There is a name that rarely appears in Uganda’s mainstream political commentary, yet it may offer us an important lesson as we watch the unfolding situation in our country right now. That name is Kigeri IV Rwabugiri.

Kigeri IV Rwabugiri — the great warrior king who ruled Rwanda for 42 years (some say 30 years) in the late nineteenth century, was arguably Rwanda’s greatest king. He fought many wars of attempted conquest, with an ambition to forge a borderless empire by annexing neighbouring territories, and a vision of a centralised, militarised kingdom ruled by an unbroken royal line. 

At the grand old age of about 49 years, Rwabugiri enthroned his son Mibambwe Rutarindwa as co-ruler of Rwanda on December 22, 1889. By the end of his reign Rwanda was a unified state with a centralised military structure. However, his sudden death on a boat while on a military expedition to Bushi, West of Lake Kivu, in 1895, sealed his kingdom’s fate. His successors did not do well.

King Rutarindwa was killed at Rucunshu in an extremely bloody coup d’etat in 1896, orchestrated by Kanjogera, one of Rwabugiri’s wives. She put her son Yuhi V Musinga on the throne, but he was deposed in 1931. Rwanda remained an unstable, blood-stained land until it was pacified by Paul Kagame and the Rwandan Patriotic Army in 1994.   

Forty years after President Yoweri Museveni captured power in Uganda, we have enough knowledge of his reign to see traits of Rwabugiri. The transition of power to the next ruler is in full swing, and Uganda is where Rwanda was when Rwabugiri made his son co-ruler.

Museveni’s promise of a “fundamental change” in Uganda’s politics and a break from dictatorship in 1986 was — at best — a useful myth. He has reigned over Uganda like Rwabugiri — and he is about to pass that reign to his blood. Those who think it is not so should wake up from their dream.

But how will he do it without risking an undesirable crumbing of his project? One option might be to appoint his son Muhoozi Kainerugaba as his vice-president at some point during the next five years. The pros and cons of that move deserve honest examination, not as a pragmatic governance question in isolation, but against this deeper, longer history of deliberate monarchical engineering.

Let us be fair. There are three arguments for the appointment of Gen. Muhoozi Kainerugaba, the current Chief of Defence Forces, as Vice President. First, Uganda has not experienced a peaceful transfer of power since political independence. With Kainerugaba already functioning as co-president, formalising this reality through a constitutional appointment is more honest than the current fiction of a functioning republican presidency.

Second, though legally prohibited from active partisan politics, Gen. Kainerugaba already maintains an increasingly formidable political presence through his Patriotic League of Uganda, a subset of the National Resistance Movement, his father’s ruling party. Placing him in a civilian constitutional role might, in theory, ease him out of pure military authority toward some form of accountable governance. 

Third, Muhoozi’s diplomatic intervention that helped reopen the Uganda-Rwanda border in 2022 after a three-year freeze earned him credit among fair-minded observers. When disciplined, Muhoozi can produce tangible results. I am told that he is doing some good housecleaning of the armed forces which have been ravaged by corruption for decades. 

These are the best arguments, albeit thin compared to the case against appointing him vice present. The three main arguments against the appointment go to the very soul of what Uganda is supposed to be. 

First, Muhoozi’s impulsivity should worry everyone, including his father. This, of course, is a handicap he could overcome with honest counselling by experienced professionals or well-wishers. He needs his father’s cool and unrushed decision-making, and the old man’s past tolerance for irritating scribes and talking heads.   

Second, the vice-presidential route would be tempting because of uncertainty about competitive electoral victory for Kainerugaba. However, while the appointment would bypass the electorate entirely, it would drive another nail into the coffin of Uganda’s democratization dream and put Uganda on a very dangerous political path. 

Third is the Rwabugiri question, which casts the darkest shadow of all. Museveni abandoned the pretence of genuine democratic succession long ago. Even the naivest NRM party elite recognize that Museveni is unlikely to hand power to someone outside the family.

The “liberation” of 1986 was really the founding act of a dynasty, and the death of the Republic. His declaration that he will not hand power to anyone suggests a monarch preparing his heir. It is the language of Rwabugiri. But that is an agenda that is bound to suffer the fate of Rwabugiri’s dynasty. 

There is a better path. Muhoozi has every legal right to seek the presidency of Uganda. What is in question is the method by which he pursues it. He has a better chance than most to win an open democratic contest. He is still young; he leads a well-funded and enlarging political movement with national reach; and he has name recognition that most politicians spend entire careers trying to build. In short, Muhoozi Kainerugaba already possesses the infrastructure of a serious presidential campaign. He does not need to be handed anything.

If Muhoozi believes in his own fitness to lead, then he should prove it the way every legitimate leader must: by submitting himself to the judgement of the Ugandan people in a free and fair election. He should step down from the military, lay claim to being a law-abiding constitutionalist, build his coalition openly, defend free and fair campaigns and elections, and embrace political opponents such as Robert Kyagulanyi (Bobi Wine) as legitimate adversaries, not mortal enemies.

This hard path is the only one that leads somewhere worth going. A presidency won through the ballot box carries a legitimacy that no vice-presidential appointment can confer. It is the difference between a leader and an heir. Between authority earned and authority inherited. 

Independent Uganda has never had a peaceful transfer of power. That record will not be broken by dressing up dynastic succession in constitutional clothing. It will only be broken by a leader with the courage to genuinely compete.

Muhoozi has more to gain from that courage than he may realise. A vice-presidential appointment would brand him forever as his father’s creature — a man who could not win power on his own terms and therefore had it delivered to him. An election victory, however imperfect, would give him something no appointment can: a mandate. And with a mandate comes the possibility – not a guarantee, but a real possibility - of legitimate, stable, and peaceful rule.

Dynasties built on conquest and military dominance are inherently brittle. They mistake control for legitimacy, and obedience for consent. Uganda stands at exactly that crossroads. Appointing Muhoozi Kainerugaba as vice president would not resolve a succession crisis. It would be the completion of a project that was always designed to subvert Uganda’s democratic future — a project conceived not in the halls of democratic thought, but in the romantic imagination of a young revolutionary who may well have looked at a 19th-century warrior king and saw not a cautionary tale, but a blueprint.

There is, however, a different story still available to be written — one in which Muhoozi Kainerugaba chooses the democratic path, submits to the people’s verdict, and earns his place in Uganda’s history not as his father’s heir, but as his country’s chosen leader. That story would be better for Uganda. It would, in the end, be better for him too. It is the story I would love to write. The choice is his. Uganda is watching.

© Muniini K. Mulera