Last week, the First Son and Chief of the Defence Forces (CDF), Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba, as he is wont to do, set social media ablaze with gloating posts about the abduction of an opposition member and close confidant of National Unity Platform leader, Bobi Wine/Robert Kyagulanyi.
In previous posts, 51-year-old Muhoozi, perched comfortably upon cushy impunity, has stated he seeks to behead opposition leaders like Kizza Besigye (who is still in jail despite meeting all the requisite requirements for bail) and Bobi Wine. Muhoozi’s inflammatory and violent rhetoric is taken lightly by his cheering supporters.
Balaam Barugahara, the minister of state for Youth and Children Affairs, might as well be the minister of praising and worshipping in the cult of Muhoozi. Balaam fanatically cheers the self-immolation of his ‘Supreme Leader’.
Veteran journalist Andrew Mwenda has previously defended the leadership qualities of Muhoozi, drumming up his ethereal goodness, supreme intelligence and utmost humility. Alas! Muhoozi’s posts beg to differ.
Muhoozi is out of the closet – he is loud and proud, in no hurry to confirm the adoring superlatives his rabid supporters lavish upon him. From a media-shy figure that seemed more content ducking in the army and warding off any nefarious rumours about plans to succeed his father, today’s Muhoozi on X (formerly Twitter) is unrestrained!
Muhoozi Kainerugaba relishes the juiciest fruits of the National Resistance Army (NRA) revolution that birthed his father’s National Resistance Movement (NRM) regime. Muhoozi enjoys the finest of freedoms – even beyond the reach of the Constitution.
His enjoyment knows no encumbrance for he is a serving army officer blatantly engaged in partisan activity; but it’s not like his revolutionary father is worried. Of course, 81-year-old President Yoweri Museveni is not worried.
As his long and fully-kitted convoy speeds up and down the country, leaving gnarling jams in the capital city, all is well in the gilded palace. Spreading the gospel of the four-acre model and the marvels of cash handouts to beggar citizens through the Parish Development Model, Museveni is not in a hurry.
It’s not like there’s a presidential term or age limit. In his speeches, he pledges, promises, plans, blasts, lectures… but hardly a coherent finish. In power since the sun-kissed year of 1986, Museveni, who is extolled for his cunning power plays and keen intellect, has perfected the art of passing the buck.
He is slippery, he is smooth like that oil he watches over tenderly. Befuddled by the poverty of his fellow citizens, his ‘bazzukulu’ on whom he looks down with benevolent grandfatherly eyes, Museveni wonders why his prosperity gospel is yet to bear fruit. Unhurried, he brushes off criticisms about his patronage style of governance and human rights record, with robust disdain.
Those who shout about corruption, torture, and dysfunctional public services are no longer simply ideologically bankrupt but worse – funded by foreign homosexuals. A lover of tradition and a promoter of indigenous culture, Museveni’s speeches are a gold mine of local phrases and idioms.
In 2009, Museveni, alongside several linguists, co-authored a Runyankore/Rukiga-English dictionary, contributing to efforts to preserve and maintain local languages. A consummate teacher, Museveni hardly misses an opportunity to teach. In his Labour day speech, Museveni dropped another nugget from Runyankore.
He told his audience in Nakapiripirit, “Enshoni is a Runyankore word that refers to a deterrent for wrongdoing. Enshoni-nkye is shamelessness, and, in the Ugandan case, it applies to the opposition and their sympathisers.”
As his father delighted in dispensing Runyankore gems and demonising the opposition, his son, on X, was also teaching Runyankore and demonising the opposition. Like father, like son. Muhoozi, in response to Bobi Wine’s tweet about the abduction of Mutwe, boasted that Mutwe was in his basement learning ‘Runyankore’.
As Museveni enthuses about the beauty of Ugandan/ African cultures and why we must preserve them, his son weaponises ethnicity, pitting Western Uganda against the rest of Uganda. With every incendiary tweet from Muhoozi, we wait with bated breath to hear the enshoni from the commander- in-chief (CIC), the fountain of honor, the President of the Republic of Uganda.
Instead, Muhoozi deactivates his account for a few days (not this time), while the rest of the government of Uganda continues like the tweets are a figment of our collective hallucination. The regime quibblers who dare address the grotesque ‘Chwezi’ elephant in the room condescendingly deign that X is not an official government platform for communication.
How they despise us! In Muhoozi, we see the undressing of Museveni’s revolutionary legacy – a remorseless kick in the teeth to the blood and guts spilled in the Luweero bush war.
Nearly 40 years later, the courageous enshoni that drove a young Museveni and others to liberate Uganda has morphed into the arrogant enshoni-nkye of Muhoozi Kainerugaba. As CDF, Muhoozi reports to the commander-in-chief (CIC), who also happens to be his father. We are in luck! If he does not catch him in the office, he can catch him at home. The buck stops with President Yoweri Museveni.
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The writer is a tayaad muzzukulu
In other words Tayaad Muzzukulu, it is a disgrace and humiliating that; for 39 years and counting, Ugandans are being led by consummate lying, BOGUS and openly diabolic self-confessed criminals.
Wow. A masterpiece.
Great and insightful writing. I pray MK does not abduct you; keep you in his basement as he shaves you off, then you salute that tired portrait ritualistically every morning. After this, the boys drive you to a staged court in Kiruhura where a waiting cadre judge, closely studying guided notes from you-know-who, sends you limping on broken legs to a remand prison. All to silence that brilliant mind!