Ugandans will vote in elections on Thursday which are all but guaranteed to extend the 40-year rule of President Yoweri Museveni, with many nervous about a possible crackdown.Museveni faces singer-turned-politician Bobi Wine, 43 — real name Robert Kyagulanyi — who is taking a second run at the presidency after his 2021 campaign ended in bloodshed and disappointment.But the 81-year-old incumbent president, who has held power since 1986, is taking few chances. Rights groups and international monitors have accused Ugandan authorities of arrests, abductions, and media intimidation in the run-up to the polls.Kampala has been quiet in recent days as residents headed home to their villages to vote — or take shelter.Wine, who has been repeatedly arrested in the past, campaigned in a flak jacket, saying the race has become a “war”.”They cannot abduct all of us. The jails are already full and we are still millions of change-seeking Ugandans out there,” he said at a colourful rally for his National Unity Platform (NUP) last week.But fears of a repeat of the 2021 violence are scaring some Ugandans.”People lost their lives, people lost their things, so it frightened us,” Kampala resident Winnie Promise Nantume told AFP.There are also concerns of a wider erosion of democracy in east Africa, after elections in neighbouring Tanzania in October descended into violence amid rigging allegations, with hundreds of protesters killed by security forces.Dozens of anti-government protesters have also been killed in multiple protests in Kenya since 2024, apparently with impunity. – ‘Protecting the gains’ -Museveni is the third-longest serving president on the African continent, having repeatedly changed the constitution to stay in power. More than 70 percent of Uganda’s population is under 30, and have known nothing but Museveni’s rule. He is running under the tagline “Protecting the gains”.To many, he is still the father of the nation who rescued the country from political and economic chaos following a bush war against his rivals in the 1980s, even if one in six in Uganda still live in poverty.”I hear my parents talking, many people lost lives. It was Museveni that defeated that,” said a former teacher, Innocent, 31.He said he would vote for the incumbent, adding that, in his view, Wine was “not ready to lead”.Some analysts say the vote is a sideshow.”You could say that these elections are kind of a shadow play,” Kristof Titeca, an expert on Uganda at Antwerp university, told AFP.”The key questions are not the elections, but what comes after, i.e. the transition.” – Succession -Museveni’s son, army chief Muhoozi Kainerugaba, has made no secret of his desire to rule as his father’s age forces him to scale back some of his activities.Kainerugaba, known for his controversial social media comments, has been unusually quiet during the election campaign, but insiders note his control over the security forces, whose presence has been increasingly felt on Kampala’s streets.Wine remains a thorn in the government’s side, and his supporters remain hopeful. The challenger’s rallies have drawn larger crowds than many expected.”Very many youths… even other Ugandans, are very ready to fight for our win this time round,” Angella Nabaggala, 23, told AFP.The regime was taken aback by Wine’s popularity when he emerged ahead of the 2021 vote, and he faced a brutal crackdown that became the subject of an Oscar-nominated documentary.The former singer has kept up the pressure, despite the risks.”Many of our leaders are being picked up, arrested, abducted,” David Lewis Rubongoya, secretary-general of Wine’s party, told AFP.Amnesty International says roughly 400 people have been arrested for supporting the NUP in recent months on charges including malicious damage to property or inciting violence.The only other significant opposition leader, Kizza Besigye, who ran four times against Museveni, was kidnapped in 2024 in Kenya and re-emerged in a military court in Uganda. He remains behind bars on treason charges.
