The Anti-Corruption court: Where the rich meet justice

If there is a place you can see how the rich live, the Anti-Corruption court is it. The accused tend to come with expensive cars, flashy gadgetry and crowds that are not badly off themselves.

There, after all, could be much more to learn from symbolism than we had imagined. Uganda’s Anti-Corruption Court could have been located in any other of Kampala’s suburbs, and still run its functions.

Interestingly, it sits back in the leafy dark-green setting of the Kololo gradient, where the rich and famous, the political and diplomatic top brass meet and rub shoulders, as they contend with serious matters of nation-building, on behalf of we, lesser mortals.

The individual who mooted the idea of locating the court in Kololo may not have known it then, but by so doing, they were positioning a judicial guillotine for Uganda’s rich, in their very backyard.

Mike Mukula
The Anti-Corruption Court has over the past two to three years, played out as the arena where one rich individual after another meets with an embarrassing plunge from the societal high horse back down to earth, crumbling like a pack of cards as a result of some form of financial misdeed or other.

Soroti Municipality Member of Parliament, George Mike Mukula, recently had his bail application postponed in this very court, two weeks after he was sentenced him to four years in jail for embezzlement of GAVI monies. But he is only the latest, and definitely not the last, of a list of rich men and women for whom the court must have become a point of deep personal regret.

There is something about many rich people, their ways and characteristics that sets them aside. These very characteristics have become a near-permanent feature at this court, as it hosts more of the rich class. Their dressing, mannerisms before cameras, size of their support crowds, etal, have become characteristic features of the court. At the Anti-Corruption Court, the rich fall like dominoes. And when they come falling, they come along with all their characteristics.

The scene around the Kololo court on the day Hon Mukula was sentenced was carnival-like. Crowds of supporters swamped the premises, bustling with noise and chants and slogans that went even wilder after the conviction. It was the surest sign you needed to know something, or even somebody important, was about to happen. And when he came in, he did not only just arrive, he made an entrance, in a mixed Toyota Land Cruiser-Mercedes Benz two-car convoy.

He rode in the front passenger seat of the black shiny eight-cylinder luxury Toyota Land Cruiser. His wife, who wore a black suit and pink top, black sunglasses and carried a folding fan, sat in the back seat. The crowd receiving him included popular musician, Moses Ssali aka Bebe Cool and Kampala Central Member of Parliament, Mohammed Nsereko. A stark contrast from other scenes in other courts such as Buganda Road Court, where petty thieves are paraded before magistrates and hardly anybody notices.

On finally sitting down and readying himself for the proceedings, Mukula, looking sharp as ever in a dark suit, white shirt and dark tie, pulled out his iPad and started swiping away. Next came his smart phone, and with that too, he swiped away.

And when the judgement was read, and he had walked out of the courtroom, reporters pounced on him like vultures on carrion. Camera bulbs flickered constantly, in your typical celebrity-paparazzi engagement.

Hassan Basajjabalaba
When it came to billionaire businessman Hassan Bassajabalaba’s turn to show up in court, he arrived in a dark blue Police sedan car, followed by no less than three SUVs, a Mercedes Benz and two Toyotas. Relatives who wore sunglasses inside the courtroom shed tears on witnessing him remanded to Luzira prison.

On the days he was first produced in court, Bassajabalaba sweated, even using his palm to wipe sweat off his brow. Basajjabalaba, the shadowy man who had only recently seemed beyond the reach of even the police’s own long arms of the law, was finally caught on nation-wide television, sweating before a judge. But when he returned for bail hearings, he had the luxury of cooling this throat with some refreshing Delmonte Mango juice provided by a family member, while inside the courtroom.

When he finally got bail, he had to deposit Shs60m, and, his sureties bonded at Shs4b. Large crowds waited upon him on the day of his release, jamming the streets, shouting, screaming and chanting.

Geoffrey Kazinda
Interdicted principal accountant in the office of the Prime Minister, Geoffrey Kazinda, has not always had the privilege of arriving at court in a prisons four-wheel-drive Isuzu truck like Bassajabalaba did. He has instead ridden on the famous prisons bus and at times, the prisons truck. On one such occasion, as he slowly climbed down from the truck and seemed to miss a step, a journalist quipped, “He does not know how to climb trucks. He only knows how to climb from Land Cruisers.”

Kazinda is another high profile figure currently dragging his way through the Anti-Corruption court. The interdicted official, with a mansion for a hotel under construction in Bukoto, has not created as many shock waves as other suspects did at the court. But the trail of wealth and riches, following to the court, can still be picked. You will pick it from the high-end cars, particularly a black Mercedes Benz Cross Country, that his acquaintances use.

The small matter of Bad Black
But if ever a Ugandan court became a showbiz attraction, then the embezzlement case that involved Shanita Namuyimbwa, aka Bad Black and Meddie Ssentongo, was it. She had already built herself the public image of a Kampala socialite, by the time court proceedings against her started.

The showy flamboyance she exhibited in Kampala’s nightspots now shifted to the courthouse. In she would drive, in any of her fleet of luxury cars, particularly, an Audi Quantum 7. Her dress sense did not seem to take notice of the fact that she was headed to a courtroom.

She wore high heels, so high they threatened to throw her pregnant body over to the other side. And then, there were the clothes, clothes so tightly fitting they made her bulging belly threaten to tear them apart. There was the hair, so wild at times it looked like an illustration of the fibrous root system. Bad Black ensured to make a fashion statement every time she made it to court.

Then there was her band of supporters. At times, the courtroom felt like Bad Black had ferried her alumni from the Speke Road School of hard knocks, all the way into court.

They were easy to spot in the court. The lipstick was always a glowing red, the dresses and skirts hardly ever reached the knees and the pants seemed to be glued to the skin. Every so often, one girl would receive a call, halfway through a court session, and then rattle her high heels across the floor, drawing all attention to her.

And of course, there was Meddie Ssentongo. To compliment his suits, he wore sunglasses to achieve a mimicked Hollywood look, even into the courtroom where the sunshine did not reach.

Kutesa, Nassasira and Rukutana
In the end, looking at the heavy shots who have been humbled before a judge who is not even a tenth as rich as they are, forced to prove their case in a temple of justice, seems to offer solace in the face of the adage that the rich never face justice.

There may be reservations in this case; questions about whether real justice is meted out against the rich and powerful or whether it is simple window dressing. In the cases against Minister John Nasasira, Sam Kutesa and Mwesigwa Rukutana for instance, the presiding judge dismissed the case and blamed the prosecution of doing a shoddy job of assembling evidence against the accused.

Still, there was no denying the humbling effect of watching rich and powerful cabinet ministers yawn, stretch, and wipe sweat from their faces for hours on end before a judge.

In a society where wealth creation, especially through crooked means, is often celebrated and not questioned, becoming a one-way ticket into the realm where the law does not reign, the anti-corruption court has acted as a reassuring symbol that the law also catches rich people.

It is the reassurance that poor people need to know that the law does not only target the poor. Even if it maybe window dressing, at least it is a form of justice. It could be worse.

jabimanyi@ug.nationmedia.com