Warning Signs in Uganda

As Uganda readies for general elections in 2026, the ghosts of its past are making an unwelcome return to the present, promising an ugly election cycle. To be sure, the political playing field has never been level in Uganda since the return of multiparty politics in 2005. Those who dared to challenge President Museveni and the National Resistance Movement (NRM) have been repeatedly arrested and assaulted. But as Museveni ages and the young population agitates for change, the state is growing more and more repressive. For years, senior NRM figures insisted that multiparty politics would be too polarizing for a tribally, linguistically, culturally, and religiously diverse society like Uganda. Now, the powers that be are stoking that very polarization.  

At the heart of the latest developments is the president’s son and potential successor, General Muhoozi Kainerugaba. Known for his erratic social media posts and hyperbolic self-aggrandizement, Muhoozi has crossed line after line, making it very clear to Ugandan society that rules do not apply to him. He played a senior role in the military’s campaign to violently, often lethally, suppress opposition supporters in the last election cycle. In January, he claimed that only his father prevents him from beheading the popular opposition leader Robert Kyagulanyi, known as Bobi Wine. In late April, Eddie Mutwe, bodyguard to Wine, was abducted. His whereabouts were unknown until Muhuoozi began to post about him four days later on X, saying that Mutwe was “in my basement.” He shared a photo in which Mutwe had been stripped of his clothing and had his beard shaven off. Muhoozi wrote that his prisoner had been captured like a nsenene (grasshopper), and suggested he was getting lessons in Runyankore, the language spoken by people from southwestern Uganda (like President Museveni). When Mutwe was finally brought to court to face robbery charges, evidence indicated that he was tortured while in custody.  

The effort to create a violent spectacle for mass consumption, the dehumanizing grasshopper comparison, the specific language reference, the constantly escalating threats—none of it bodes well in a country with a bloody history of ethnicized political violence. Leaving that chaotic period in the past was supposed to be the hallmark of President Yoweri Museveni’s National Resistance Movement. But it is Museveni’s son and potential successor relishing this throwback to gratuitous, lawless violence combined with showmanship as political messaging. For several years, analysts have warned of the potential for mass atrocities in Uganda. Last year the Simon-Skjodt Center at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum published an Early Warning report focused on Uganda, highlighting how “uncertainty around what could be the country’s first political transition in nearly four decades is breeding division and fears about potential violence.” The latest developments add another heap of dry tinder to an already dangerous situation.