Remembering Ben Kiwanuka

On September 20, someone called to ask me if we had arranged anything to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the abduction on September 21, 1972 and subsequent disappearance of Benedicto Kiwanuka, the first prime minister of Uganda, the former Chief Justice and the third president of the Democratic Party. 

Kiwanuka was picked from his chambers in the High Court, never to be seen again. To this day, he lies in an unmarked grave. As Chief Justice (CJ), he allowed a Habeas Corpus application by an expatriate who had been detained at Makindye military barracks in the confusion that gripped the country during the mass departure of British Asians and in the wake of the invasion from Tanzania in September, 1972. This was the last act in the uneasy relationship between the CJ and then President. 

In the run up to the 50th independence anniversary, it behoves us to memorialise him, if only for his role in the independence politics. In October, the Foundation for African Development (FAD) will hold its annual Ben Kiwanuka memorial lecture.

While secretary of the Law Society in 1992, under the society president now Justice Remmy Kasule, I started the annual Ben Kiwanuka memorial lecture. It was not my brilliant idea; I stole it from the Bank of Uganda annual Joseph Mubiru memorial lectures, which I found to be immeasurably inspiring and most edifying. 

The Law Society launched its first Ben Kiwanuka Memorial lecture with a bang in March 1992. We invited Kenyan lawyer and then upcoming politician, Paul Muite, as chief speaker. The lecture remained on the law society’s annual calendar for some time. It was later stealthily and inexplicably deleted from the annual events.

Kiwanuka was chief minister in 1961 when DP won the general elections that year and later Prime Minister and leader of the internal self-government up to independence on October 9. He had earlier taken over the leadership of the DP in 1958 at Tororo, replacing Matayo Mugwanya. DP was formed by some Ugandan nationalists on an anti-communist platform. 

As independence increasingly became unavoidable, the British did not want to hand over power to the kingdoms, the very authority they had taken it from in 1894 and with whom they had signed the protectorate agreement. Similarly, they loathed handing it to Kiwanuka whom they saw as likely to be his own man, not a black governor of the ‘’independent colony’’. This is the reason they ordered a repeat of the general elections and formed the KY/UPC alliance contrived to defeat Kiwanuka and DP. Between Kiwanuka and Milton Obote, the British preferred the later. 

Kiwanuka had more international exposure and had, by far, greater nationalist credentials, qualities that would have put him in the same category with Kwame Nkrumah and other African leaders like him. 

He worked in the High Court and saw injustice perpetrated by white judges and lawyers against Africans in the very temple of justice and later went to Lesotho for his matriculation, where he saw racism in raw form. He next went to Grays Inn to study law.

His political career was thus informed by this rich experience, the drive to redress the injustices he had seen, felt and lived. His first step when he became chief minister and later prime minister was to “africanise’’ the public service through scholarships that aimed to equip Ugandans with skills they needed to man different government departments.

This move put colonial officers ill-at-ease with him, as they saw their jobs threatened. Most of them were World War ll ex-combatants who had been rewarded with profitable jobs in the colonies.

To them, therefore, Kiwanuka was a threat who had to be stopped. In contrast, they reckoned that Obote was of a much humbler status, hopefully easy to manipulate and more likely to grovel before them even as leader of independent Uganda.

The writer is a veteran Kampala lawyer