According to his column, Mao is back. He’s a writer again. Oh yes, he writes for Sunday Monitor. That’s right, a whole minister in a whole newspaper with more than half a chance of winning a seat in a less-than-wholesome Parliament. According to haters, the man is only writing because nobody bothered to write the Democratic Party’s (DP) manifesto. It all started when he, Mao, decided that being a Member of Parliament was better than being a member of the First Family as family head. Or what Mbidde would call Pater familias.
By selling himself short, Mao fulfilled the phrase “bumper sticker on a Bentley”. This is a metaphor for doing something tacky or inappropriate to an expensive, luxury item. It became famous from a 2017 interview where Kim Kardashian used it to express her disdain for tattoos, comparing them to bumper stickers on a Bentley. Later, Kardashian got a small, discreet tattoo on the inside of her lip, which she referred to as having “finally put a bumper sticker on a Bentley’.
Anyway, the Bentley in this case is Mao’s career, and the bumper sticker is presumably the MP seat. The man is supposed to be president of Uganda. However, he decided that the leopard should never be assaulted via the rear. Mzee warned us all that the Big Cat’s external opening of the rectum, located inside the intergluteal cleft, should not be touched. Mzee used to be a domestic cat when he was in the bush.
Then he grew into a big cat as soon as January 26, 1986, rolled around. Thereupon, the big cat also became the big dog. Mao reportedly took note. Mao thus transformed himself into an attack dog. He then went from being a rebel without a pause to being a rebel on paws. I meant, pause. So he couldn’t write the DP manifesto. This brought him to Sunday Monitor. He is writing it here and the editors are reportedly limiting him to a word count that will abruptly transform into a full stop as soon as his manifesto starts sounding like the National Resistance Movement’s (NRM) manifesto.
It makes sense, seeing that the DP bossman once said he was going to vaccinate the country against the yellow fever spread by NRM’s party colours. However, Mao is famously stubborn. He is sure to fumble, being a former student of Namilyango College. The CDF will agree; the epithet ‘fumbler’ was coined by Namilyango’s rivals from St Mary’s College Kisubi (SMACK), where the CDF used to dine on posho and beans. Now he’s enjoying the UPDF’s menu, bulleted to shot for his culinary tastes. As for Mao, he is now on two diets.
One does his palate justice while the other leaves him in a position to eat his words once his column is documented and then used against him by his red detractors. By putting his words into cold print, Mao risks being correctly quoted and thus being denied the plausible deniability every politician subsists on. However, Mao is not bothered. He wants to be quoted. He has nothing to hide. The emperor is wilfully naked. His column, his critics say, will not last longer than his MP campaign run. It is just a seriated manifesto. After he gets to Parliament, it will vanish like a certain minister’s orange shirt.
Then he is likely to be made Mzee’s immediate underboss, which is what he means when he says: ‘Power is not for everyone. That’s why I said the transition will not be based on elections. These things are already happening in the rooms which matter. And those rooms are not your TV studios.’ Now we know why Mzee turned up missing at the NTV presidential debate.
Mao had warned us, but we ignored it. The man is now going to be warning us every Sunday, and if we do not listen, Mzee will be given a column in the Monitor. He has been reportedly negotiating his contract. Mzee has told this satirist that his official monthly salary is Shs3.6 million, so Monitor should add at least 1m and the leopard will be given more oomph to its pounce.