Andrew Mwenda: Bobi Wine only cares about himself and his family

Bobi Wine’s dangerous duplicity | By Andrew M. Mwenda

In 2018, I appeared on Frontline program of NBS television with Bobi Wine. In the heat of the debate he said that if there were chaos in Uganda, I would be the first person to board a plane and run to exile. He said for him he has nowhere to go because his only home is Uganda. Right!?

Well last night Bobi Wine evacuated his entire family to the safety of America. Please note that he did not send them to Kenya or Rwanda or Tanzania, who are our immediate neighbors. He sent them to far away America. Why? Because Bobi Wine is not a Ugandan or African project. He is a foreign project to impose a particular set of values on the people of Uganda.

Why has Bobi Wine shipped his family to America before the election? What does he know that many do not? No presidential candidate in Uganda’s history has ever done this: not Yoweri Museveni in 1980, not Paul Semogerere in 1980 and 1996, not Kizza Besigye in 2001, 2006, 2011 or 2016, no one. Why Bobi Wine and why now?

There are two reasons: first Bobi Wine and his hooligans are plotting mass violence when (not if) they lose the election. And they are going to lose. So he knows he has set in motion a series of activities of chaos and wants to save his family. Yet for all his claims to care about the people of Uganda, he has only taken care of his family, nothing more.

Second, Bobi Wine does not care about Uganda or Ugandans. Bobi Wine cares only about Bobi Wine and his family. If he had a grand vision of Uganda and the people of Uganda, he would no organize to burn down the country it he loses an election. And he and his hooligans are organizing to burn down Kampala in the aftermath of electoral defeat. All his plans are known.

Indeed, many of the young people who surround him are not democrats seeking freedom for Ugandans as they claim. They are power hungry desperadoes looking for an opportunity to put their fingers into the national till to loot it. That is why they are intolerant of any criticism of their boss.

In a democracy, the opponents seek to defeat not to destroy each other. NUP activists seek the total destruction of their opponents, real and imagined, whom they see as enemies. Never before has our country ever experienced this kind of radical extremism.

The good news is that Bobi Wine has exposed his true colors (selfishness and cowardice) to the people of Uganda. He has also exposed his plans to wreak havoc and instigate chaos. Now we know.

For those who watched the debate between me and Bobi Wine, be assured that I will stay put in Uganda. I will not evacuate my family, including my little grand kids from this country. I will stay put because I don’t have anywhere else to go. This is the only country I have.

But also, I will stay in Uganda because I trust the capacity of the state of Uganda and contain the chaos and violence that Bobi Wine and his hooligans are planning. On January 14th, and contrary to Bobi Wine’s plans, not a single stone will be thrown in Kampala. Whoever dares knows or should know the evil that will be visited upon them.

Andrew Mwenda is a Ugandan journalist, and owner of The Independent.

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