OPINION

This opinion was first published in the New Vision on May 3, 2023

By Ofwono Opondo

Bart Magunda Katureebe, Chief Justice emeritus, has written an autobiography titled Turbulent Times and Service in the Three Branches of Government.

His story, written with simplicity and frankness, isn’t quite different from that of many Ugandans, as a village boy whose assigned domestic chore was herding the family goats, then to Makerere University, a long-serving cabinet minister and ending up as Chief Justice to lead one of the branches of the State — the Judiciary.

So, last week on my way home, my phone rang. It was Bart Ketureebe calling to request me to ‘kindly’ attend the launch of his book tomorrow at Katonga Hall, Serena Kampala Hotel to which I gladly accepted because I am sure the whole town will be there.

A graduate of law from Makerere University, Katureebe joined the Bar in 1976 as a state attorney, where he served for eight years before going into private practice.

Huge figure in stature, Katureebe is an easy-going person, who even as an Attorney General, you would find him at Kampala Meat Packers in Industrial Area personally buying cow hooves aka Molokonyi to take home.

When his wife, Bernadette still run Total fuel station in Kireka township way back between 2000 and 2006, Katureebe was a regular there and I used to enjoy my evening stopovers at this place.

In 1989, when the interim Parliament between 1986 and 1996, the National Resistance Council (NRC) was expanded, Katureebe was elected to represent Bunyaruguru county, then in Bushenyi, but today Rubirizi district.

Shortly after, he was appointed Deputy Minister for Regional Co-operation, Deputy Minister for Industry and Technology and later Deputy Minister for Health. In 1996, after the promulgation of the 1995 Constitution, and the first direct general election under universal adult suffrage, Katureebe was appointed Attorney General and Minister of Justice. Katureebe was elected in 1994 as the Constituent Assembly (CA) delegate for Bunyaruguru and was among the most eloquent, but calm debaters.

On June 19, 2020 he retired as Chief Justice, a day before clocking 70 years, the mandatory retirement age for justices of the Supreme Court, in what many thought was very unusual behaviour considering that his two predecessors had tried to somersault.

A Deputy Chief Justice even fought a prolonged battle as he fidgeted to alter his date of birth, but lost nevertheless.

Earlier in 2001, Katureebe was among senior politicians and ministers who opted not to seek re-election to Parliament preferring to return to private legal practice with Kampala Associated Advocates, one of the city’s high-profile firms where he was a founding partner with Oscar Kambona and former Nyabushozi MP Elly Karuhanga.

After a short stint there, he was in 2005 appointed Supreme Court judge, from where he was later elevated to Chief Justice in March 2015.

As the first active politician to be appointed Chief Justice, Katureebe has had an exceptionally distinguished career in public service beyond the expectations of many worth emulating.

I recall, when as Chief Justice, he once called me unamused that the 10th Parliament had passed a law, The Rebecca Kadaga Institute of Legislative Studies, which he found rather overboard.

He then asked me if I could write a column repudiating that law, and if there was a way to get the President to decline his assent.

And well as the adage goes, that is now history because one of the first acts of courage and reasonableness of the11th Parliament was to revoke that law and cause its amendment removing Kadaga’s name from the institute.

Katureebe has had the habit of calling me each time I have written in my column what didn’t amuse him, especially when still Chief Justice because in his officialdom view, he took criticism of the judiciary often too personally for which we had run-ins, but he found not easy to bend.

Reading Katureebe’s autobiography, one sees a fruitful journey, almost like that of now very senior citizen, Dr Martin Jerome Okec Aliker 94, The Bell Is Ringing — Martin Aliker’s Story, also a goat-tending boy from Aworanga village in Koch Goma on the outskirts of Gulu town who travelled to America to study dentistry and has had a bountiful life.

In his memoir, Justice Bart Magunda Katureebe says he has a happy ending and returns home to tend goats, cattle, a tourism lodge and private legal practice.

The writer is the executive director of Uganda Media Centre