Judicial system and land wrangles: Time to rethink our legal education
‘ … does the Whiteman understand our customs about land’…? ‘…how can he when he does not even speak our language…?
Were Chinua-Achebe’s classic, Things Falls Apart, to be Africa’s ‘Bible’, then these two verses would be placed at the heart of the book of Lamentations. And at no other time would this sad dialogue between Obierika and Okonkwo be more relevant to Uganda than the last week of January and first week of February this year.
Amid the stranger-than-fiction facts emerging during sessions of the Justice Catherine Bamugemereire-led Commission of Inquiry into Land Matters and media reports, a looming ‘war’ is in the works regarding the importance and need for the pre-entry examinations to the Law Development Centre for the Bar course, which qualifies a graduate of Law to practice as an advocate of the High Court of Uganda and other courts subordinate thereto.
The common thread between the land wrangles unearthed by the Justice Bamugemereire Commission and the LDC pre-entry exams debate, is the alien laws governing Uganda, imposed by England. Swallowed hook, line and sinker, from a politico-economic and socio-cultural milieu that was radically different from ours in all respects. As aptly stated by Samuel Wakhakha in Daily Monitor February 5, the English legal system was from a post-industrial society, whose class interests were clearly defined and understood, entrenched and accepted. The landed gentry extracting surplus from the land tillers ( lords versus surfs: The genesis of such strange words as landlord into our vocabulary).
Despite the several Law Reform Commissions, studies and amendments, the core of Ugandan law remains alien. Not even ‘simplifications’ as seen in the Small Claims Procedure recently launched by the Judiciary will be a panacea.
It is, therefore, high time we started from zero. Starting from zero here means abandoning the current system of teaching Law in Uganda. The bachelor’s degree in Law should no longer be studied as an entry level education from high school.
One should have studied a bachelors or even masters in a different field, and preferably worked for at least three years, to qualify to enter Law School for a bachelor’s degree in Law.
Core modules for this ‘mature graduates’ Law course will include anthropology, notably studies into pre-colonial African judicial systems. Virtually all pre-colonial societies had judicial systems, some of which like the Ncuri Nceke of the Meru in Kenya, still have a great influence on the political, social and economic life of their communities. The Gacaca system and courts of Rwanda, with their notable feats in resolving post-genocide conflicts, is another living testimony.
This approach will produce lawyers whose life and world view will be wider than the legal field, thus will be better placed to apply the law in the relevant respective fields.
Law applies to every aspect of life, thus we will have lawyers applying their expertise in other fields, with no singular focus on becoming advocates as is the case today.
This new cohort of graduates will in due course become the vanguards of legal reforms, who will eventually weave a legal-judicial system that draws from our beliefs, practices, values, in a society that remains pre-industrial, despite pockets of the Fourth Industrial Revolution even in remote villages.
As we have argued here before, we left Africa, but never reached Europe. And if we are to establish our position in the club of free and independent nations, we must return to the roots.
This, coupled with State-led industrialisation, which will create off-the-land livelihoods in industrial conurbations, is what will eventually resolve the land wrangles we are witnessing. No alternative.
