Welcome back to the cyclical pantomime of sub-Saharan power dynamics, where the script hasn't been updated since the Cold War and the actors are starting to look like wax museum rejects. This week’s performance takes us to Uganda, a nation currently engaged in the atavistic ritual known as a ‘general election.’ In one corner, we have Yoweri Museveni, a man who has held the presidency since 1986—roughly the same era people thought leg warmers and shoulder pads were a good idea. In the other, we have Bobi Wine, a pop star turned politician who seems to believe that a catchy hook and a Twitter account are sufficient armor against a military-grade kleptocracy.

Let’s start with the regime’s opening act: the internet shutdown. There is something almost refreshingly honest about a government that simply pulls the plug on the digital age. While Western autocrats prefer the nuanced rot of algorithmic manipulation and shadow-banning, Museveni’s crowd goes for the full digital lobotomy. By plunging the country into a forced 19th-century information vacuum, the regime effectively turns the entire nation into a silent movie where they control the only projector. It’s the ultimate ‘I’m not listening’ gesture, executed on a scale that would make a toddler proud. If you can’t see the fraud on your feed, does the fraud even exist? To the regime, the answer is a resounding, silent ‘No.’

Then there is the ballot stuffing. One almost feels a sense of nostalgia for such analog corruption. In an era of sophisticated hacking and deep-fakes, the sight of a government official physically jamming extra papers into a plastic box is like watching a blacksmith at work in a world of 3D printers. It’s artisanal tyranny. Bobi Wine’s frantic dispatches from the front lines of this absurdity tell a story of ‘massive’ fraud, but honestly, what did anyone expect? Did the opposition think Museveni would suddenly experience a crisis of conscience after thirty-five years of treating the national treasury like a personal piggy bank? The shock expressed by the Wine camp is as performative as the election itself. You don’t walk into a lion’s den and then act surprised when the cat doesn’t offer you a vegan wrap.

And let’s talk about the ‘Pop Star’ candidate himself. Bobi Wine is the quintessential modern revolutionary—a man who has spent more time in a recording booth than a legislative chamber. He represents the desperate hope that celebrity can somehow override the crushing weight of institutionalized violence. It’s a charming, if pathologically naive, conceit. He calls for the masses to ‘rise to the occasion and reject the criminal regime,’ a sentiment that would look great on a t-shirt or a concert poster, but lacks a certain tactical depth when the regime in question owns all the tanks and the people with the keys to the prisons. His rhetoric is high on emotion and low on the kind of grit required to actually dismantle a paramilitary state. He is selling a dream to a population that hasn't slept in decades.

Meanwhile, the ‘leaders’ and ‘polling agents’ are being abducted and arrested with the boring regularity of a grocery list. This is the part of the show where the state reminds everyone who owns the monopoly on force. It’s not even a tragedy anymore; it’s a procedure. Arrest the agents, chase off the supervisors, fill the boxes, and then declare a victory for ‘stability.’ It’s a boring, predictable, and utterly stultifying process that serves no purpose other than to provide a veneer of legitimacy for Western donors who need to tick a box labeled ‘democracy’ before they send the next round of aid.

The voters, as always, are the ultimate extras in this production. They stand in line for hours at polling stations that never open, or they cast votes that will be incinerated or replaced before the sun goes down. They are participating in a math problem where the answer was written in 1986 and only the variables change. Whether they vote for the aging strongman or the autotuned challenger, the outcome is a foregone conclusion. The regime will claim a mandate, the opposition will claim a theft, and the internet will eventually come back on just in time for everyone to argue about it on X before the next cycle of poverty and repression begins. It’s not a democracy; it’s a treadmill. And everyone involved is just running in place, hoping the scenery will change while the machine stays exactly the same.