An aging autocrat plans to reign for life. His impatient son is agitating for the throne. His family is squabbling. His generals are exasperated. The people look on in dismay.
Politics in Uganda has become a parable of dynastic decay. For 37 years, President Yoweri Museveni has ruled with a supporting cast of relatives, army officers, and hangers-on. They see themselves as the only ones capable of running the country—and have profited handsomely from doing so. Museveni has twice had the constitution rewritten to remove limits on his rule. But he is now 78, and he cannot rewrite biology.
Enter his 49-year-old son, Muhoozi Kainerugaba: a hard-drinking, trash-tweeting soldier who considers himself “the most handsome General on earth.” After a rapid promotion through the army ranks, Kainerugaba says he wants to run for president at the next election in 2026. “Enough of the old people ruling us,” he tweeted in March.
For now, Museveni shows no signs of giving way. Although he has done much to promote his son, he has never named a successor. Some think he is testing his son out, while others speculate that the situation is slipping beyond his control. In a speech in May, he said that some of Kainerugaba’s followers were looking out for “their own interests” and warned against creating “unprincipled contradictions among the people.” He has also been receiving endorsements from party honchos to run again in 2026.
Others in the first family are of two minds about Kainerugaba, at least if the whispers of regime insiders, journalists, and analysts in Kampala are to be believed. His powerful uncle Salim Saleh, a retired general, has sometimes tried to rein in his excesses. His brother-in-law Odrek Rwabwogo, a presidential advisor assigned with courting foreign investors, is said to covet the top job himself. His three sisters have displayed little enthusiasm for his ambitions. One of the stronger voices in his defense might be Education Minister Janet Museveni, his mother, though reports are contradictory and hard to verify.
Those in Museveni’s circle now face a conundrum. To preserve their power and position, they must find a successor from within. Alternative candidates have been sidelined or are keeping their heads down. But the natural heir is a loose cannon, as even the president must see. The succession issue is already fracturing the ruling elite—and one day, it could plunge Uganda into crisis.
This story is based on interviews with a dozen analysts and experts, as well as officials and other political actors familiar with the situation. Many spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.
Outside Uganda, Kainerugaba is best known for his bombastic tweets, which insiders say are often posted under the influence of alcohol: idle threats to invade Kenya, boasts that he is descended from Jesus Christ, and an offer of cattle as bride price for the hand of Italy’s prime minister. In April alone, he taunted a fellow officer, quoted Mao Zedong’s view that he “did not kill enough,” lusted after women half his age, and called a female journalist “ugly” because she questioned his conduct.
When Kainerugaba tweeted about invading Kenya last October, his father sacked him as commander of the land forces after roughly 15 months on the job. He currently serves as a presidential advisor, without formal command, which constrains his chaotic influence—for now.
“Twitter is a tool for galvanizing support,” said Michael Katungi, one of Kainerugaba’s close associates, comparing his outspoken tweeting to former U.S. President Donald Trump. “Hate him, like him, everyone is talking about him.” But the first son’s Trumpian persona is rarely seen in public, where his speeches are stilted and a little nervous. His appeal comes from his parentage and position, not natural charisma.
Rumors of a “Muhoozi project”—a long-term plan to install Museveni’s son as president—have swirled for years. Kainerugaba joined the army in 1999 after recruiting a cohort of university students who would rise alongside him. He later took charge of the presidential guard, which became Special Forces Command (SFC), an elite unit that he filled with friends and loyalists. In 2013, a dissident general fled into exile after alleging Kainerugaba’s allies were plotting to assassinate anyone who stood in his way.
For many years, Kainerugaba let his henchmen do the talking. SFC soldiers developed a fearsome reputation, having been accused of kidnapping opposition activists, shooting dead the driver of an opposition politician, and invading parliament during a constitutional debate. In 2021, armed men abducted Kakwenza Rukirabashaija, a satirical writer who had called Kainerugaba “obese” and a “curmudgeon” on Twitter. When the novelist emerged a month later, his back laced with scars, he alleged that Kainerugaba himself had personally supervised his torture. Documents filed before the International Criminal Court accuse Kainerugaba of controlling torture centers where opposition figures are held. Kainerugaba denies these accusations.
It was only after Uganda’s 2021 elections that Kainerugaba erupted into public life. That contest was defined by the rise of Bobi Wine, a pop star-turned-politician who described his struggle as a “generational cause.” The singer’s popularity underlined how Museveni had lost touch with young people in rapidly growing cities. The first son now casts himself, a tad implausibly, as the regime’s response. He and his followers are “the authentic voice of the young people in Uganda,” he tweeted—citing as supposed evidence his love of rappers such as Tupac, Snoop Dogg, and Dr. Dre.
He has also tried to steal the opposition’s thunder by condemning ministerial corruption and government failure. He even attacked the ruling National Resistance Movement, the party his father founded and leads. “It is probably the most reactionary organization in the country,” he tweeted in December 2022, adding that it “certainly does NOT represent the people of Uganda.”
Plain speaking should not be mistaken for sincerity. Kainerugaba’s mobilization strategy is rooted in transactional politics rather than fresh ideas. At a recent rally in Kabale, a town in western Uganda, attendees queued patiently for free T-shirts with his face on them. “He is not delivering what we expected,” complained one young man—referring not to policy but to the late arrival of lunch.
These rallies are organized by the “MK Movement,” a motley assortment of wheeler-dealers who cling to Kainerugaba’s coattails. Its spokesperson and schemer-in-chief is Andrew Mwenda, a journalist who revels in the intrigue of palace politics and has siblings in the army and government. “By every single definition of a monarchy, [Uganda] is a monarchy,” he once told me. “The only thing that has not yet happened is a transition from father to son.”
Some senior figures in the army-state are determined to ensure that Kainerugaba never takes power. “Leading a country is not about jokes because you have much following on social media,” Kahinda Otafiire, the 72-year-old interior minister, said last year. Resistance also comes from an intermediate generation of military officers in their 50s and early 60s. Some have personal beef with Kainerugaba. Others cling to the idea of the army as a professional force, rather than a family heirloom.
This contingent is outraged by Kainerugaba’s contempt for army rules and decorum. His rallies violate restrictions on officers participating in politics. His tweets about wars in Ethiopia, Ukraine, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo send diplomats into a spin. Most provocative of all is his admiration for Rwanda, the austere dictatorship next door. Many leaders in Kigali, including President Paul Kagame, grew up as exiles in Uganda and fought in the guerrilla army that brought Museveni to power. The two countries’ relationship broke down in the late 1990s as they squabbled for the loot of Congolese wars, and it now resembles the relationship between jealous brothers: long-standing, personal, and deeply mistrustful. Each side accuses the other of conspiracy and plot.
Last year, Kainerugaba brokered the reopening of the Uganda-Rwanda border, which had been closed for nearly three years. He tweets affectionately about “uncle” Kagame, who hosted his birthday party in April, and sees kinship between the Tutsi minority in Rwanda and his own Bahima ethnic group. He has also publicly defended M23, a Tutsi-led Congolese rebel group that benefits from Rwandan backing. His opponents within the army whisper that he has become a tool of Rwandan interests. His allies say that such talk is whipped up by hawkish officers.
Two incidents last year sharpened tensions. In June 2022, M23 rebels captured the Congolese border town of Bunagana after passing through Ugandan territory without hindrance. Ugandan troops’ acquiescence was documented by the United Nations Group of Experts on Congo, though an army spokesperson said that report is “not accurate,” and Kainerugaba’s allies have denied it. Although the precise details are murky, some regime sources suggest that orders to allow passage for the rebels were given by Kainerugaba, perhaps after consultation with Kagame.
Two weeks later, in an apparent test of internal loyalties, the deputy defense forces chief, Peter Elwelu, put the military on its highest state of alert, restricting troop movement. Kainerugaba, who ranked lower in the chain of command, countermanded the order. The president called a hasty meeting of army leaders, at which furious generals accused Kainerugaba of insubordination. Tempers have cooled, but resentments remain. Sources in each camp now say that they suspected at the time that their rivals were plotting a coup. That may well be bluster, but it is of a very dangerous kind.
For four decades, Museveni’s preeminence has kept factionalism in check. Now, as his own end nears, his courtiers are starting to think beyond him. Alliances are slowly coming into focus. Kainerugaba is trying to make his presidency inevitable, and his opponents are trying to make it unthinkable. If those differences cannot be resolved through compromise, they may be resolved by force.
The likeliest scenario is that Museveni runs again in 2026 and that his son, after some huffing and puffing, eventually toes the line. But do not rule out a crisis. In 2010, Kainerugaba published a book about Ugandan warfare that includes the story of Bacwa, the eldest son of a 19th-century Nkore king. Bacwa is described as “a remarkable warrior” who is “beloved of his father and the army.” When a jealous aunt blocks his succession to the throne, the kingdom collapses into “senseless fratricide.” The narrator’s sympathies are clear. Ugandans will draw their own conclusions.
