Mr Nicholas Sengoba
There has been a lull of a good number of months. Then the Chief of Defence Forces, who also happens to be President Museveni’s son, Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba, 50, woke up last week and fired a salvo of plainly spoken posts on his X,formerly Twitter, handle.
Gen Muhoozi in the past has been known to launch them raw. He has fired in all directions on topics controversially touching Ugandan politics and international relations.
This time it was about Igara East MP Michael Maranga Mawanda, 57.
Mawanda is a supporter of Gen Muhoozi; an active member of the serving soldier’s political movement; the Patriotic League of Uganda (PLU). The law does not allow soldiers to engage actively in politics.
MP Mawanda was incarcerated for allegedly being involved in the Shs160 billion cooperatives compensation scandal.
The post goes “Michael Mawanda is a political prisoner. He was taken to prison by some politically dilapidated people in NRM for the ‘great crime’ of supporting Muhoozi Kainerugaba in Bushenyi. This is the only crime. Supporting me. Free Mawanda.” Then another, “My friend Michael Mawanda is in prison (and they think we shall keep quiet forever) while people who have stolen from this country for decades are still Ministers? Mzee should hear our cry for change.”
The third one featured a picture of his father, President Museveni ,79, with his son-in-law, who is Muhoozi’s brother-in-law, Mr Odrek Rwabwogo,55. Mr Rwabwogo, a Presidential Advisor, is married to Gen Muhoozi’s sister, Pastor Patience Museveni Rwabwogo, 46. It goes “Mzee you arrested my friend, Michael Mawanda, and you are comfortable taking pictures with the BIGGEST THIEF in Uganda?”
A group called The Disciples of Odrek Rwabwogo (DOOR) responded by dismissing Gen Muhoozi’s allegations as “emotive outbursts of chronic envy, the operative force of hate, the malevolent object of fear and above all a project of intrigue enforced by an irrational coward suffering from extreme sense of entitlement”.
By blaming ‘politically dilapidated people’ for arresting MP Mawanda and then accusing President Museveni of imprisoning him, Gen Muhoozi, who Mr Museveni calls his avenger, has made a very disparaging statement about a man who has been in power for 38 years.
The posts on X give a glimpse of how the Museveni era is likely to end. Just like it began - with a fight.
Over the last 40 years Mr Museveni and his acolytes have built a gargantuan vehicle that now dominates Uganda’s politics, almost unrivalled. He firmly heads command and control of the coercive instruments. The country’s economic resources are with those who owe him allegiance.
He holds sway over the Legislature, Judiciary and public service. In other words, he is a State power. The rest is ostensibly, pro forma and posturing. That is why he is the main focus in most consequential political conversations.
He has either cowed the Opposition or compromised with money and opportunities. Beyond a nuisance value, they are no longer a serious force to reckon with in the race to succeed President Museveni, whose nature is phasing out.
Those with an advantage in the race to succeed Mr Museveni are mainly those groomed by the National Resistance Movement (NRM) set up. They are children of what the Rastafarians call ‘the Babylon system’ - a crooked and unfair state of affairs - that NRM has established. It is mostly a well-paying, ethnically supported corrupt enterprise, built over the last 38 years.
It has taken away wealth and livelihood from the public to weaken it and personalised resources to strengthen themselves. In so doing they have created a power and patronage relationship where the majority are vulnerable. They subserviently look up to the minority, predatory ruling-class for survival and lick their boots whenever the need arises, which is very often.
Whoever is warming up for the highest office in the land has to get a hold of this system. They may either receive it on a silver plate with the blessing of Mr Museveni or wrestle it out of his hands.
That may mean taking the risk of engaging in an all-out confrontation with the system, destroying and replacing it with one they have built on their own for ease of control.
But those now in charge, especially the older generation, may not sit and wait to be dislodged. They will resist such machinations for the liquorice of the corrupt political system is one of the most lucrative ventures that has bequeathed a fortune to those ensconced in it. The end of Museveni is likely to be an inside job with brothers fighting each other like Gen Muhoozi’s ‘crazy’ posts directed at his brother-in-law.
Because President Museveni does not seem, at least publicly, to indicate that he is leaving anytime soon or to clearly show who will replace him or the route they will take to do so, tension is rising.
What is going to follow is an increase in clique formation and infighting. The emergence of PLU and DOOR are cases in point. Mr Museveni is now the ‘stumbling block.’
The unique position in which Uganda finds itself is that there are very many desperate people waiting to be bought into these schemes of fighting to replace Mr Museveni. The sides within NRM will easily find supporters.
The other big challenge is the population structure, with the majority being below the age of 30. They hardly have any experience of what Uganda went through in the contests for power between 1962 when it attained independence right up to the 2000s when the war in the North ended.
This group is willing and energetic enough to do anything for change or whatever else is needed to remove the politically dilapidated people. The disturbing issue is that those intending to replace them have not shown that their motivation is to handle things differently. For instance, Gen Muhoozi looks at the serious charge of corruption against his supporters merely as political persecution.
Then he operates in total contravention of the law that bars military men from politics. That is impunity, which together with corruption have delivered the Uganda we have today.
Children of NRM drawing swords to replace Museveni will be a mere change of guards that is not worth a drop of blood.
Mr Sengoba is a commentator on political and social issues
X: @nsengoba
