Anger in Uganda after leader’s son claims he abducted rival’s bodyguard

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President Yoweri Museveni’s son who is also Uganda’s military chief has sparked outrage by claiming responsibility for the detention of opposition leader Bobi Wine’s bodyguard and threatening to castrate him.

In a string of posts on X, General Muhoozi Kainerugaba, who is often touted as a potential successor to his 80-year-old father, said he was holding Eddie Mutwe, Wine’s bodyguard, in his basement, and that he would be coming for the opposition leader himself next. He posted a picture of Mutwe undressed and with his beard shaved off.

The general’s threats have fuelled an outpouring of anger from Ugandans online, and sharply raised tensions in the east African country where Museveni is expected to stand for a seventh term in office in elections in 2026.

Former supporters of the president warned that the repressive environment — as well as the erratic behaviour and menacing tone of Kainerugaba, which in some of his latest posts had divisive ethnic undertones — risked tearing the country apart.

“There is an earthquake that is going to happen. We just don’t know yet what it will measure on the Richter scale,” said a former ally of the president, who took power in 1986 after a long bush war. The person asked not to be named.

Museveni initially presided over a prolonged political and economic recovery, with Uganda becoming a key western ally and linchpin of regional security in east Africa. But as his rule has stretched on, the regime has become increasingly intolerant of opposition, institutions have been hollowed out and corruption has thrived.  

Bobi Wine, a former pop star whose original name is Robert Kyagulanyi and who was the main challenger in the 2021 elections, has himself been jailed and beaten on many occasions.

Ahead of a planned rally to demand the release of Mutwe on Friday, Ugandan soldiers and police raided the headquarters of his party, rounding up some of the supporters present.

“Many of our people are being picked up as we speak right now” Wine said by phone from a hiding place on Friday.  

“According to reliable information we have, they want to isolate me and arrest everyone around me,” he said, adding that where once there might have been some “relief” in the protestations of western embassies at such displays of brute force, now those embassies were silent.

Mutwe was seen being picked up last Sunday by unidentified men in a town in central Uganda. His whereabouts were unknown until Kainerugaba’s posts on X late on Thursday.

The president’s son has a habit of posting inflammatory messages late at night, many of them directed at Wine, and has presided over the increasingly violent repression of political opposition to his father.

He posted recently that another longtime opposition leader, Kizza Besigye, who was charged in February with treason, would only leave prison “in a coffin”.

The former Museveni ally said that the political and ethnic coalition that has underpinned his rule had begun to unravel and, where once the president himself could keep his son in check, now he seemed unable to do so.  

“MK (Muhoozi Kainerugaba) is trying to show he can do whatever he wants to and get away with it. But he is also exposing how powerless his father is to maintain the kind of rule he used to.”

A close associate of the president’s son declined to comment on the rationale behind his latest actions. A spokesperson for Museveni could not immediately be reached.