IT IS SAD AMBASSADOR KAGIMU’s ROLE AT THE BURIAL OF HIS UNCLE

It is sad the role Ambassador Maurice Peter Kagimu Kiwanuka played Tuesday, May 27, 2014 at the burial of his paternal uncle, a brother to former Chief Justice Ben Kiwanuka (RIP).  Reports are that there was real deployment of forces to counter any possible exchange between the mourners following Kagimu’s decisions at the burial of his uncle.  CBS Radio reported that though the dead man was a staunch DP member, Kagimu did not want the DP colours put on the coffin of the dead man.  It is sad that a heir to Ben Kiwanuka would bring in NRM politics at the burial of his uncle to the extent of calling for deployment in a situation that would have been a peaceful send off of his uncle. 

Reflecting on the relation between Ben Kiwanuka and Hon. Paul Kawanga Ssemogerere former President General of the Democratic Party:

“On a matter of most painful memory, I recall the occasion when Chief Justice Kiwanuka called me to his Chambers in the High Court and, thinking aloud, he said, “I am no longer Chief Justice”!

Ben made those remarks while clearing his desk, getting ready to   resign or be fired, following a telephone call from President Idi Amin, the day earlier, questioning a judgment, the Chief Justice had made, granting a habeas corpus application in respect of a certain Mr. Stuart, a British expatriate at the Madhvani Sugar Works, Kakira, who had been picked up by military personnel and detained at their barracks at Makindye.

Ben then gave me a personal file he had been keeping in his Chambers, which contained all his land titles, and asked me to keep it in a safe place of my choosing without reference to him. I carried out the confidential and disturbing assignment as requested; and after the Chief Justice had been presumed dead by assassination, I gave the file to his wife, Maxensia Zalwango Kiwanuka.

Kiwanuka had the combination of a well-cultured and well-formed person, a well-educated and successful lawyer who was highly valued by his clients and respected by many people in society, and  he an informed, morally upright, and bold politician.  In Ben Kiwanuka Buganda and Uganda had secured but lost a national leader with impressive credentials, and someone with a well-informed understanding of the local and international issues of the time.