Alan Tacca
Whether by agreement or as workplace opportunism, the Saturday 8-10am Top Radio talk-show host, Mr Kateregga, now frequently veers into his campaign for the Ntenjeru South parliamentary seat.
So, in 2026, Ntenjeru South could have a new MP, whose most inspiring idea (judging from its tiresome repetition) is “Generation come; generation go”, and whose dream of transforming Parliament appears different from a fantasy only to flatterers who are grateful to be hosted by the show.
In return, he scratches their backs.
When a regular guest like self-confessed semi-literate Abdu Ssali fiercely attacks NRM rule for its crippling taxes, corruption and a parasitic Parliament, but with the same passion advocates the extension of the regime into hereditary rule, Kateregga glosses over the contradiction.
Another regular panellist, one Ms Buchana, spits all the poison and slander she can generate and directs it wherever she believes there are members of the National Unity Platform (NUP).
Understandable, because Buchana’s calling on earth is to attack any mammal that seriously challenges President Museveni.
But she is in double luck. Her host, who would at least address the slander, remains an MP-to-be spectator.
Enter Zimula Mugwanya, Kassanda LC5 chairperson.
A Democratic Party member, Zimula steers a foggy course. But he is also unperturbed. Basking in MP-to-be glory, Kateregga does not ask him hard questions.
For instance, Zimula often praises DP for grooming politicians who have taken their leadership skills to other parties.
Was DP designed as a nursery for other parties?
If the party also aspires to take power, are there weaknesses in its mechanisms that make it unable to retain its more viable members?
Once a giant, isn’t DP now a confused dwarf?
If this is true, would NUP be wise to work like DP? NUP would be copying a failed game plan. In Zimula’s DP-styled game plan, Mr Mathias Mpuuga (of Sh500 million fame), would be handled with soft gloves as an indispensable NUP player.
And a super-hostile character screaming wildly like Abed Bwanika would be fully accommodated without questioning his lucidity or his motives.
Well, NUP leaders apparently see things differently. And I do not understand why Zimula and DP cannot have Mpuuga back. That is where he came from, an asset fully loaded with DP-styled political skills.
The illustrious Bwanika (PDP-cum-NUP), the learned and exceedingly brilliant Richard Lumu (MP Mityana South), DP president general Norbert Mao (currently on NRM duty), and many other Opposition big guns would of course be consulted.
This pack would be a formidable political force, with plenty of work out there.
After Zimula complained (Saturday, August 24) that the Opposition is ‘on holiday’ because its leaders are not visible enough, his force can now seize the moment. Mount a new ‘wave’!
Independence champions and rebel Museveni of 1981-86 were volunteers.
As chairman of gold-rich Kassanda, with DP’s structures at his disposal, Zimula has a wonderful base.
Some months back, he was loudly leading Uganda’s district chairpersons in peddling a federal form of government.
It must be an attack of treacherous laziness that puts Zimula and his friends on holiday before that mission is concluded. Do not blame NUP leaders or anyone else.
Focusing on such tasks and confronting the simmering threat of militarised hereditary rule would make Zimula and his colleagues look less ridiculous than ranting at any Kyagulanyi-like shadow, whose leadership of NUP and the Opposition in general they have judged wanting.
The vacuum is for them to fill. Their renewed sense of purpose could even redeem Kateregga’s talk show.
Mr Alan Tacca is a novelist, socio-political commentator.
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