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.