrated musicians – including Cool and Chameleone – teamed up to release Museveni’s reelection campaign song: Tubonga Nawe (we are with you), an action that openly divided the music industry on a political issue for the first time.

Kaggwa considers the song’s premiere a turning point in the industry and nation. Without it, he says, opposition leader Wine would not have emerged on the political scene.

“It’s the day we heard ‘these artistes are for, the others are against’ that the division happened, the line was drawn,” he tells The Africa Report. “That’s the day the audience was divided. It’s the day people started choosing who their champions are. That day changed Ugandan music.”

While the pro-Museveni gang of musicians moved across the country singing at the president’s campaign rallies, the anti-Museveni group did not enthusiastically cling to the opposition leader Kizza Besigye.

Battle lines drawn on the stage

When Wine stepped onto the political scene as a Member of Parliament in 2017 divisions in the music industry deepened.

Once you have money from the regime, there is no way you are going to come out and criticise the things that are happening

Even though Museveni and his campaigners dismissed Wine, he quickly read the room: the singer was popular among the youth who made up the majority of Uganda’s population.

When it became clear that Wine intended to challenge Museveni at an election, the president moved to recruit artists to undercut his popularity among the youth.

Before he joined parliament, Wine was widely recognised by the industry as the leader of the urban poor or ‘ghetto president’ as he called himself. Museveni decided to pick Mark Bugembe, alias Buchaman, Wine’s former “deputy president” as presidential envoy to the ghetto. As a presidential envoy, Buchaman claimed his former musical ally’s ghetto president label.

The president further appointed two female singers, Catherine Kusasira (aka Maama Kabina) and Jennifer Nakangubi (aka Full Figure), as his advisors.

Avoiding another ‘Bobi Wine’ scenario

Ali Bukeni (aka Nubian Li), Wine’s music partner, tells The Africa Report that the state has been appointing musicians to government positions and throwing money at them to avoid the emergence of another Bobi Wine. “Once you have money from the regime, there is no way you are going to come out and criticise the things that are happening,” Li says. “One thing they don’t want is to have another Bobi Wine”.

In response, Wine’s National Unity Platform (NUP) party sponsored two singers: Hilary Kiyaga (aka Dr Hilderman) and Geoffrey Lutaaya, who won parliamentary elections in 2021.

With Wine emerging as a formidable challenger to Museveni, the state moved to block the singer’s shows. “As a musician, as an artist who basically survives from making shows, this was a big blow to our livelihood because this meant that we could not earn from our craft,” Li says.

But the freeze on Wine’s concerts equally impacted the pro-Museveni artists as fans skipped their shows and some attendees pelted bottles at them on stage. The government swung in to save the artists aligned with it. “They will make sure that if there is a performance where there is a lot of money to be spent on the creatives, they will somehow spend it on their artists,” says Kaggwa.

Things will get worse before they get better

For artists opposed to the government, an endorsement from Wine guarantees a successful concert while attacking him means their shows will flop. That, explains Kaggwa, is why artists will seek photo ops with Wine to attract his supporters to their events.

The division along political lines has also prompted corporate companies to cut their sponsorship budgets. “With a very politicised industry, corporate companies are shying away from working with Ugandan artists,” says Kaggwa.

For Kaggwa, things will get worse before they can get better. “When you get to that level where people are kind of avoiding the industry, it has to crumble because that means people will not be making money out of it, the quality might go down.”

Li says the future of the music industry rests on whether Museveni succeeds in keeping it under his fold. “If the regime wins, then that means we are going to have an industry that does not talk about the real issues that concern Ugandans. We are going to have artists only singing about love. But entertainment is not only limited to love”.

Source: The Africa Report
Featured image: Members of Ghetto Kids rehearse a dance routine with Ugandan musician Edrisah Musuuza, also known as Eddy Kenzo, in Makindye, a suburb in Kampala, Uganda, on 20 January 2023. (BADRU KATUMBA / AFP)