By Isaac Ssemakadde
ULS Law Society President.
My brother Kakwenza,
I receive your words not merely as a tribute but as a reminder of the sacred duty that comes with speaking truth to power, even when the corridors of justice are littered with cowards in wigs and gowns. I am humbled that you saw in me a vision worth campaigning for, but more importantly, I am gratified that you too have remained steadfast in exposing the rot that has infested our institutions.
The judiciary of Uganda is indeed in chains—captured, colonised, and corrupted by an appointing authority that fears merit the way a thief fears the light. But let it be known: those who mistake their robes for immunity are only actors in a tragic play, and history will judge them far more harshly than any courtroom ever could.
You speak of the table banging. Yes, I banged the table, and I will continue to bang it wherever silence and complicity reign. For silence is betrayal, and complicity is treason against the people. If that rattled skeletons in high places, so be it. Their fear is proof that the struggle is alive.
Leadership, as you say, is a season. My season at the helm of the Bar was not for personal glory but to awaken a profession lulled into slumber by mediocrity. If in that awakening we managed to inspire courage in one, two, or ten souls then we succeeded. And now, in Eron Kiiza, I see the same flame that once burned in me: the refusal to be cowed, the audacity to resist, the discipline to serve justice over power.
The establishment may conspire, judges may pervert the law, prosecutors may weaponise their offices but they cannot kill an idea whose time has come. That idea is simple: law must serve justice, not power.
I salute you, comrade. And I salute every Ugandan who still dares to believe that dignity, freedom, and justice are not foreign imports but birthrights. Our tormentors may sit high today, but the arc of our profession, like that of history, bends slowly but inevitably towards justice.
