The 43-year-old musician-turned-politician has been evading a military hunt for over a week, infuriating Gen. Muhoozi Kainerugaba — the army chief and president’s son — in what has become a very public rivalry.

Wine went into hiding shortly after Uganda’s disputed presidential election on Jan. 15. The vote was marred by an internet shutdown and the failure of biometric voter identification kits meant to prevent ballot stuffing.

Wine, whose real name is Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, has rejected the official results, according to which President Yoweri Museveni won a seventh term with 71.6% of the vote.

He has urged his followers to do whatever is legally possible to show the government has weaknesses despite the massive military presence that accompanied the election.

Dispute between Wine and the army chief
Ugandan soldiers raided Wine’s house the day after the Jan. 15 vote, but the opposition leader had already gone into hiding, fearing for his life after campaigning for weeks in helmet and flak jacket at rallies where security forces were a constant presence.

Wine said his ability to evade the army shows that the government is not as strong as it appears.

“The whole army is looking for one person. It’s now coming to 10 days but they have failed to find me,” Wine said in a video posted on X on Monday. “That means they are not as strong as they tell you.”

That also “means that you, as a Ugandan, you can do whatever is possible without breaking the law. Yes, they call us outlaws, but we are not law breakers,” he added.

The hunt for Wine is being led by Kainerugaba — the president’s presumptive heir — who has responded to Wine’s taunts by calling him a coward, a “baboon” and a “terrorist.”

He has a yearslong habit of posting offensive tweets, which he often deletes later.

Kainerugaba said on X that Wine and other leaders of his National Unity Platform party are wanted for criminal offenses, but did not specify them.

Yet Ugandan police and government spokesman Chris Baryomunsi say Wine is not wanted and is free to return to his family.

Wine said in his most recent message to his followers that he went to his ancestral home to “to get some love.”

“Another day of hiding. Another day of injustice,” he said. “As I have always said, that in a country under family rule the ruling family is always above the law.”

Ugandans worry about unrest
The exchanges between Wine and Kainerugaba have raised tensions after the election, with many Ugandans worried that an attack on Wine could trigger unrest.

Wine, the most prominent of seven candidates who ran against Museveni, has a large following among young people in urban areas, many of them unemployed or angry with the government over official corruption and the lack of economic opportunities. Many want to see political change after four decades of the same leader.

The opposition were further angered by a Jan. 23 raid in which Wine’s wife Barbara Kyagulanyi says she was roughed up by soldiers at the couple’s house on the outskirts of Kampala, the capital, forcing her to be hospitalized for anxiety and bruises.

Kyagulanyi, who is affectionately known as Barbie, told reporters gathered around her hospital bed that she did not cooperate with the dozens of men in military uniform who demanded to know where Wine was.

She described “a swarm of men” behind masks who broke the door and windows to reach her and then attacked her by lifting her off the floor by her pajamas. One of the intruders banged her head against a pillar, demanding the password to a phone, she said.

Kainerugaba has taken responsibility for the raid but denies that Kyagulanyi was attacked.

“My soldiers did not beat Barbie,” he said on X. “We are looking for her cowardly husband not her.”

Museveni to serve seventh term
Museveni, the 81-year-old leader who is a long-time U.S. ally, has accused the opposition of trying to foment violence during the voting.

He will now serve a seventh term that would bring him closer to five decades in power.

His supporters credit him for the relative peace and stability that has made Uganda home to hundreds of thousands fleeing violence elsewhere in this part of Africa.

AP

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Gaza’s Health Ministry said Thursday that more than 46,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Israel-Hamas war, with no end in sight to the 15-month conflict.

The ministry said a total of 46,006 Palestinians have been killed and 109,378 wounded. It has said women and children make up more than half the fatalities, but does not say how many of the dead were fighters or civilians.

The Israeli military says it has killed over 17,000 militants, without providing evidence. It blames Hamas for their deaths because it says the militants operate in residential areas.

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are now packed into sprawling tent camps along the coast with limited access to food and other essentials. Israel has also repeatedly struck what it claims are militants hiding in shelters and hospitals, often killing women and children.

The war began when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and abducting around 250. A third of the 100 hostages still held in Gaza are believed to be dead.

In Lebanon, the parliament voted Thursday to elect the country’s army commander, Joseph Aoun, as head of state, filling a more than two-year-long presidential vacuum.

The vote came weeks after a tenuous ceasefire agreement halted a 14-month conflict between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and at a time when Lebanon’s leaders are seeking international assistance for reconstruction.

The session was the legislature’s 13th attempt to elect a successor to former President Michel Aoun — no relation to the army commander — whose term ended in October 2022.

Aoun was widely seen as the preferred candidate of the United States and Saudi Arabia, whose assistance Lebanon will need to ensure that Israel withdraws its forces from southern Lebanon as stipulated in the agreement and to fund the post-war rebuilding.

AP

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Nigeria’s army chief who led soldiers through a critical period in the fight against Islamic extremists in the West African nation’s hard-hit northeast has died, President Bola Tinubu said Wednesday.

Lt. Gen. Taoreed Abiodun Lagbaja, who served as army chief since June 2023, died Tuesday night in Nigeria’s economic hub of Lagos after a “period of illness,” Tinubu said in a statement issued by his office without elaborating further. Lagbaja was 56.

The late army chief had not been seen in public in nearly two months, fueling rumors that he had died, which the Nigerian army first denied more than two weeks ago. He has already been replaced by Lt. Gen. Olufemi Oluyede, whom Tinubu appointed in an acting capacity a week ago.

His death comes at a crucial time as Nigeria continues fighting one of Africa’s longest wars on militancy in its northeastern region, where Boko Haram extremists launched an insurgency nearly 15 years ago.

Lagbaja is the second Nigerian army chief to die in office in less than four years. Ibrahim Attahiru served as army chief for only four months before he died in a military air crash in 2021.

The country’s military, long underfunded and outgunned, has been fighting to slow the expansion of the extremists in the region and beyond.

While the frequency of violent attacks has decreased over the years, analysts say extremists have sought to recruit more fighters and consolidate their strongholds in the Lake Chad basin.

With the army often deployed across the country, Nigeria’s security crises also persisted on various fronts during Lagbaja’s tenure, including rampant killings and kidnappings for ransom by dozens of armed groups in the northern region.

At least 11,600 people, including security forces, were killed during his time as army chief, according to data from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, a U.S.-based nonprofit.

Lagbaja had promised to entrench discipline and professionalism in the Nigerian army as one of his key priorities, seeking to rebrand an institution often accused of mistreating civilians and extrajudicial killings in conflict zones.

Nigeria’s Defense Chief Gen. Christopher Musa described his death as a “tremendous loss” to the military and Nigeria. He commended Lagbaja’s “sterling performance, courage and steadfast commitment to safeguarding Nigeria’s sovereignty.”

AP

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