Bully Kainerugaba is a threat to stability in Uganda and E Africa

Uganda opposition leader and National Unity Platform (NUP) Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, popularly known as Bobi Wine. [AFP] In 1711, in England, there emerged a mob made up of youthful White men of high social status whose behavioural repertoire ranged from dusktime binge drinking to roughing up womenfolk and older, mostly male guards with impunity. Styling themselves The Mohocks, the group's members derived their misguided sense of entitlement to social incivility, and criminal behaviour, from the equally misguided self-flattery that they could easily, and always, get away with the misexercise of wealth-given power. Many centuries later, the Mohocks-ilk self-flattery and moral invulnerability seem to have found, not just a ready and easy incarnation, but also a potent actor, in the emergence of Ugandan President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni's son and head of the country's army, General Muhoozi Kainerugaba, as a ruling family bully-scion. Given to social media user-indiscretion, Kainerugaba has, in the past few years, courted controversy with posts on X (formerly Twitter), making a case for a regionwide, 'for-the-glory-of-Uganda' expansionist blitz. In the immediate aftermath of the General Election in Kenya on August 9, 2022, Kainerugaba embarked on a social media race to capture and subsequently vassalise Nairobi within a two-week time frame. Not only would he take the Kenyan capital for Uganda, but also cream off the city's crown jewel, such cachet-festooned places as Westlands and Kilimani for his own residence and playground. And thus began a flurry of Kainerugaba-made posts on X that not only elicited indignation from the peoples of the region but also very nearly caused the souring of relations between Uganda and her neighbours. His itch to de-atomise the original East African Community member states of Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda into a federation, with himself at the head of the outsised army, established him as a threat to regional stability too loud to ignore. At some point, the rumpus of outrage from around the region goaded his strongman father into 'action', who, as though to thumb his own nose at his son's critics, elevated the younger man to the apogee of the country's military command, indirectly and inadvertently exposing himself as both the author and promoter of the show. For what then followed was an emboldened Kainerugaba relapsing into his old, interventionist self and, on X, injudiciously going on the rampage about how then-warring factions in neighbouring Sudan comprised "juvenile fools" who needed colonial era-style whipping to grow up! In the build-up to, and immediate aftermath of, the presidential election in Uganda on January 15, 2026 which his father, in power since 1986, 'won' with slightly over 70 per cent of the votes cast Kainerugaba's minatory words to both candidate Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu (popularly known as Bobi Wine) of the National Unity Platform (NUP) party and his supporters could not be dismissed as idle threats, further lending credence to the supposition the exercise was neither free nor fair. As I write this, Uganda is in the grip of both horror and Kainerugaba-caused uncertainty following the first family's scion's glee-filled posts on X to the effect that his father's regime had murdered hundreds, possibly thousands, of Kyagulanyi's supporters in the days leading up to, during and after the aforementioned poll on January 15, as well as ultimatum-filled calls for the NUP leader in self-imposed hiding for fear of a military raid on his house to surrender himself to the authorities. It is, however, the fact that Kainerugaba's conduct, disgusting though it is, has thus far enjoyed a run without a single chastening word coming out of his president-father that makes it all the more unsettling. The inferential conclusion of those watching is and will be that the son, though a power-spoilt brat he may be, is his father's messenger. And it remains to be seen whether the older man will, at some point, call off his son to some kind of behavioural rundown. The damage to both the personal reputations of the duo, as well as to relations between Uganda and her regional peers, will long have been done, though. Although individual states within the region are faced with unique problems, including such factionalism-fuelled instability as we have seen in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kainerugaba's ambition-driven intransigence, in particular, represents an even more danger-fraught, war-potent extra-jurisdictional overreach. Uganda, like her neighbour to the east, Kenya, plays the hugely important role of host to refugees from such war-scourged peers in the region as South Sudan, DR Congo and Burundi, and, therefore, the cost(s) of an incaution-fuelled outbreak of civil strife within her borders, or even war pitting her against another state(s), would be transregional. For watchers, as well as those in positions of influence and privilege, there are lessons galore from Kainerugaba's social and positional peccadilloes of the past few years, particularly on how not to relate with others and project power. Those who spend their stints in leadership roles, or moments of glory, self-lionising to Goliath-sized majesty while, the whole time, subjecting everyone else to derogatory put-downs are ultimately and forever met with not approbation, but odium. And there's always the tendency of history to recall and critique man's relationship to privilege.

Bully Kainerugaba is a threat to stability in Uganda and E Africa

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