Kategaya’s power was in his modesty

His death at 67 has ripped from our midst one whose sanity, tolerance and respect for other points of view was much needed in our dangerously polarised politics. He has cast a dark shadow on the land, one which may take a while to lift.

Dear Tingasiga:
I feel the singular honour of writing with the most tender memory of my friend Eriya Tukahirwa Kategaya. He was, of course, a highly placed politician with whom I enjoyed many years of dialogue, disagreement and occasional disappointment.

However, it is as his friend that I pen these words, mere hours after his death in Nairobi. This most easy-going man, whose middle name was Mr Modesty, was imbued with a curiosity and spirit of adventure that once brought him and I perilously close to disaster.

In the early 1990s, Kategaya was a guest in our house when it began to snow very heavily. He was mesmerised by the spectacle, new to him, of so much snow coming down in sheets of white flakes that looked like solid rain. It was the kind of weather that signalled to old hands in these parts to stay put in their houses and avoid the treacherous roads.

To Kategaya this was an opportunity of a lifetime, one that invited the visitor to discover the thrill of a winter night. So he announced that he was ready to return to his hotel in downtown Toronto, 60km from our house.

It was nearly midnight and I thought that a quick trip outside the house would persuade the First Deputy Prime Minister of Uganda that it would be the height of foolishness for us to venture onto the treacherous highways with near zero-visibility. “Let’s go,” he insisted. My protestations and my wife’s appeals to sanity were rebuffed with his trademark laughter.

The Don Valley Parkway was very hard to navigate, with several vehicles and their occupants already stranded in ditches into which they had glided as if on skates.
The poor visibility had forced me to drive very slowly, which was just as well, for the car suddenly skidded and turned, and ended up facing where it had come from.

“This is neat!” Kategaya declared amid laughter. “I have never seen this before.” I was stone silent, scared by the possibility of another vehicle ramming into us. I was also scared by the optics of such an accident. “What if you get killed,” I asked him, “do you suppose that Museveni will believe that it was not an assassination?” “No,” he replied, adding that he would simply be replaced.

That was the time when Kategaya was presumed to be the second most powerful man after Museveni. Yet during that short but terrifying moment on the highway, Kategaya was an ordinary guy, challenging fate, enjoying the thrill of living dangerously and displaying a simplicity that eluded and still eludes many of his colleagues to this day, and acknowledging his dispensability.

It is this simplicity that made him so accessible, respected and powerful. To be devoid of the airs that have enslaved many politicians is a blessing that Kategaya had in large measure.

Every life is a rollercoaster and Kategaya has had his share of ups and downs. The one incident that will probably be remembered about him was his dramatic political U-turn after parting ways with Museveni over a matter of principle in 2003. In 2006, he was back in the Museveni cabinet, but this time with greatly diminished power and influence.

Like many citizens, I was disappointed and wrote as much in a column that declared Kategaya’s U-turn a tragic case of political suicide. Whereas I believed that Kategaya had as much right to leave the NRM as he did to return to that party without first seeking the permission of his colleagues, I was deeply disturbed by this U-turn.

If Kategaya was offended by my opinion, he did not display his feelings, except for a jocular protest that I had slaughtered him with my pen. We enjoyed a drink as he explained to me the sequence of thoughts and events that had made him turn like a Munyankore man in his bed.

Sadly, his long and distinguished career in the struggle for democracy seems to have been swallowed up by this U-turn, with all commentators during his life and now after his death focusing on his brief break up with Museveni and his return to cabinet.

Yet there was more to Kategaya than the man who turned against his own firm promise never to betray his principles. He was a true intellectual, not afraid to say what he thought, but also respectful of opinions with which he did not agree. He was a central actor in the struggle that brought the NRM to power. He was a moderating influence on many colleagues who became drunk with power not long after the end of the Luweero war. He spent his last years working hard to enhance the dream of an East African Federation.

His death at 67 has ripped from our midst one whose sanity, tolerance and respect for other points of view was much needed in our dangerously polarised politics. He has cast a dark shadow on the land, one which may take a while to lift.