Time running out for the three big wigs of the Uganda Judiciary

By Prof George W. Kanyeihamba
Posted 


Sunday, May 29  

2016 at 

01:00

Religion has its Trinity and the three wise men of the East who honoured baby Jesus at birth. History has had its three musketeers and the three wise monkeys who say, hear or see nothing.

In Uganda today, we have three Constitutional big wigs of the Judiciary, but time is just running out for the trio for achieving much good to remember them regarding national justice and jurisprudence.

I have personally known, worked and interacted with the three heads of the courts of Uganda and followed or shared their careers closely. They are Chief Justice (CJ) Bart Katureebe, Deputy Chief Justice Steven Kavuma, and Principal Judge Yorokamu Bamwine.

The first two were my students in the Faculty of Law at Makerere University. Today, they are aged 65 and 68 years old, respectively. As by Constitution, they are bound to retire at 70.

Justice Katureebe has only five years in which to shine and Justice Kavuma a mere two years, heading and adjudicating controversially in the Court of Appeal, which doubles as the Constitutional Court of Uganda.

At the age of 62, Justice Bamwine is the youngest of the three big wigs, but as principal judges and High Court judges compulsorily retire at the age of 65, Justice Bamwine has only three years remaining to hand in his instruments of office and retire.

Uganda recalls with much gratitude and appreciation the excellent services rendered by their three predecessors. The most industrious and longest serving of them all and still working as a jurist is Samuel Wako Wambuzi. He has been my friend, a confidant and Chief Justice of Uganda both before and after the Idi Amin regime. I recall that while I was in exile in Britain, I visited him in Nairobi, where his services had been gratefully hired by the region as a Justice of the Court of Appeal of East Africa.

Following the overthrow of Amin, the Yusuf Lule Cabinet invited him to be CJ and with only a short interlude of the Military Commission, Justice Wambuzi continued steadily and wisely, steering the Uganda precious cargo of justice for many years until his retirement.

My fondest memories of him include the times he and I played Mweso or listened to or attended recitals of music in different Uganda concert halls.
The other big wigs in his time included the no nonsense Principal Judge Herbert Ntabgoba, who as Principal Judge, fiercely maintained and fought for the independence and impartiality of the Judiciary.

Their contemporary and Deputy Chief Justice was Seth Manyindo, who endavoured to follow the examples of justices Wambuzi and Ntabgoba, but is reported to have been weakened by exertion of political power by the mighty Executive and surrendered to it some of the powers of the Judicial Service Commission, which he presided over following his retirement from the Judiciary.

Justice Manyindo’s successor, Justice Mukasa Kikonyogo, was a deeply committed religious lady who had risen through the ranks of many lower benches to the Supreme Court. With so much routine work in her dockets for a long time, she was unable to contribute effectively to the jurisprudence of Uganda.

However, she will always be fondly remembered for her courageous and unflinching leadership of the Judiciary during its siege and assault by the police and security forces nicknamed “Black Mambas” during the absence of the Chief Justice. The same siege made the poetic and rhetoric successor to Justice Ntabgoba, Justice James Ogoola to call that assault “The rape of the temple of justice”.

The fire Ogoola exhibited during that siege appears to have been dampened by what he found and feared in the Judicial Service Commission, where he was appointed to be its shepherd and guardian. No wonder the current Chief Justice has accused Justice Ogoola of having unconstitutionally surrendered the powers and functions of the Commission to the political omnipotence of the Executive.

The three senior judges of the Courts of Judicature have had their ups and downs in the administration and delivery of justice in Uganda.

Justice Katureebe will be remembered for marshalling nine independent justices of the Supreme Court to sing harmoniously the same chorus of legal decision in the 2016 presidential petition and for carrying out transfers of judicial officers whether suspected of crimes or not to spread their experiences and deeds nationwide.