Gen. MUHOOZI KAINERUGABA
I can bet with confidence, in this article, that Gen MK will neither be on the ballot as a presidential candidate nor a president-elect in 2026 unless he executes the oedipal method.
Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba’s (MK) train of presidential ambition has been fired up by tweets and seems now ominously unstoppable. Will he be the first person to depose a dictator over Twitter?
But wait a minute, has Gen Museveni, the father, a lifelong president, and Gen MK’s Commander-in-Chief declared a position on succession or transition?
The characteristic actions of the President on this matter of succession speak louder than the rancor of Gen MK and his overzealously opportunistic supporters. Clearly, Gen MK’s expectation to replace his father in 2026 is simply infantile, diversionary, and at most, oedipal.
The question that this article raises, is not about the materiality of Gen Museveni handing over power to his cub. This which concerns the conscience of the nation is that with this steam of succession politics, have we, as a country rationalized institutional chauvinism and discarded the foundational ideology that fosters nationalism? Can we state, unequivocally, that the NRM-O and its leaders have arrived at the end-point of their ideological evolution?
I may not have answers to all the above questions myself, however, what is clear is that each time we indulge in this succession debate, the chauvinistic element of Chwezism emerges. The most logical justification of this succession debate is situated in reinventing a Chwezi “historical” might over the East African region.
This chauvinistic tendency is ingrained in the tweets such as the ambitions of capturing Nairobi, the prospects of caving a Chwezi empire to include Eastern DRC, or praises for uncle this and uncle that, including fabricating relationships with Egyptians, Ethiopians and exalting the Russians.
These tweets are not random. They must illuminate repressed knowledge or myth that resulted from being exposed to the power and how that power is mobilized and sustained. Far from those who may dismiss the General’s tweets as misgivings of inebriation, I see in them a pattern of premonition rooted in his father’s myth.
Additionally, the succession discussions feed into the ambiguous theme of transition that Hon. Norbert Mao fronts to justify his transition from opposition to the government. Like Gen MK’s false hope of becoming President in 2026, Mao is also “being driven like a wheelbarrow” to cultivate a false public narrative of a non-existent transition that is otherwise possible only upon God’s beckons.
Previous trends have shown that Gen Museveni says only things he has no intention of doing and effectively does only things he never says in public. For instance, in 1986, he promised never to cling to power, now he is one of the longest-serving presidents. In 1986, he was totally averse to corruption and vowed to end poverty in Uganda, now corruption and poverty, and two leading tourist attractions to Uganda. Somewhere, he promised the return to constitutionalism, rule of law, and securing persons and property, now the constitution is worthless, kondoism is back, everyone is insecure and private properties are being vandalized or appropriated under gunpoint.
Precisely, the contradictions of Gen. Museveni are our motivation to empathize with his son. If his goal is to become President in honor of his mother, then he may as well execute the Oedipal method and we move on!
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