Fare-thee-well Peter James  Nkambo Mugerwa SC

I joined the firm of Mugerwa & Matovu Advocates at the invitation of T. Masembe Kanyerezi. This was a little after Mr Nkambo Mugerwa, or PJ as we affectionately called him, had hung his robes. He didn’t go to court anymore and he spent the day managing the firm.

One key role PJ played would probably be called quality assurance in modern parlance. Every week he would take the flimsy file and comb through it. 

The flimsy file contained a plain paper copy of every single letter that left the firm. Those were the days before communication by email.

One day, PJ summoned me to his corner office and showed me a letter I had written. I read through the letter and felt the blood rush to my face. 

The letter was full of mistakes and was plainly unintelligible. Worse, it had already been despatched. 

PJ fixed me with his intent look. He didn’t say anything more. My forlorn figure slinking out of the door ended this unfortunate incident. 

But I want to share with you what happened when PJ was Solicitor General and I was still figuring out how to spell my name. PJ handled the case of Uganda -v- Commissioner of Prisons Exparte Matovu. 

This is a case every law student is required to read well. Permit me say that reading a case at school and reading it in practice is a totally different ball game. 

So it was only when I read Exparte Matovu in practice that a lot of outrageous things dawned on me. The case, if it can properly be called that, was filed by Abu Kakyama Mayanja (rest in peace). 

The pleadings comprised all of two affidavits, one of which was by him. There was no respondent named. How this case went on to establish a fundamental constitutional principle in Ugandan law is a mystery. 

I never had the opportunity to ask late Abu Mayanja why he would start a case in such a manner. 
Today, if you showed up with two affidavits to file a case the court registrar would laugh you out of the building. 

But I did ask PJ why he as the government lawyer had not asked court to throw out the case in the infamous preliminary objection style so favoured by the Attorney General’s chambers. 

I was in his corner office with the law report in my hands. I read to him the case report and emphasised that it was no case at all. 
He listened patiently, fixing me with his intent look. He gave me a wide grin. But he didn’t answer me. 

My guess is that the answer is found in that often quoted passage in the judgment that “bearing in mind the facts that the application as presented was not objected to by counsel who had appeared for the State; and that the liberty of a citizen of Uganda was involved; and that considerable importance was attached to the questions of law under reference since they involved the interpretation of the Constitution of Uganda; we decided, in the interests of justice, to jettison formalism to the winds and to overlook the several deficiencies in the application, and thereupon proceeded to the determination of the issues referred to us.”

There was a greater cause than arguing the technical points of law. The liberty of the individual was at stake. There was a human being a citizen waiting for justice. 
Looking at our jurisprudence today, especially in the Constitutional Court, one can only wonder how we have fallen from the gold standard of justice set by PJ and the court in Exparte Matovu. 

We owe it to PJ, to the country, and to justice itself to re-establish this gold standard.

Fare-thee-well Peter James Nkambo Mugerwa SC.
“What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others,” History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides.

Mr Karugaba is a lawyer