Gen Muhoozi tweets and emergence of First Son from the shadows of his father

His free-flowing opinions and comments which until now have mostly been focused on the army and the historical role played by Fronasa-NRA in Uganda’s liberation, have extended into discussions on regional matters.

Charles Onyango-Obbo reported in his column in the September 29 edition of Daily Monitor: “The story goes that the Commander of Land Forces, Lt Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba, who is President Yoweri Museveni’s son, is being a bad boy. Muhoozi has been stirring trouble at home and abroad with his tweets on foreign countries.”

Lt Gen Kainerugaba’s tweets on one particular foreign country, Ethiopia, are what has finally turned these from private musings of a powerful military and political figure and to increasing concerns about their possible bearing on Uganda’s standing among its neighbours.
A Twitter handle called Egyptian and Ethiopian local news on October 10 asked: “[Is] this really the account of Lt Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba, the Uganda Commander of Land Forces?... His tweets about Ethiopia are explosive.”

For those not on the social media platforms, Kainerugaba’s posts are bombastic and erratic in tone and seemingly out of touch with reality and lack reflection on the implications of these kinds of public utterances.

“UPDF is one of the best armies on earth. Only fools would dream about fighting us!” read his tweet on Sunday, October 17.
Kainerugaba expresses himself in the way familiar from his own father’s thought pattern -- dismissive of critics, complex realities reduced to simple declarations and an insistence on a show of strength.

When he created his Twitter account, Kainerugaba indicated that “Tweets by Gen Muhoozi will be signed off with MK.”
Most of his tweets no longer have that signing-out, leading many onlookers to wonder if somebody else runs the account (or handle, as Twitter terms the accounts.)

The question, though, is that if these tweets are indeed written by an aide to Kainerugaba, doesn’t the owner of the handle look through them before they are published?
Alternatively, after they are published, doesn’t Kainerugaba read through them, see the flighty, erratic tone and order their deletion and even sack the aide?

It seems clear that these are Kainerugaba’s own tweets. Some of what he says is insider knowledge of Ugandan political history of a kind that an ordinary aide would not know about.
Many of the photos that accompany the posts come from a personal or family album, not the public domain searchable via Google.
After Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed came to power in 2018, his first foreign visit was to Uganda. President Museveni attended his inauguration ceremony in Addis Ababa.
Shortly after the outbreak of the current civil war in Ethiopia in November 2020, an Ethiopian government delegation visited Uganda to seek advice and mediation from President Museveni.

Museveni is, unquestionably, a staunch Abiy ally. Or at least, that’s what it seems on the surface.
It has, then, surprised many observers to see Lt Gen Kainerugaba tweet blatant and emotional support for the rebel TPLF group in contradiction of his father’s public position on the situation.

All this creates a crisis for President Museveni. On the one hand, the social media posts by his son, if not restrained, could damage Mr Museveni’s relations with various regional leaders and governments.
Could it be that Gen Kainerugaba’s tweets are, in fact, an accurate representation of Museveni’s true stance on Ethiopia and his apparent support of Prime Minister Abiy is deceptive?

As a serving military officer, Lt Gen Kainerugaba is forbidden to openly state political views without clearance from the Chief of Defence Forces or the Commander-in-Chief.
As a serving military officer, one does not have or allow people to go around publicly declaring one “my next president” when there is a serving president just recently elected.

But this now lays bare the contradictions that are NRM Uganda. Not one member of the UPDF high command has called out Kainerugaba on his Twitter utterances.
His own father, the Commander-in-Chief, remains silent. Nobody seems able to do anything about Kainerugaba’s tweeting.
If Museveni were to order Kainerugaba to stop his tweeting and get off social media, his growing aura of military clout would be seriously damaged.

Therefore, President Museveni must find a careful balance between getting his son to tone down the rhetoric and potentially damaging utterances, and not undercutting Kainerugaba’s public image.
This brings us back to a Sunday Monitor analysis a few months ago, about the paradox of Museveni’s total dominance of the Ugandan state and at the same time, his increasingly weak control of his own government.

Like any other family, the Museveni family could be facing differences of opinion and approach in matters of interest and concern to them.
Behind the public image of a united and loving traditional family posing for group photos at Christmas in the Rwakitura country home, the Museveni family can be stifling to its members.

Every time somebody from the family expresses political ambitions, somehow there is a crisis within the family or their ambitions are prematurely ended.
Ms Janet Museveni wants to become an MP. Crisis. Odrek Rwabwogo wants to contest as NRM vice chairman for western Uganda. Crisis, pressure on him to withdraw his bid.
Differences within the President’s family over matters of public interest were first revealed by Museveni himself in November 2005 when the First Lady Janet Museveni announced her intention to seek a parliamentary seat for Ruhama constituency in Ntungamo during the 2006 general election.

For most of his life, one of the biggest sources of frustration for Gen Kainerugaba has been that of living in his father’s shadow, being constantly viewed as a kind of political project and not as an individual.
In Kainerugaba’s tweets can be seen a defiant tone, the triumphant tone of one who has finally found the freedom to be himself as a stand-alone entity and he is relishing this freedom.

Suffice it to say that there could have been many more tense Museveni family meetings than that which took place in 2005 to discuss the Ruhama matter.
The most recent tension arose late in 2020 when Museveni’s brother Godfrey Aine sought to contest in the Mawogola North seat on the NRM party ticket, at the same time Shartis Musherure Kutesa, daughter to Sam Kutesa, the former Foreign minister and in-law of Museveni, also expressed interest in the same seat.

Museveni as the NRM party chairman was at a loss of what to do, who to endorse and whom to disappoint. Increasingly, this is the sort of dilemma in which he finds himself on a daily basis.
Museveni’s children have come of age, are married and into business or the army. Several family members, including, of course, the First Lady, are Cabinet ministers, Members of Parliament, powerful civil servants or political fixers.
In other words and in conclusion, President Museveni today is where former Kenyan president Jomo Kenyatta was around 1976. 
Kenyatta was the charismatic leader and face of Kenya’s independence campaign and a father figure to the nation. His power, however, was founded on the Kikuyu ethnic group.

Over time since independence in 1963, the Kikuyu had become established as the dominant power in politics, the military and in business.
Kenyatta who made these Kikuyu was increasingly hostage to the forces he created and those forces were starting to think about and positioning themselves for a post-Kenyatta.
Kenyatta, caught between these Kikuyu forces, was growing more and more indecisive and in relative terms his power was diminishing.

This could explain why President Museveni threatens to clampdown on corruption but nothing is done, because much of the corruption and influence-peddling within the state is by the powerful ruling elite.
A future meltdown, if or when it comes, will follow the pattern of post-independence Ugandan history.

It will not be a mass street uprising that topples the NRM government, nor will it be an opposition victory at the ballot box in an election organised by the NRM state.
Rather, it will be an internal split as did happen in the Cabinet in 1966 and in the army in 1971 leading to the putsch that brought Maj Gen Idi Amin to power.
Or it will be like a split within the UPC government into two factions in 1984, followed by the split of the national army the UNLA in 1985 and climaxing in that year’s sudden and decisive change of government.

Muhoozi’s recent popular tweets 

On Guinea coup, Sept 14: If our Commander in Chief gave us instructions it wouldn’t take UPDF a day to discipline mutinous troops like the ones in Guinea-Conakry. 

On Ethiopia crisis, Sept 20: I don’t know why my brothers in Ethiopia are fighting me? It makes me sad. You are now fighting my tribe in Tigray. Tigrayans are part of us. God is the one who protects us! 

Nov 5: I urge my great and brave brothers in the Tigrayan Defence Forces to listen to the words of General Yoweri Museveni! I am as angry as you and I support your cause. Those who raped our Tigrayan sisters and killed our brothers must be punished! 

On Bachwezi, Nov 5: Some of you asked me who the descendants of the Bachwezi were, well, now I can answer...General Yoweri Museveni, Prince Fred Rubereza, General Fred Rwigyema, and General Salim Saleh! They are the direct descendants of the Bachwezi!