THE LAW IS AN ASS...(Is there no cause?)

 

So, three days ago I wrote this blog "THE LAW IS AN ASS..." I got swift readership, lot of encouragement and then I also got a whiplash across my face! Not that I expected any less, but Why? I had touched the leopards... (refer to Gen. Kaguta speeches to fill the blanks in!) as some people thought.

It is interesting that the initial reactions of correction I got were from the learned friends as they thought I had attacked the sanctity of the priests of the "temple of Justice." Not at all brethren, not at all. This was only a case of mistaken identity and reading at cross purposes (if there is any such thing!). In fact I did quite the opposite if you care to read my article and read it well. What I did was to raise a flag on a seething wound that is swiftly going septic, a weapon of mass destruction quickly coming together, which if it is not handled well can potentially affect a lot of things beyond our own personal spaces.

Let me illuminate; in 2016 my partners and I raised some investment to carry out a major project in one part of Uganda that has had serious land issues. I recall driving some potential investors to this part of the country and showing them the land that we had acquired and asking them to support the next phase that called for serious capital investment. One specific gentleman I will never forget, an American guy, told the others who were with him: "Do not place your money here; land issues in Uganda are very volatile. You will end up loosing your money!" First, I was shocked at his boldness to his friends, then I was sad for dear Uganda (“O Uganda may God uphold thee!”), then I quickly transited to some pensive introspection and wondered if surely there was no cause to this astounding statement.  Had my people really come to this that now internationally we were known as land fraudsters?

Alas, there was cause! I was to discover first hand only a few months after that utterance the ridiculousness of the land issues in dear country (Story for another day). Therefore, I did not speak lightly nor redundantly when I mentioned what I did in my blog. I know for a fact that there is a lot of Judges that are doing their best to ensure that justice is served (I know a couple of such). But I also know there has been a few that issued terribly shocking judgments that have costed a lot of honest Ugandans their life’s savings and in some cases their lives due to broken hearts.

I am reminded of this land case where the mountain of evidence against the defendant could not stop the judge presiding over the matter to pass a shocking ruling in favor of the defendant. Everyone in court (and the matter for the complainant was handled by a rather competent senior counsel) including the defendant’s lawyer was in utter shock. This not withstanding that the case had trudged on for over five years up to this point and had costed the complainant loads of costs, only to experience an abortion of justice! That specific case is currently on Appeal and it has been over Four years now; it hasn't been heard yet. In the meantime, this bought the defendant time to wreck havoc on ground to the extent that even if he lost the case on appeal it only gives the Complainant an empty nest (never mind that there was a court order to maintain status quo with case on appeal). Of course, the circumstances leading to this state of affairs are so telling as to the state of some unscrupulous officers in the lands offices as well, who will work for and with anyone throwing potent “green” at them. Well, like I said, "the law is an ass!"

In my tribe we have a proverb that goes "omulya mamba abeera omu navumaganya e’kika" loosely translated it means, "it only takes one bad apple to spoil the barrel" or "others reputations are often sadly concluded from the misdeeds of one of their kind." Whilst my blog was not about the judges but rather about the manipulative Ugandans that will litigate on anything including matters where they flatly know the truth and the fact that it is not anywhere in their version of the story, my point was that these kinds of people have taken advantage of technicalities in the laws and exploit them to the extent that they end up getting "justice" which they then ride upon to cause so much destruction in their wake, which destruction in any case is the least of their worries. The situation is dire and must urgently be fixed otherwise people can only take so much.

Now to my brothers and sisters in the Legal profession, there is another way rather than trying to point out apparent "misdeeds" of the legally ignorant when they stand up to comment on this “divine language” of the law; stand up and be counted. Fight for the justice for which you burnt many precious hours learning to defend. When weird stories come up over matters legal, provide clarity on these matters where you can and as well make an effort to understand the full story. When two media houses post the same story two days apart from each other and there is a loud din from the competent, what does that tell you? You leave matters of interpretation to the aggrieved, and interpret they always will.

I challenge my brothers and sister of the "learned tribe", rise up and steer this ship of the law back on course, otherwise soon, the much-treasured profession will soon be a slaughter house where the law will be the treasured tool to effect the final blow upon those that most need justice. It is no longer OK for you to standby and look the other way when so much is at stake and their purpose with the pride of your profession. In time past you were known as the defenders of the weak, the vanguards of Justice and the dependable ones. There comes a time when there is cause for a fraternity to rise up and defend their pride .

My question to you learned friends, is in the quotation from the bible below.

1 Samuel 17:28-30 - King James Version

28 And Eliab his eldest brother heard when he spake unto the men; and Eliab's anger was kindled against David, and he said, Why camest thou down hither? and with whom hast thou left those few sheep in the wilderness? I know thy pride, and the naughtiness of thine heart; for thou art come down that thou mightest see the battle.

29 And David said, What have I now done? Is there not a cause?

30 And he turned from him toward another, and spake after the same manner: and the people answered him again after the former manner.

….Is there No cause?

THE LAW IS AN ASS...

Recently in early September 2020 I picked up a copy of one of Uganda’s  Daily News papers, and somewhere conspicuously hidden in the middle pages was one of the most shocking articles of recent time; the Constitutional court had quashed the decisions and recommendations of the Commission of Inquiry into Land matters in Uganda. The cost of this Uganda shillings Fifty-Four Billion (UGX 54bn) of the tax payers money and valuable time of 3 years blown away by the wind! There was the hidden costs as well; the lives lost and property destroyed as well as livelihoods cut short.

So how can this be? How can 3 years of a very expensive inquiry go up in smoke just like that yet it is discussing such a very sensitive issue? How can a matter of that magnitude of national volatility be seemingly left to fight on for dear life? One doesn't have to look very far to see that land issues in Uganda are a flash point just waiting to happen. There is so many aggrieved parties, both settlers and land Lords alike. Lives have been lost over land matters in Uganda and property destroyed and the bleeding continues unabated in many cases for now.

Land seems to be the one thing that over 80% of the Ugandan population still draws its livelihood from. What happens when the livelihood of such a big group of people gets threatened? I leave it to your imagination.

So, how did we get here? The Constitutional Court quashed the decisions and recommendations of the Commission of Inquiry into Land matters which the Constitutional Court judges ruled as having acted illegally when it convened itself as a court of law in handling land disputes. Then begs the question, where and how did the commission of inquiry convene itself as a court of law?

Apparently one senior and very powerful citizen of the republic rushed to the court after the commission issued a warrant of arrest against him, thus the resultant action amounted to exercise of judicial power. Now, my learned friends have a common proverb that goes something like "the law is an ass" import being that the law, as created by legislators or as administered by the justice system, cannot be relied upon to be sensible or fair. Thing is, technically the judges are right, however matters of justice are not simply technical.

One wonders how far such manipulation of the law by selfish citizens (who use their advantage and never flinch to revert to the courts of law arguing the letter rather than the spirit of the laws) will stretch to serve the interest of those few to the chagrin of many; how those in vantage positions will continue to rub in the salt of their powers and for how long. In the meantime, the real world goes on like a ticking time bomb. At some point there is an inflection point always against injustice and when that time comes it does not care about the law, albeit only about getting the things crudely fixed to what the aggrieved think they should be.

This is just one example of how things can start to go terribly wrong, how a tsunami begins to boil up far out at sea and the would-be victims of it continue to sip at teas and cocktails at beautiful beaches totally oblivious of the approaching disaster. In the moment the tsunami becomes physically apparent to those at the beach it is usually too late to do anything about it. Somethings will carry out of their way, in their force, whatever they come across whether good or bad and usually only leave regrettable damage as they recede. Such is the power of a tsunami, and such is the power that manipulation of the law by those few selfish citizens puts into the hands of aggrieved and oppressed people.

Being a non-legal mind, I often ask my lawyer friends if nothing can be done about such injustices that are supported by the law. Often their answer is predictably the same, "it is the law!" In pursuit of this, I also recently during that same timeline saw a social media item making its rounds. In a local traditional court, "Mato Put", an alleged murderer was seeking reconciliation for loss of life apparently accorded by him. He wanted reconciliation with the family and friends of the deceased. The accused faced a panel of elders who questioned him and cautioned him to tell the truth; what followed has been subject of many arguments. However, my position has been that perhaps the African traditional courts had something that the western legal systems missed, something that sets things right; things lost when "the law is an ass." I pointed the opponents to my argument to The Truth and reconciliation Commission of South Africa, constituted by the late President Nelson Mandela otherwise called Madiba, the son of a traditional chief and himself a traditional chief by birth. Did this commission work? Did it deliver results? I would shudder if anyone said it did not. I recon this commission is one of the reasons present day South Africa has managed to achieve its current harmonious existence between the Black and their former white oppressors. Is it the best of relationships? Of course not, but it definitely is much better than would have been had the path of "the Law" been taken.

I also pointed my opponents to the Gacaca system used to reconcile Rwanda after the 1994 genocides. The Gacaca court is a system of community justice inspired by Rwandan tradition, loosely translated to "justice amongst the grass". This traditional, communal justice was adapted in 2001 to fit the needs of Rwanda in the wake of the 1994 Rwandan genocide where over an estimated 1,000,000 people were killed, tortured and raped. Now Rwanda is not at its best after such trauma, but it is definitely light years ahead of where it would have been.

So, there is something about these alternate systems of justice that stabilizes society when the law fails. Sometimes, stability of the society is much more important than the "rightness" of the law, hence the need for such interventions. The trick is to know when such a time and event calls for this kind of justice and for one to have the wisdom to put it together. This is where true patriotism begins.