Muhoozi Keinerugaba: Is He An Outlaw Or A Mere Mischievous President’s Son?

The Phenomenon Of General Muhoozi Keinerugaba: Part Military, Part Political

When General Muhoozi Kainerugaba, President Tibuhaburwa Museveni’s well-known son, was born in 1974, I was an undergraduate student at the University of Dar-es-Salaam in Tanzania.

I got a chance to see him as a kid when I visited the Musevenis at their Musasani residence in a suburb of the City of Dar-es-Salaam in 1977. I had just arrived from Zanzibar, following the collapse of the East African Community (EAC).

It was a late friend who was called Lt Kagaata Namiti (not the one who was incarcerated by President Tibuhaburwa Museveni in Luzira together with Paulo Muwanga in the early 1990s) that persuaded me to visit the Musevenis. He first took me to the residence of a Ugandan lawyer in Dar-es-Salaam whom I remember only as Musisi. Musisi drove us in his small, old car to the Musevenis residence.

It seemed to me that Museveni had already been told that we were visiting him.  We found him standing under a tree. His wife was standing on the stairs of their house with a little boy, whom I later came to know was Muhoozi Kainerugaba. He was then about two and a half years old.

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I never imagined that today President Tibuhaburwa Museveni would be the strongman of Uganda; that his wife would be the Minister of the critical Ministry of Education; and that the little boy I saw in1974 would be a giant, a General and the Chief of Defence Forces of Uganda.

I perceived President Museveni’s wife, Kataha, as a humble, politics-shy lady, unlike her husband who had cast himself as a rebel against the Idi Amin regime and was already making incursions into Uganda, particularly in what was then known as Bunyha but today is known as Mayuge District.

I established that Lt Kagaata Namiti and lawyer Musisi were members of Tibuhaburwa Museveni’s Front for National Salvation (FRONASA). I never heard of Kagaata Namiti and Musisi again apart from the sad story that Kagaata Namiti was among the 100 or so combatants who drowned in Lake Victoria on their way to Uganda to fight Idi Amin’s forces. I never came to know the circumstances under which they drowned.

Since this article is on the Chief of Defense Forces, Muhoozi Kainerugaba, let’s re focus on him.

The first time I met General Muhoozi Kainerugaba as a grown up was in the early 1990s when I was lecturing at Makerere University. A group of students introduced him to me in front of Patrick Kirunda’s Mitchell Hall. We shook hands. At that time, he looked humble and a man of few hands.

I have been continually in Uganda to follow his phenomenal rise through the ranks in the Uganda Peoples Defense Forces (UPDF). Since President Tibuhaburwa Museveni is the President of Uganda and Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, he has been behind and doer of the phenomenal rise in the UPDF.

The President has created a befitting politico-military environment for General Muhoozi Kainerugaba to play politics while in army uniform. He has become phenomenon in Uganda just as President Tibuhaburwa Museveni has become over the last 38 or so years.

Apparently it is actually true that the two phenomena – President Tibuhaburwa Museveni and General Muhoozi Kainerugaba -are two former rebels (the latter as a Kadogo or child soldier) who are making all the big political and military decisions in the country. They also protect each other militarily and politically.

President Tibuhaburwa Museveni supposedly retired from the UPDF in 1996 so that he could stand to be the first elected President in post-NRM/NRA era. However, General Muhoozi Kainerugaba does his pro-NRM politics openly while serving as the topmost serving soldier or CDF of the UPDF. This may suggest that the UPDF has not strategically transformed itself from the NRA stature prior to the making of the Uganda Constitution 1995.

Not only has General Muhoozi Kainerugaba made outrageous statements – including one that his army could occupy Nairobi; another that he will support his father in the 2026 Presidential elections. He has recently said, according to Press reports that no civilian will ever rule Uganda again, or something like that.

On top of all that, the General took the political decision to form a political party called Patriotic Front of Uganda (PLU). Most of its members are from the NRM. Some in President Tibuhaburwa Museveni’s Cabinet are also members. Some people from the Opposition are also members. The PFU’s colours are largely yellow, just as that NRM yellow colour. Some top leaders of the PLU were appointed to Cabinet positions by the President. Since it is difficult to separate UPDF military politics from NRM politics, one school of thought believes PLU is an NRM project approved by the President of Uganda as a strategy to propagate the firm hold onto power by the President and son.  Perhaps recognising that PLU existence within NRM casts too many contradictions within the phenomena of Tibuhaburwa Museveni and Muhoozi Kainerugaba, the latter decided to recast it as more or less a non-governmental organisation

If General Muhoozi Kainerugaba were not the President’s son, and if PLU were not a brainchild of NRM, he would have faced the Martial Court severally. In any case, Uganda is now a joint project of the President and General Muhoozi Kainerugaba. This, according to one school of thought, could be the reason why the latter did not, if correctly reported, hesitate to pronounce that Uganda will never be ruled by a civilian again. Uganda is thus a politico-military project of the two men – father and son – cushioned my regular elections to produce agents of the project. This is why democratisation in Uganda from now on will manifest more as fuss than a reality.

For God and My Country.