Opinion: Understand Gen. Muhoozi Kainerugaba from a Mental Health Perspective

By James William Mugeni

USA, October 10, 2022:

Those whom the gods wish to destroy they make mad, first with power and then fast with wine. This write up is purely mental health considerations of Muhoozi from a medical clinical officerand Certified Public Manager. If I could save Ugandans fromMuhoozi, I would take pride in having gone to school and trained in clinical medicine and community health let alone my recent training by the State of Iowa and the Center for professional studies of Drake University.

To understand this baby General, a general of his father’s army, one doesn’t need to scrutinize his life in isolation but the totality of it. His background and very early life is not forthcoming as it’s wrapped in a dark shroud. There are tales he lost his real mother whom he never got to see and experience the warmth of loving humanity. Other hushed whispers contend he was forced into the care of step motherhood. Whatever those gaps they seem to have a bearing on the erratic nature of his eccentric and murderous character. His mercurial rise in the ranks of the army is partly explained by the inept management of Public Institutions on the African Continent. Background check that underlies suitability of office of the developed world is largelynonexistent but even if it were there in this skewed scheme of the NRM, it would still amount to nothing regarding the recruitment of Muhoozi into the army since the institution belongs to the father. His stake in fame is fabricated by lies that he engaged Kony in one of the fiercest fights that enabled him to very nearly capture the rebel leader who slipped awayabandoning behind a jerrycan and guitar in the furnace of battle, those are exaggerated roles and blatant lies in the drama meant for public relation stunts.

All Muhoozi’s actions get negative community ratings and uproar characteristic of the negative reactions communities giveto a supposedly adult human being faced with mental escapism. Muhoozi ought not to exhibit these challenges because he is the first son, to the first man, who has been the first man for four decades and once described himself that he’s next to God. 

Muhoozi’s childhood was robbed of its innocence. Growing up around men of violence and around power, surrounded by killing machines both living and inanimate, it’s little wonder that in his rite of passage into manhood he had to join the Local Defense Unit (LDU) the crudest of all military outfits which by the time required no qualifications at all but unalloyed loyalty to Museveni and his Junta. Unknown to the bush war generals of the time that was Museveni’s scheme to prolong his dynasty and grip onto personal power. Today they are stuck in the middle of a game they do not seem to understand and are gripped by palpable fear. Entering as an LDU, he knows he has been unfairly promoted to the helm of the army to gain unfair advantage over his peers. He knows it’s wrong to kill Ugandans, yet the system he works for, or which works for him to protect his father asks him to kill young people. The wanton killings of innocent young people during the 2021 sham Presidential Elections must be very exacting and devastating in the mind of any normal young person but Muhoozi. The monstrous killing machine he controls haunts him. And no one should get surprised if that could be one of the reasons the baby general hides in the bottle for most of the time. He is the singularity behind the military – security behemoth that killed young people during the elections and continues to abduct, torture, maim and torment political opponents.

Mental illness is real, but I should hasten to add that for Muhoozi’s case, he is likely to get false diagnosis or nonebecause no medic can dare give it to him from doctors, Neurologists, Psychiatrists, or Psychologists. He is sure to get a false diagnosis which placates his whims just like the false promotions he is wont to. His behavior is unusual and does not have empathy. This write up which lays bare the observable weaknesses of the baby general, carries with it 100% risks to my life. But what is riskier for the medical workers than dying on the frontlines of Ebola, Covid-19. Being killed by a rabid militia, or being folded by poverty, is all the same.

The late Corp Kirumira omwoyo gwe ggwanga used to say,” you speak you die, you keep quiet you die, so better to die but when you have spoken.” If people risk their lives in disease control and prevention, they should marshal courage to point out to the world that another Hitler has successfully been made in the heartlands of Africa, in Uganda and let the world never saythat we never warned them.

Muhoozi is seemingly seeking acceptance among the young people his forces have tortured and tormented. He is looking for acceptability in a Country they have choked for nearly four decades. He is looking back to reclaim his innocence and live life afresh. He has all the reasons to be a zombie since even thefamed, “social media hooligans” where he was getting anonymous relationship and following seems to be rattled by his behaviors and giving him his distance.

These two lawless malignant men the father and his son, owe their existence and ascendancy to power in the sword and brute force. The father fomented a rebellion which consumed hundreds of thousands of innocent lives, and he calls his son the avenger. They have now accumulated unchecked dictatorial power to the point of systemic disfunction harming institutions as well as individuals and peoples.

With the recent outbursts, overindulgence, and erratic nature of this violent “juvenile” dictator, what are you seeing? This is closer to medical health science than what meets the scavenging politicians’ eye.

Like his father before him, he knows the bullet can make him President yet from his body language, he is no soldier, he is no general, but merely a man surrounded by violent thuggish people created for him by a despot. The target of the Presidency seems to be farfetched and a tall order, yet that’s what his father wants for him, not for patriotic love of the Country but to protect the position and ill-gotten wealth they have assembled over the years.

If statistics don’t lie, the 14 million Ugandans with mental health challenges have Muhoozi in their number ofcourse because mental illness doesn’t discriminate.

https://www.newvision.co.ug/category/news/14-million-ugandans-have-mental-disorders-rep-133833

Muhoozi is cold, expresses himself at the wrong times or in the wrong circumstances. Why the embarrassing behavior? Clinical medicine or mental health care givers should capture what we have at hand, acting impulsively without considering how others perceive his behavior is social disinhibition. His emotions are flat, exaggerated, impulsive or improper. His emotions seem completely disconnected from situations or just flat. This baby General of his father’s army just after the lockdown and in the middle of a fulminating famine in Karamoja was throwing lavish and expensive birthday parties across the Country in the name of selling himself to the population. Amidst all he promises to go to Karamoja to annihilate them. What a cold-hearted person!

What do scholars say? Writing for Harvard Business Review, executive coach, Manfred F. R. Kets de Vries claims a surprising percentage of leaders have some sort of personality disorder.

The author adds that a leader’s mental health has a direct and major impact on the morale and structure of the working environment. “Toxic leaders” create unhappy workplaces. Further, a warped personality can put business plans, systems, and even, entire organizations at risk.

Most leaders would benefit from the kind of self-reflection facilitated by an executive coach, insists Kets de Vries. Even the mentally healthy can display some of the traits associated with a personality disorder. The author explains how executive coaches – combining psychotherapy with management theory – can help leaders recognize the pitfalls in their personalities and develop more useful behavioral patterns. Attached to his almost senile and over bearing father, scarcely travelled, haphazardlyeducated and surrounded by sycophancy with no institutional frame work but power as an inheritance Uganda is a sinking ship.

The author further describes four of the most common personality disorders among executives and advises how best to deal with them. Imagine the itchy tweeting fingers of the babygeneral, nearly brought the Eat African region into chaos! Kenya had to win the media altercations.

The Narcissist (Muhoozi) He thinks highly of himself, hebelieves others are inferior keeps writing off soldiers who are senior both in age and rank. Muhoozi maybe, maybe notmegalomaniac, narcissist, or may have gaps like almost everyone does, but it should never be problematic to put into perspective the personality of the man who is going to be forced onto Ugandans. There is nothing wrong with Muhoozi vying for the presidency, but there is everything wrong with breaking all known conventional rules to ascend to power.

According to Kets de Vries, pathological narcissism is the most common dysfunction to be found among senior executives. Thisis associated with Frontotemporal Disorders. He explains that everyone displays some degree of narcissism (we all need a little of it to survive), but too much is dangerous, often leading to the pursuit of power at any cost. This becomes a medical problem than a political problem. We have a political system that has produced a MEGALOMANIAC.

The writer is a Ugandan medical Clinical Officer/Certified Public Manager based in USA.

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