I am a silent observer in a lawyers’ WhatsApp group trading as “Advocates UG 1”; it is full to overflowing and has some really brilliant lawyers. As is usually the case with very good lawyers, the conversation is dominated by politics, money and women.
Not in that order, by the way….catch my drift? Once or twice a year though, you just might catch them discussing law. Again, as is expected, the lawyers there have very, very good English. The top two are probably Humphrey Rugambanengwe (Ruga) and the precocious Julie Bibangambah.
In a more civilised country, Ruga would have made billions just writing for fun, while Julie, when stripped of her occasional Dr Stella-esque tendencies, is a fantastic writer and can properly edit a book in her sleep.
It might soon be necessary to hire a tough-as-nails High Court judge like Lydia Mugambe or Musa Ssekaana to adjudicate matters on this WhatsApp group because, quite predictably, lawyers cannot agree on anything; so they are in really fiery arguments nearly all the time.
Even a registrar may be necessary to issue quick interlocutory preservative orders before the judge gets to hear the matter. Things are that bad down here. It is Ruga who, in one such really heated argument, famously said the man who cannot change his mind probably has no mind [in the first place] to change. It was both very clever and maybe a tad below the belt; I have since christened this “Ruga’s Law”. I was hoping there were exceptions to Ruga’s Law but it appears he sold it as an absolute. Advertisement
At some point in 2015, as the country prepared for the 2016 General Election, I was, quite naturally, heavily involved with The Democratic Alliance (TDA) that sought to unite the Opposition forces against the might of the NRM. Then Leader of Opposition in Parliament Wafula Oguttu (Waf, as we fondly call him) took me to a conference room in Eureka Hotel, Ntinda, into what was the equivalent of the TDA High Command to make a presentation on our communication strategy.
There was former Vice President Gilbert Bukenya, former Prime Minister, also Museveni’s bosom buddy, Amama Mbabazi, Gen Mugisha Muntu, who had served as Army Commander for nearly a decade, Col Dr Kizza Besigye, Museveni’s former personal doctor, Maj Amanya Mushega, former minister of Education, David Pulkol, former director general of the External Security Organisation, among others. In fact, apart from Democratic Party president Norbert Mao and Waf, who had always been in the Opposition, nearly everyone else had been very close to the President.
It was an interesting commentary on the President’s philosophy of politics…and his methods of work. Me, myself and I all wondered how on earth anyone in their right mind, after seeing the people in that room, would even think of joining Museveni. For some reason I had never heard of the now hugely notorious media activist Basajja Mivule until three or four weeks ago when he was arrested, apparently for speaking out against the Museveni administration.
From the hullabaloo that followed his arrest, I assumed he was a firebrand of a conscientious objector; one of those dedicated to the regime change this country badly needs.
So I was shocked when next I heard of him, he had made a dramatic, unbelievable transfer to the Museveni camp; which would have been okay with me (as a scholar of Ruga’s Law), had it not been for the extreme invectives he was throwing at the Opposition forces that he had been so valiantly campaigning for. How could a normal human being, change just like that, so quickly and so radically?
It was like a man driving at full speed towards Jinja, then, without stopping the car, engages the reverse gear and shoots back at top speed, towards Kampala…in reverse. Unbelievable.
Maybe it is time for counsel Ruga to tell us whether there really are no exceptions to Ruga’s Law.
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