IT LOOKS as if Mzansi's political singing sensation - our one and only Machine Gun Man - has finally met his match

IT LOOKS as if Mzansi's political singing sensation - our one and only Machine Gun Man - has finally met his match.

Mzansi's deft dancer and talented singer, he of Umshini Wam' fame, will have to stop hopping from one capital to another and start polishing his skills at home if he is serious about his musical career.

The competition comes in the form of none other that President Yoweri Museveni, the Machine Gun Man's Ugandan counterpart, whose newly released two-minute hip-hop song, You Want Another Rap, has set the Ugandan showbiz scene ablaze.

Guluva's Deep Throat in the capital Kampala says no other song has received such sustained airplay on local radio stations in Ugandan history.

The man behind Museveni's transformation into an overnight hip-hop star is highly acclaimed Ugandan singer and producer Richard Kawesa, who has included this smash hit on his latest 17-track album, I Am a Ugandan.

Released on the country's Independence Day, the song is also popular on the nightclub circuit and, according to cable TV network Al Jazeera, telecommunications companies are falling over each other to secure the rights to use it as a ring tone.

As a result of the unprecedented demand the production team has had no option but to release the song's video earlier than originally planned. The song is so big in Uganda it has even attracted the attention of social networking sites such as Facebook, HiPipo.com and Twitter.

And all this time our globetrotting hitmaker was having tea with the Queen in London; touching base with his African counterparts in Luanda, Gaborone, Cairo, Maputo and Windhoek; rubbing shoulders with United States' President Barack Obama in Washington; and hobnobbing with G20 leaders in Seoul.

It's a while now since he made Umshini Wam' a blockbuster. The song is unfortunately beginning to sound like a scratched record and you will agree with Guluva that it's time he released another.

It's not as if he has no credible production team to put his career back firmly on track, so to speak.

His friend Eugène Mthethwa, of the kwaito group Trompies, who stood by him through thick and thin, and Chomee, the favourite diva of Women, Children and People with Disabilities Minister Lulu Xingwana, would make a formidable production team.

Guluva cannot wait to see the Machine Gun Man reclaiming his spot as Africa's best political singing machine.

What a smart husband

Guluva swears the following story is true:

A man went out pub-crawling with his pals the other night. When he did not return at the end of the mutually agreed curfew, his wife became furious and instructed the children not to open the door for him when he returned.

Then, just after midnight, there was a knock on the front door and the wife immediately woke up to go and answer.

When she realised it was him she barked: "Tsamaya oile robala mo o tswang teng! (Go sleep where you come from!)."

The man replied: "Gaise kere ke tlo robala; ke tlo lata chelete. Ke special sa bo magosha ko Centurion!" (No, No, No! I'm not sleeping here tonight; I'm only coming to collect some money because there's a special that sex workers are offering in Centurion tonight."

The wife hesitated for a few moments, swung the door open and yelled: "Voetsek! Tena mo ntlung o robale! (Nonsense! Don't talk rubbish; just come inside and sleep)."

Gotcha!

Email Guluva on: thatha.guluva@gmail.com