POWER, MUHOOZI AND THE MAN STILL HOLDING THE CARDS

Power is the ability to influence people, events and things—to make something happen that otherwise might not happen.

Money is power. Office is power. Information is power. Control of institutions is power. The ability to reward, protect, punish or exclude is power.

But power is rarely an end in itself. It is a means to an end. You need power to implement an agenda, protect an interest, change society or preserve an existing political order.

Which is why the first order of business after acquiring power is usually to keep it.

This is where the world of power separates itself from the ordinary morality by which most of us conduct our lives...

Most people are brought up to think in neat categories: good and evil, right and wrong, loyalty and betrayal. The successful power player has to think additionally in terms of interests, consequences, alliances, timing and survival.

Yesterday's enemy may become today's ally. Yesterday's friend can become tomorrow's liability. One individual may be sacrificed to preserve a much larger coalition. Intentions may be concealed because revealing them prematurely allows adversaries to organise.

This amorality does not mean that everything done in pursuit of power is right or lawful. Far from it. But to understand politics, it can sometimes be more useful initially to ask not whether an action is good or bad, but: What does this action achieve?

Seen this way, General Muhoozi Kainerugaba's recent behaviour deserves examination beyond the outrage it often produces.

There is little doubt that Muhoozi is accumulating power.

He is Chief of Defence Forces. He chairs the Patriotic League of Uganda. He has publicly announced his intention to contest the presidency in 2031. Political and business figures are increasingly organising around him. Reuters describes him as having long been considered a potential successor to his father.

More interestingly, he seems willing to break some of the cosy arrangements that developed during four decades of Museveni's rule.

Museveni's political genius has never simply been coercion. It has also been accommodation.

He brought opponents inside. He balanced factions. He allowed competing networks of influence to coexist beneath his ultimate authority. An opponent today could become a minister tomorrow. A businessman in trouble might know somebody in State House. A politician quarrelling with one security agency might find protection through another power centre.

A political culture emerged in which virtually every important person knew another important person.

It worked.

"Museveni's longevity has been attributed by observers to strategic patience, shifting alliances and firm control of the military alongside his ability to manage competing interests...

An urban political and business elite flourished inside this arrangement.

And this may explain why parts of that elite look so uncomfortable with Muhoozi.

Consider the range.

Kizza Besigye is a former Museveni physician and NRM insider turned opposition leader.

Erias Lukwago is one of Kampala's most established political figures.

Odrek Rwabwogo is not merely a businessman and presidential adviser. He is Museveni's son-in-law.

Anita Among rose to become Speaker of Parliament.

Yet proximity, title and establishment credentials increasingly appear incapable of guaranteeing insulation from Muhoozi.

Following Lukwago's detention, The Observer reported extraordinary reluctance among senior politicians and civil-society leaders to comment publicly. One unnamed NRM legislator told the newspaper that politicians had realised Muhoozi was not bluffing.

"That is an important characteristic of power.

Its highest expression is not when you continuously punish people. It is when people adjust their behaviour because they believe you might...

Then came the almost comic spectacle surrounding a reported celebration for Among.

State Minister Justine Nameere Nsubuga hurried to distance herself from suggestions that she was organising it. The significance was not the party. It was the political body language.

In the old order, powerful people negotiated around one another.

In the emerging order, people appear increasingly careful not even to be mistaken for standing in the wrong place.

That tells us something.

"But what may shock Uganda's traditional elite even more is the apparent absence of widespread public sympathy for its discomfort...

This needs qualification. Opposition politicians, lawyers, human-rights activists and others have certainly spoken against arrests, detention and abuses of due process.

But there has been no obvious national popular mobilisation demanding protection of the old political establishment.

And absence of sympathy does not necessarily mean approval of Muhoozi.

It may simply reflect public alienation from an elite that many Ugandans believe has prospered disproportionately during the last four decades.

For years ordinary citizens have watched politicians accumulate wealth, businessmen cultivate political connections and public servants live lives far removed from the people they administer.

Now some members of that establishment are discovering arbitrariness and asking the country to be alarmed.

A Ugandan struggling to pay school fees might reasonably ask: When the system was working in your favour, where was your outrage?

Muhoozi may understand this instinctively.

Breaking elite networks can therefore serve two purposes simultaneously. It intimidates potential rivals while cultivating the image of a man unwilling to tolerate untouchable insiders.

The elite may call it persecution.

Sections of the public may see an overdue disruption of privilege.

Whether that perception is deserved is a different question. Due process remains due process. Breaking elite impunity is not the same thing as replacing institutions with personal discretion.

But there is an even larger complication.

What if Muhoozi himself is partly a red herring?

Everybody discussing succession—including those rapidly aligning themselves with Muhoozi—would be wise to remember that there remains one supreme practitioner of power in Uganda.

Yoweri Kaguta Museveni.

Museveni is a guerrilla before he is almost anything else politically.

The guerrilla survives through constant vigilance, constant movement and constant suspicion. He does not reveal his position unnecessarily. He keeps several escape routes open. He watches his comrades almost as carefully as his enemies. He allows an opponent to concentrate on one position while manoeuvring somewhere else.

Museveni's political career has repeatedly demonstrated patience, tactical flexibility and an ability to change alliances while retaining ultimate control. His major influence lie in a five-year guerrilla struggle in which mobility, political organisation, intelligence and careful preparation were indispensable.

And Museveni is not famous for telegraphing his intentions.

Which makes the apparent certainty around Muhoozi dangerous.

We have actually seen this movie before.

Ahead of the 2026 election, Muhoozi's presidential ambitions dominated political conversation. His political mobilisation accelerated. His supporters organised. Opponents debated the so-called Muhoozi Project endlessly.

As early as 2022, one remarkably prescient commentary proposed exactly the alternative theory: that Muhoozi might function as a decoy drawing political attention while Museveni quietly prepared for another presidential run.

That is essentially what happened.

Muhoozi had previously declared an intention to run, eventually withdrew, and Museveni returned to the ballot in January 2026 and secured another term.

So why assume 2031 is already settled?

Museveni could genuinely be preparing Muhoozi.

He could be testing him.

He could be allowing him to establish authority while observing which politicians rush to his camp.

He could be using Muhoozi to discipline an elite that Museveni himself cannot easily attack after decades of accumulated relationships.

He could be allowing two centres of power to develop so that every ambitious politician reveals his loyalties.

Or Muhoozi's ascendancy could once again be absorbing everybody's attention while Museveni keeps his own intentions deliberately obscure.

Several of these things could even be true simultaneously.

The guerrilla does not need the decoy to know that it is a decoy.

That is the genius of a good diversion.

Muhoozi can sincerely believe he is building his succession. His followers can genuinely believe they are joining the next administration. His adversaries can genuinely reorganise themselves to confront him.

And all of them can still be serving Museveni's interests.

Think what the current situation gives the President.

Politicians who believe Muhoozi is inevitable expose themselves by rushing towards him.

Those who oppose Muhoozi expose themselves too.

Businesspeople choose sides.

Old political relationships are broken.

The security establishment reveals where its loyalties lie.

Potential alternative successors either surface or retreat.

And Museveni gets to watch.

That is priceless intelligence for a man whose first political instincts were formed in guerrilla warfare.

It may therefore be premature to interpret Muhoozi's increasingly assertive conduct as proof that the succession has been settled.

Indeed, a 2026  examination of Museveni's new Cabinet specifically asked whether its composition might actually be putting brakes on Muhoozi's apparent ascension, illustrating how ambiguous the signals remain even inside government.

Muhoozi unquestionably matters.

His power is real.

His ability to frighten sections of the political class is real.

His network is growing.

His presidential ambition is now explicit.

But there is a difference between being powerful and being the successor.

And there is a difference between Museveni allowing something to happen and Museveni having decided how it will end.

At 81, after four decades in power and more than half a century immersed in politics, Museveni remains extraordinarily difficult to read. His political biography is one of adaptation: Marxist intellectual, guerrilla commander, revolutionary leader, liberal economic reformer, regional security partner and finally one of Africa's longest-serving presidents.

Survival has required constant adjustment.

So perhaps the most interesting question in Uganda today is not whether Muhoozi is demonstrating power.

Clearly he is.

The question is:

Whose power is ultimately being demonstrated?

His?

His father's?

Or both?

Uganda's elite may be scrambling to accommodate the man they believe will succeed Museveni.

They should remember one of the oldest rules of power.

Never declare the battle finished while the old guerrilla is still on the battlefield.