Media has lost friend, Uganda has lost a star

Today I write not about journalism but about a great friend of journalism, Justice Kenneth K. Kakuru, who lost the battle to cancer on March 7.  Justice Kakuru was a colossus who has left an indelible mark on Uganda’s civil society, the Judiciary and on our democracy. In many ways, I am not even qualified to eulogise him. So I shall simply record a few things about him in this little space for the benefit of many young Ugandans who should know that a great star that stood for the high values of humanity and for our aspirations as a country has fallen.

Yes, stars like Justice Kakuru are increasingly far and apart in Uganda in general and in the public service in particular.
I have known Justice Kakuru for many years from afar, first as a leading civil rights advocate, lawyer, and later as judge. But I came to know him a little more closely in the last five or so years when we interfaced and spoke severally. Our last meeting was in January, the day his iconic judgment on the Computer Misuse Act was delivered. We met to talk about a book he intended to write. In my company was a “ghost writer” whom I introduced to him who would do all the back end. Now the book may never be!

This meeting was different from the other meetings for the absence of officiousness that always surrounds judges’ – and lawyers’ – chambers. This was at his home in Buziga. He was in the company of his ebullient sister, Maria Baryamujura, and his young daughter.  We talked and laughed as we discussed the approach to his book. He reminisced over his early years as a civil rights and environment lawyer, and his relationship with the media – from the Weekly Topic and The Monitor days. Apparently, his first law chambers on South Street (Ben Kiwanuka) was on the same building with Weekly Topic, only a floor above. There he interfaced with its editors Wafula Oguttu, Charles Onyango-Obbo and others, as well as its publishers.That early association birthed a life-long friendship with the media and solidified his views on the importance of unfettered access to information in society. He once argued in a paper titled, “Environmental law as a tool in peaceful resolution of conflicts” that: “Public participation in decision making would be a mockery without access to information. Many conflicts arise and have arisen because of mis-information or inadequate information or complete lack of information…”

He did not just talk! In 2002, Kakuru, representing Green Watch, went to court to force government to make Bujagali Hydro-electric Dam Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) public.
Justice Kakuru’s footprints straddle a wide area – conservation, media, human rights etc. To all these causes, he applied his skills as a lawyer and civil rights advocate with missionary zeal.

He spent his early years fighting to protect the environment from private and public abuse and degradation. As director of Green Watch Uganda, an NGO dedicated to the protection of the environment, Kakuru in 2002 led the fight to preserve Butamira Forest Reserve, near Jinja, that the government wanted to lease to Kakira Sugar Works. Fighting in court, in the parliamentary committee on natural resources and in all public places, Kakuru and Ugandans won; rolling back the sugar juggernaut and their State partners. He would be back in the trenches again in 2007 as part of the coalition to save Mabira Forest Reserve from another sugar baron, SCOUL. Many years later years as a judge, he always stood on the side of the people and the media. 

Justice Kakuru was the lone dissenting voice in the presidential age-limit and MPs extension of tenure to seven years case. The judgment is documented in the law records, and for the benefit of the wider public in his book, Lest We Forget (2018).
On World Press Freedom Day 2021 organised by Uganda Media Council and Uganda Media Sector Working Group (UMSWG), Justice Kakuru was chief guest and delivered a keynote address titled, “Enhancing the Legal and Regulatory Measures for the Protection of Information as a Public Good in Uganda.”His lead judgment of January 2023 on the Computer Misuse Act case was his last gift to this country. He ruled that section 25 of the Act that criminalised unsolicited sharing of information on a computer “is unjustifiable as it curtails the freedom of speech in a free and democratic society”.
Rest in eternal peace, Justice Kakuru. You played your part, and did so with dedication, distinction and humility.

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