TO PULL OR NOT TO PULL?

Besides the raging debate on whether women should “pull” or not, the outgoing Chief Justice, Bart Katureebe, can redeem whatever is left of the Judiciary’s (and his own) honour although many people would not credit him or that branch of government with any.

You see, the already congested environs of the High Court in Kampala are due for further crowding if plans to erect Supreme Court buildings there are put into action.

For all the travesties that have been committed against Ugandans under his tenure—not least the Judiciary’s complicity in cementing Gen. Museveni’s authoritarian thuggery—while occasionally throwing a few crumbs of hope at Ugandans, this proposed structure would be a permanent and physical reminder, a monument, of a most ignoble term of office.

The incredulous plan will also encroach upon and see the destruction of the Constitutional Square, a public space protected by law (Historical Monuments Act) and by extension, Article 29 of the Constitution.

The proposal isn’t merely an assault on common sense—it threatens the environment and would add to the glorified squalor we call our Central Business District. The ‘city’ is barely navigable, with narrow, potholed cattle paths that cannot cope with the ever-surging numbers of boda bodas who are daily engaged in an unofficial war with other road users.

There’s no need to anticipate how much more traffic jam, noisy and menacing convoys of their Lordships, diversions during major hearings and flash flooding when it rains (thanks to an obsolete master drainage system) a new building of that size and stature—ironically built for the purposes of dispensing and administering justice—will visit on Kampalans.

It will definitely take a lot more to redeem the Judiciary, whose corruption was (and still is) a necessary cornerstone for Musevenism to thrive, but for the sake of the few trees that cool the air around Kampala and Buganda Roads, the Supreme Court should find another home—preferably outside the Capital.

You may now return to that topic that has lit up shosho media for three days straight and even caused men to “fight” for women’s rights with unprecedented energy?!