Muhoozi, a test tube Idi Amin?

By Makau Mutua Professor at SUNY Buffalo Law School and Chair of the KHRC.

• What you need to know:

• Perhaps Mr Museveni and his son are testing the new pretenders in Nairobi.

• Did Mr Museveni see in Mr Ruto a leader he could manipulate? After all, he’s the wily chameleon of East Africa.

• Mr Kainerugaba might be a threat to Kenya, but he’s a bigger threat to Uganda and Ugandans.

Even by the tortured standards of the most unfortunate post-colonial African states, Uganda occupies a special place of historical infamy.The country suffered its worst excesses under the dictator Idi Amin, a buffoon who ruled it from 1971-1979.

        In that period, the military man committed the most unspeakable crimes. The illiterate soldier’s atrocities have not been equalled in East Africa. Uganda then fell under the spell of brutality as several shambolic regimes took turns ousting one another.

        Finally, a “bush” soldier named Yoweri Museveni took power at the point of a gun in 1986. Since then, Mr Museveni has bestrode Uganda like a colossus. His son, a “general” named Muhoozi Kainerugaba, threatens to eclipse his father as the next ruler of Uganda. 

        Mr Kainerugaba is the most visible of Mr Museveni’s children. Like his father, he’s a military man born in 1974. He attended a motley collection of schools in Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, and Sweden. He even was an officer cadet at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in the UK.

        But what has been shocking is the speed at which his father has bestowed upon him one rank and accolade after another without any discernible merit. From the Commander of Special Forces to Commander of Uganda People’s Defence Forces Land Forces to now a four-star general.             

        It is this last promotion that makes a mockery of Ugandan military ranks. All Mr Kainerugaba did was have a meltdown on Twitter for his father to promote him. This week, Mr Kainerugaba fired off a series of tweets, the essence of which was to threaten to militarily take Nairobi in two weeks. He laughed off Kenya’s constitutional two-term limit for President and questioned why Kenya’s immediate former head of state Uhuru Kenyatta did not run for a third term.

        Either Mr Kainerugaba is a fool, a drunken soldier, or a very reckless and dangerous man. Or could he be suffering from a personality disorder? The head of the army of a neighbouring state simply cannot issue such incendiary statements unless he’s literally lost his noggin. He is unfit for command, or any responsible public office.  Or perhaps Mr Museveni and his son are testing the new pretenders in Nairobi.

        Perhaps that’s the reason Mr Museveni reportedly favoured UDA’s William Ruto in the August poll. Did he see in Mr Ruto a leader he could manipulate? After all, he’s the wily chameleon of East Africa. Mr Museveni has ruled Uganda for a record 36 years. He has survived four Kenyan presidents.

        He’s for all intents and purposes a life president. He disdains any constraints on his power. He’s ruled with an iron fist and crushed the opposition at every turn. He’s an abomination to democracy and the rules of political fair play. Clearly, he’s the most important teacher of Mr Kainerugaba, his son. 

No laughing matter

No one should take declarations of war by a neighbour lightly. It’s not a laughing matter. For those of us who study the African state, we see incipient signs of Africa’s worst military dictators in Mr Kainerugaba.Most of them were clownish but genocidal. Think of such military.

         Neanderthals like Jean-Bedel Bokassa, Ethiopia’s Mengistu Haile Mariam, Liberia’s Charles Taylor, and of course Uganda’s own Idi Amin. These brutes left behind such broken countries that no one has been able to put Humpty dumpty back together again. I don’t deny that Mr Museveni ended the worst excesses in Uganda’s history, but then he created a republic of fear. Now, he obviously wants to leave it to his unstable son.

    I see in Mr Kainerugaba what I saw in Idi Amin. Mr Amin would one minute be laughing uproariously but hacking bishops to death the next minute. He was a man of useless stunts. I saw him coerce a bunch of hapless white people to carry him aloft in a carriage.

        The man thought he was fighting racism. Really. As far as I know, he ended up feeding racists with good material to continue their hate and contempt for black people. That’s why Mr Kainerugaba – a test tube Idi Amin in the making – can’t be dismissed simply as a madman. A madman he might be, but he’s a mortal danger to Kenya should he ever ascend to power. 

        Let me be clear. Mr Kainerugaba might be a threat to Kenya, but he’s a bigger threat to Uganda and Ugandans.My crystal ball tells me that if he takes over, he will probably return Uganda to the hell that his father fought to rescue it from in the 1980s.Uganda’s misfortunes under him would risk the stability of Kenya and the region. Refugees would flood out, and the state would totally fail again. My advice to the East African Community is to convene and discuss openly the threat that Mr Kainerugaba poses to the region. Take the battle from him before he takes it to the region. 

Makau Mutua is SUNY Distinguished Professor and Margaret W. Wong Professor at Buffalo Law School, The State University of New York. @makaumutua

Source: Sunday Nation tomorrow