President Museveni (L) and first son Lt Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba. PHOTO/COMBO
When President Museveni said a few years ago that his son Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba would be tough on corruption, a few observers took note. Few expected that it would take this turn.
What seems clear is that the Uganda government now operates as two semi-independent wings of the First Family.
The main Uganda government is under President Museveni while the second wing is under his son, Gen Muhoozi.
So while the President and First Lady are on a tour of the country to inspect Parish Development Model projects, the son is on his social media account pronouncing all sorts of decrees and threats on the Opposition and news media.
We can also define three phases of the new Muhoozi regime over the last three years.
The first phase in 2022 featured Muhoozi celebrating his 48th birthday and this celebration being treated almost as a national event, from a party at Lugogo to a dinner at State House Entebbe.
The second phase, following closely on the heels of the first, had Muhoozi extending his birthday celebration into a series of nationwide tours and rallies intended to thank the population for their birthday wishes and to present him as a national figure.
The third phase in 2023 had Muhoozi now formalising his country tours into a structured organisation first dubbed the MK Movement and later named the Patriotic League of Uganda (PLU).
The PLU was more or less disbanded with the appointment in 2024 of Muhoozi as the Chief of Defence Forces and several of his PLU aides absorbed into President Museveni’s Cabinet.
After going quiet for a few months as CDF, Muhoozi reappeared on social media in full blast. This time, unlike in 2022 and 2023, Muhoozi was no longer engaging in bombastic declarations.
Since late 2024, he has been sounding militant in a way last seen in Ugandan military leaders in the 1970s. He threatened to execute Opposition leader Kizza Besigye by hanging and vowed to cut off the head of Bobi Wine, president of the National Unity Platform.
Initially, this was seen as just part of his banter since 2022. But now, government agencies and officials appear to be carrying out these orders.
The headquarters of NUP at Makerere-Kavule in Kampala were raided by the security forces.
The ongoing campaigning for the Kawempe North parliamentary seat has been disbanded by heavily armed operatives who beat up campaign agents, journalists and supporters with a brutality that matched the threats against NUP on social media by Muhoozi.
Last month, he directed on X that journalists must all enrol in a patriotism course at the National Leadership Institute at Kyankwanzi in June.
It remains to be seen how seriously the Uganda Media Council and the Uganda Communications Commission will act on these directives made on social media.
It’s difficult at this stage to determine if Ugandan troops were recently deployed further into eastern Congo as a result of Muhoozi’s tweets or if the order was arrived upon by the army High Command and the tweets were a pre-deployment announcement.
Something notable is in whom Muhoozi directs to carry out his orders, the new minister Balaam Barugahara and others from the PLU, in the instance of journalists and Kyankwanzi, bypassing the minister of Information and National Guidance, Dr Chris Baryomunsi.
In all this, President Museveni has remained silent. Whether this silence is tacit approval remains to be seen.
All told, one can surmise that the NRM government is now being run from two parallel centres of power, the father’s and the son’s.
His orders to have Besigye hanged or Bobi Wine beheaded have so far been met with silence from the army and police.
This indicates that the armed forces are erring on the side of caution, preferring to wait for formal instructions from the Head of State rather than respond to the CDF's social media musings.
Muhoozi’s bizarre utterances make it nearly impossible for any reasonable government or military spokesman to defend him.
In other words, Uganda in 2025 is now in similar terrain to UPC/Obote II, 1981-1985, where a powerful military leader (Maj Gen David Oyite-Ojok, 1982, 1983) acts on his own and disregards the orders and wishes of the head of state, Milton Obote.
The writer, Timothy Kalyegira, is a veteran journalist.
