Prime
Muhoozi’s anti-climax 2023 birthday
Rwandan President Paul Kagame (centre, seated) hosts Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba and his delegation for an evening to celebrate the First Son’s 49th birthday in April 2023. PHOTO/ COURTESY
What you need to know:
- Given the photos and the surroundings, it would be more accurate to say Gen Muhoozi was hosted by Mr and Ms Kagame of Rwanda, than by President Kagame and First Lady.
Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba led a Ugandan delegation to the Rwandan capital Kigali last week to celebrate his 49th birthday.
The way Muhoozi had billed his birthday party this year, it’s clear that he intended or expected that celebrating it in Kigali would be a major East African public event, exceeding the celebration in Kampala last year.
Crowds of admiring supporters would fill the streets of Kigali and he would be unveiled as a new East African prince, a peacemaker uniting the region.
There would be live, continual TV and radio coverage of every moment from the arrival of the Uganda Airlines Bombardier at Kigali airport to a lavish state banquet, presumably attended by the top brass of the Rwandan military, cabinet, foreign diplomats accredited to Rwanda, and a cross-section of Rwandan business leaders and socialites.
In the end, it was a decidedly much lower key event than the quasi-national celebration of April last year.
Not one member of Uganda’s First Family accompanied Muhoozi on the trip.
It was an odd, mismatched Ugandan delegation that landed at Kigali International Airport.
A government minister here, a civil servant there, a friend of Muhoozi, a spouse of a friend of Muhoozi there.
I’m not sure Gen Kainerugaba, used to acting with impunity in Uganda, expected such an anti-climax of a birthday event this year.
His host, President Paul Kagame, deliberately kept the event as trim and ordinary as possible.
This was not the kind of reception and birthday party Kainerugaba had in mind, given the impunity and use of the State machinery he has become used to in Uganda.
There was no street parade for him in Kigali, no Rwandan cabinet ministers, no troupes of traditional dancers to greet Kainerugaba at the airport, no display of Ugandan and Rwandan flags.
If Muhoozi felt the purpose of the Ugandan delegation was to discuss bilateral matters, there were no Rwandan cabinet or government counterparts at the meetings.
That it was awkward was fairly obvious to see. Was the Ugandan delegation there to represent President Museveni?
Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba.
Was it a “Friends of Muhoozi” delegation? Were Gen Jim and Susan Muhwezi there as government officials or as family friends?
If as family friends, friends to Muhoozi’s family or the Yoweri and Janet Museveni family?
And Norbert Mao, the minister of Justice? A family friend or a government representative? If as a family friend, friend of whom?
Was Mao included on the trip because he really had something to say about constitutional reforms, or somebody from the Cabinet had to be found to give Muhoozi the image of leading a delegation?
Muhoozi was denied any opportunity by Kigali to imagine himself a regional celebrity and politician of import.
In fact, given the photos and the surroundings, it would be more accurate to say Muhoozi was hosted by Mr and Ms Kagame of Kigali, Rwanda, than by President Kagame and First Lady Jeanette Kagame.
I suspect too that this was precisely the point President Kagame was trying to put across to him.
During last year’s Muhoozi birthday dinner at State House Entebbe, the chief guest President Kagame clearly found it a bit on the overly-dramatic and wasteful side.
He politely offered to edit Muhoozi’s Twitter posts, a veiled statement of disapproval of the erratic tweets and bombastic posturing that have caused so much embarrassment across East Africa.
This trip to Kigali, one could even go as far as to state, was President Kagame’s way of sending a signal to Muhoozi on how a professional army officer and responsible public figure should behave.
Obviously, a subsidiary message by Kagame was that unlike President Museveni, he, Kagame, has no time for such errant behaviour and this dull birthday party was intended to trim Muhoozi’s ego.
All said and done, the low-key reception and birthday celebration that Muhoozi was treated to in Kigali was a study in contrasts.
It was a picture of how President Museveni, well past his political prime and effectiveness, has allowed the open abuse of power and waste of resources to plague Uganda.
And entire national aircraft chartered continually just to humour an army officer whose only claim to fame is the accident of being President Museveni’s son.
The embarrassing lack of proper systems and lines of reporting in NRM Uganda were on display with this delegation.
A minister of security accompanying a presidential adviser, when it sound be the other way around.
An army General who goes to meet a head of state of another country, but the Chief of Defence Forces can’t dare make a political statement and get away with it.
But once outside Uganda’s borders where there is no state or government interested in Muhoozi’s antics, he comes across as a lonely-looking figure looking for a purpose in life.
