My critic Omara of the UPC think tank

By Prof George W. Kanyeihamba
Posted 


Sunday, May 1  

2016 at 

01:00

First, let me make a personal confession. I love critics. Without independent critical examination and judgment of one’s work or opinion, one would not be able to correct mistakes or improve what he or she personally thought is right or good.
Any writer or opinion maker worthy of note should always welcome other people’s comments on his or her work. I lived in academia and the intellectual world long enough to know that an opinion or an idea which does not excite comments one way or the other, is not worth advancing.

Consequently, I personally welcome critical responses to what I say or believe because those responses make my work better and my ideas more practical and easily accepted. That is why I welcomed the views Mr Andrew Omara ably expressed in the Sunday Monitor of February 20.

He criticised me for the views I expressed about the late Maj Gen David Oyite-Ojok’s relationship with the late former president Yusuf Lule. Mr Omara’s historical account of what happened during the Uganda liberation war was quite fascinating and perhaps accurate. He must be congratulated for enlightening us. I have not personally written about that part of our history because I do not know it well. When the events Omara writes about occurred, I was in exile.

However, I came to know Oyite-Ojok during the Moshi Unity Conference and in the UNLF government where I was attorney general and minister of Justice. My comments, which Omara criticises, were limited to the period in which Yusuf Lule was president.

I vividly recall the day president Lule called me to State House Entebbe where he worked and presided over the affairs of the nation and said there was a crisis in the UNLF government. He instructed me to draft an amendment to the Uganda Army Act deleting the army commander from the membership of the National Defence Council.

I was puzzled about it and asked the president the reasons for making such a strange proposal. He said Oyite-Ojok was insubordinate and even refused to salute him as president. Lule disclosed that Oyite-Ojok had apparently undertaken that he would never recognise Lule as president but only as chairman of the UNLF because he had previously dedicated his life and service to Dr Milton Obote (RIP) as president of Uganda and there was no way Oyite-Ojok would break his oath.

I advised the president that the course he was proposing was unattainable and politically explosive. I respectfully declined to draft the amendment. I am not sure that Mr Omara knew about this incident. If anyone is in doubt about it and the context in which I made my remarks in the Sunday Monitor, one is advised to read my, “Constitutional and Political History of Uganda from 1894 to the Present, 2nd ed.”, P. 150.

With regard to Mr Omara’s critique of my comments on former Zambian president Kenneth Kaunda, again I am afraid Mr Omara wrote an opinion entirely unrelated to the comments I made about that humanist leader of Zambia.

It may be recalled that in the same Sunday Monitor issue, my comment was only limited to Kaunda’s statement that he wished to stand again in the presidential election. He had already served Zambia well for many terms stretching to 27 years. Apparently, he wished to complete his programme of modernising Zambia.

I have no reason to doubt Mr Omara’s narrative of what Kaunda achieved for his country in those 27 years. In fact, if what Omara wrote is correct, then he is actually supporting my opinion that Kaunda should not have stood again because he had completed his programme.

Scholars and writers should always read someone’s whole works and internalise them properly before rushing to judgment. For Mr Omara to write “Prof Kanyeihamba must respect or try to understand the heritage of Zambia and comrade Kaunda, the party and the government’s decisions or thinking” is like taking a tilapia out of Port Bell lake waters, placing it on the concrete road and then criticising it for failing to ride a bicycle to the city and appreciate what KCCA and Kampala Lord Mayor have done for Kampala.

Prof Kanyeihamba is a retired Supreme Court judge. gwkany@yahoo.com