Kanyeihamba 'wrestled greatly with life, never surrendered easily', says city lawyer

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A city lawyer has spoken of Prof. George Kanyeihamba’s final days with him at Nakasero Hospital in Kampala.

Kanyeihamba, 85, died of an undisclosed illness on Monday, July 14, 2025.

Elison Karuhanga, a partner with Kampala Associated Advocates, said in a social media post that he visited the former Supreme Court judge in the hospital in his final days.

“Part of his leg had been amputated. He was on dialysis, his body failing after a long and noble fight. He lay there unconscious, still, silent, yet even in that stillness, he bore the unmistakable air of a man who had wrestled greatly with life and never surrendered easily,” he said.

He recalled that Kanyeihamba was in frail health, but the memory of his strength filled the room.

Prof. George Kanyeihamba. (File photo)

“Frail in body, yes, but the memory of his strength filled the room. The old legal giant, now at the edge of the final verdict, remained defiant in spirit. Even in silence, he seemed to resist the fading light with the same resolve he once brought to courtrooms and causes,” he stated.

They then stood by his bedside and said their prayer.

“I leaned in, whispered greetings from my family, and offered my final farewell,” Karuhanga narrated.

Always told a good joke

He noted that the deceased always told a good joke and once narrated how he found his guard asleep on duty, took away the gun, and waited.

In the morning, the guard nervously reported that robbers had come and taken the gun, but he had fought them off bravely.

“Prof. listened carefully, nodded, went back inside, brought out the gun, handed it to the guard, and said, ‘I am the robber,”’ Karuhanga recalled.

He said another time, in open court this time as counsel, Kanyeihamba rose and told a joke so humorous and so crude that it jolted even the dozing backbench.

He stated that when he was done, the former luminary in the legal profession sat down and, without apology, declared: “I was merely trying to keep the court awake.”

He also said Kanyeihamba warned a senior colleague once, only half in jest that “if you dare introduce me as your teacher, I will spill the real beans. I was a young lecturer, and you were a mature entrant.”

“Such was the man, humourous, never unserious, always fair, and impossibly firm. He joked, he judged, he taught; and he never yielded where truth was at stake.”

Man with conviction

Karuhanga described Kanyeihamba as a man fashioned not for convenience, but for conviction.

“I knew him not only as a towering jurist, but as a historian of his own story, a teacher of reluctant students, and a man whose stubbornness was rivalled only by his sense of justice,” he wrote.

He also described Kanyeihamba as a towering legal giant and said few remain of his generation.

“Let history never forget the energy, the life, and the courage that the Odoki-led Supreme Court on which he sat breathed into our jurisprudence. Case after case, that Court carried the burden and the promise of a new Constitution, testing its limits, defining its soul, and giving shape to a fledgling republic’s legal identity,” he noted.

Benjamin Odoki, 82, is a former Chief Justice of Uganda and former Supreme Court Justice of Eswatini.

Karuhanga prayed that as Kanyeihamba crosses the Rubicon, may he meet and greet Justices Joseph Mulenga, John Wilson Tsekooko, Arthur Oder, and Alfred Karokora.

He said the five deceased justices were jurists from different walks who brought vitality and honour to an apex Court finding its feet in a new constitutional dispensation.

“To those of us to whom the law is both our trade and our calling, Scripture offers not just comfort, but command: ‘Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight and the sin that so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.”

Karuhanga then quoted the Bible. “Hebrews 12:1 Let us honour these servants of God, who with their pens tried to bring much clarity to our law. Let us recall their work. They are for sure - our great cloud of witnesses. May his soul rest in eternal peace.”