It is time the world wakes up to what is unfolding in Uganda as a man who openly threatens to behead me and to hang my fellow opposition leader, Dr Kizza Besigye, makes his power grab.
While the world is distracted by major conflicts in Ukraine and the rise of populist politics, Uganda’s next nightmare is loading, with dire consequences for the country, the region and the continent of Africa.
President Yoweri Museveni (81), who has ruled since he took power in Uganda at the head of a “liberation” army in 1986, has emerged as a despotic ruler who fixes elections and violently suppresses opposition.
You would think things couldn’t get worse. Enter his son and likely successor, General Muhoozi Kainerugaba, who openly talks on social media about wanting to beat, hang, torture and kill opponents of the autocratic regime.
In January 2026, Uganda will hold elections. These elections are likely to follow the pattern of the previous election in 2021 where 50 people lost their lives to state-sanctioned killing while hundreds more were arrested, beaten and tortured.
This brutal crackdown was led by Kainerugaba’s Special Forces Command. Museveni’s eldest son is chief of the Ugandan Defence Force and chairman of a grouping called the Patriotic League of Uganda, an organisation which claims to work “towards reviving in Ugandans a spirit of good citizenship, national pride, national service, protection of vulnerable persons, combatting corruption and wastage of public resources, and protection of the environment”.
In reality, it is a vehicle for Kainerugaba’s presidential candidacy as he seeks to take over after his elderly father.
A former commander of the special forces, Kainerugaba was appointed commander of land forces until Museveni got cold feet and removed him when he tweeted that the Ugandan military could capture Nairobi in less than two weeks.
After a two-year hiatus, Museveni relented and appointed him Chief of Defence, giving him control of Uganda’s military.
Assault on democracy
He has become a regular presence on social media with increasingly brazen posts that have shocked Ugandans. In one post he offered Italy’s Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, Ugandan cattle as a bride price. “Nkore cows. The most beautiful cows on earth,” he wrote, adding, “in our culture, you give a girl you like a cow”.
In Uganda’s latest assault on democracy, an opposition leader, the respected human rights activist Dr Kizza Besigye was arrested and brought to trial before a military tribunal on allegations of treason.
Besigye, who was Museveni’s comrade-in-arms and his doctor during the civil war, was kidnapped in Kenya and illegally transported across the border. He was arraigned before a military tribunal.
In January 2025, Uganda’s Supreme Court declared that civilians could not be tried by military courts and ordered that the proceedings be halted. But the military continued with the trial in defiance of the courts.
In February, Kainerugaba posted that Besigye would leave prison either “in his coffin after we hang him or shoot him or on his knees apologising to Mzee”. Mzee is the name which Kainerugaba uses to describe Museveni.
A month earlier, he had posted about me, saying: “If Mzee was not there, I would cut off his head today.”
In May he posted a picture of an abducted opposition leader, who was shirtless, and said he was holding him in his basement. Eddie Mutwe, an associate of mine, was abducted near Kampala by armed men.
When I questioned this abuse of the law, he said: “He is in my basement... You are next!”
Kainerugaba’s open campaign for the leadership of the country and his ageing father’s tolerance of his aggressive anti-democratic behaviour and social media posts suggest that Uganda’s slide into dictatorship is likely to accelerate.
Economic threat
The Ugandan economy is also under siege as the US, UK and others have applied targeted sanctions following human rights abuses and corruption.
The looming Kainerugaba presidency could set Uganda back and remove the last pretences of democracy as violent suppression of the opposition rises. The economic effects of this sort of violent anti-democratic presidency, as illustrated by Venezuela, will be severe.
While this nightmare for the people of Uganda unfolds, investors continue to cut deals with the regime to cash in on profits at the expense of the people. We are calling on the top investors in Uganda (the top 10 are listed below) to take a strong public stand and demand that the regime cease its repression of opposition and respect the rule of law.
They ought to do that because it is the right thing, but if the moral argument does not persuade them, they should do it out of self-interest. An unstable Uganda ruled by a violent dictator will not be good for business.
Top investors in Uganda
- TotalEnergies Uganda (France), oil and gas, $3-billion;
- Tullow Uganda Operations (UK listed), oil and gas, $2.5-billion;
- CNOOC Uganda (China), oil and gas, $2-billion;
- Stanbic Bank Uganda (Standard Bank, SA listed), financial services, $800-million;
- Standard Chartered Bank (UK listed), financial services, $600-million;
- MTN Uganda (SA listed), telecommunications, $500-million;
- Airtel Networks Uganda (India), telecommunications, $300-million;
- Uganda Breweries (Heineken, Holland), beverage, $200-million;
- Hariss International (Oppenheimer Partners, SA), food and drink, $180-million; and
- Nile Breweries (Diageo, UK listed), beverage, $150-million.
(Own calculations based on Uganda Investment Authority and UNCTAD 2023 FDI data)
Blind eye
While this next step towards brutal anarchy is under way, the world and foreign investors are turning a blind eye.
On such cynicism was the empire built. We expect the same hypocrisy from those investors who made their money under apartheid, always putting profits before people. But we don’t expect the same from companies based in countries whose people take pride in their democratic systems.
It is puzzling then that two of our biggest cellphone companies in Uganda, Airtel of India and MTN of South Africa, not only do business with a regime that represses more than it represents the will of the people. With elections coming up next year in January, they will be expected to play their part and turn off the internet as the ruling party shows its authoritarian colours.
We know this because it has happened before. But this time it is different, because the elections will indirectly anoint a leader true to the caricature of Idi Amin.
Don’t say you have not been warned. DM