Museveni Wants to Hand Uganda to a Son Who Boasts of Torture

Think about what it means to be a Ugandan citizen who wakes up to learn that the country's next president may be chosen in a family living room, not at a ballot box. Think about the young woman in Kampala, the boda-boda rider in Gulu, the teacher in Mbarara who has never known any head of state except Yoweri Museveni. Now imagine being told that the man who has ruled since 1986 wants his son to take over, and that the son is the same man who posts online about torturing opponents in a private "basement."

This is not a hypothetical. It is the present situation in Uganda, and it should make every African who believes in democracy sit up straight.

The facts are these. Museveni, now 82, has held power for four decades. In 2005 Parliament scrapped the constitutional presidential term limit, clearing the way for him to stand again and again. In 2017 the age cap went too. Now his son, Lt. Gen. Muhoozi Kainerugaba, 52, commands the Uganda People's Defence Force. He is not a backbencher waiting for his turn. He is the head of the army, the institution that is supposed to serve the constitution, not a family. Muhoozi has publicly said he intends to run in the presidential election scheduled for 2031.

In late October, Museveni presented a paper to senior members of the National Resistance Movement suggesting his son had "the right credentials" to succeed him. Days later, the party's executive committee met to decide the question. According to five people present, as reported by AFP, a vote on Muhoozi's candidacy had to be abandoned because several of the 28 members spoke against it, and their remarks drew loud cheers from the room. An unprecedented act of defiance against the most powerful man in Uganda. Not a dictator's rubber stamp, but a crack in the wall.

Why should that crack matter to you? Because it proves that the dynasty plan is not inevitable. It also proves that people inside the system, people who have spent their lives in its service, still understand what they are being asked to swallow. Twenty-eight members of a ruling committee found the courage to say no. Where is the rest of the country?

Consider the man being groomed. Muhoozi has built a reputation on swagger and menace. He has boasted on social media of torturing opponents and has used his platform to threaten critics, all while holding a command that should be bound by the law. When an army chief treats the state's coercive power as a personal weapon and then announces he wants the presidency, you are not looking at a succession plan. You are looking at a coup in slow motion, dressed in a suit.

Uganda's opposition knows this pattern well. Politicians such as Robert Kyagulanyi, known as Bobi Wine, have faced arrests, beatings, and prolonged detention during election cycles. Journalists and civil society organisations have repeatedly reported restrictions on their work. The machinery of repression that has kept one family in power for forty years is not a relic. It is being inherited, piece by piece, by the next generation of the same family.

Now look beyond Kampala. Uganda is not alone in this. Across the Horn and East Africa, political systems are wrestling with a single question: who really answers to the people? In Ethiopia, analysts including the Africa Center for Strategic Studies have warned that ethnically organised armed groups thrive when politics is closed, when opposition is marginalised, and when the press cannot inform the public. Ethiopia's federal design is contested and needs reform, but the lesson in the Ethiopian debate is the same one Uganda is failing: militias and dynasties grow fat in the vacuum left by weak institutions. Where there is no independent court, no free press, and no real opposition, violence becomes the only language left to the ambitious.

Our continent has shown what the alternative looks like. In 2024 Botswana, a country often pointed to as Africa's model of prudent governance, saw the ruling Botswana Democratic Party lose power at the ballot box. The incumbent conceded. Duma Boko's Umbrella for Democratic Change took office. Nobody burned the capital. Nobody dragged the losing party into a prison. The institutions held, and the country moved on. In Senegal, when Macky Sall tried to postpone the 2024 election, the Constitutional Council overruled him, the people returned to the streets in a peaceful but determined way, and Bassirou Diomaye Faye won the presidency in a free vote. Ghana's 2024 transfer of power followed the same path. These are not perfect countries, but they understand a basic truth: power belongs to the people for a time, and then it must be handed on.

So what must Uganda do?

First, the NRM's executive committee must make its dissent permanent. A party that claims to stand for the people cannot allow one family to purchase the succession. Members who spoke against the plan should be protected from retaliation, and the party should publicly commit to a competitive, transparent process for choosing its candidate in 2031, with no backroom deals presented as consensus.

Second, the Uganda People's Defence Force must be reminded, in law and in practice, that it belongs to the republic. The army chief should not be campaigning for the presidency while commanding the country's armed forces. Parliament should pass clear rules barring serving military officers from partisan politics unless they resign their posts well before any election, and those rules must be enforced against everyone, including the president's son.

Third, the independent judiciary and the Electoral Commission must be given real protection. Courts that can rule against the state, election officials who answer to the constitution rather than to State House, and an end to arbitrary detention of opposition leaders are not luxuries. They are the minimum conditions for a fair contest.

Fourth, Ugandan citizens must demand it. Write to your MP. Support independent media that report on the succession without fear. Organise through churches, unions, universities, and business associations, because the private sector also pays the price when investors are scared away by dynastic politics. The free market in Uganda, from coffee farms to Kampala's growing services economy, depends on property rights and predictable rules. Nobody builds a factory in a country where the next ruler might be a torturer with a grudge.

We, the people of Africa, are not spectators in Uganda's story. The same forces that let a son inherit a presidency in Kampala can be used by strongmen in Kinshasa, Harare, and Yaoundé. Every time a dynasty is normalised, the lesson travels. Every time a democracy holds, that lesson travels too.

So here is the question, plainly put. Will Ugandans accept a country run like a family estate, with the army as its private guard and a basement as its prison? Or will they demand what Botswana, Ghana, and Senegal have already proven possible: a government chosen by the people, bound by the law, and forced to leave when the votes say so?

The 28 members of that committee said no. Now the rest of Uganda has to say it louder.

Based on reporting by ACSS-EMAIL