By Mulengera Reporters
In Ugandan courts, in most cases, it’s the lawyers and their clients (the parties with matters in court) who come early and sit to wait for the judicial officers to arrive and begin hearing their matters.
But on Monday, at the Makindye-based Standards & Utilities Court, a new standard was set when the exact opposite played out. Her Worship Kamasanyu, who heads that same Court in her capacity as the Chief Magistrate, arrived a few minutes past 9am and found the Court room empty.
Only two journalists, who had just arrived, were in, including one from Mulengera News. It’s a spacious Court room with capacity to accommodate up to 70 people at once. But on this occasion, it was all empty yet Monday is always a parked day because many petty offenders, such as those breaching traffic rules or exceeding maximum alcohol content, always have their lawyers coming to apply for bail.
Kamasanyu walked in with her bodyguard and clerk-and seemed surprised to find that none of the lawyers or their clients had arrived. “What’s happening today? Are the Counsel coming or we just think of attending to something else?” she loudly asked while smiling in the direction of the two journalists who were seated working on their laptops in one extreme corner of the Court room.
Her assistants suggested that she goes back to her chambers as they try to contact prosecution and defence lawyers whose matters had been scheduled to be tried on Monday morning. “No it’s okay. Don’t bother. Let me sit here and be doing my other things [on the iPad] at they come,” said Kamasanyu as she turned on her iPad and connected her internet.
Indeed, she patiently sat there and waited for more than 40 minutes as, one by one, lawyers and some of the accused persons (who are out on bail) walked in. These were followed by the arrival of the remanded accused persons from Luzira who were matched into the Court room in a long line, as always, each one of them hand-cuffed.
“Abange muli mutya? Weekend yagenze bulungi [How are you, my people? How did the weekend go?]” a smiling Kamasanyu extended a greeting in Luganda as the Court room finally got filled up.
Journalists thought she was going rebuke the lawyers and criticize them for keeping her waiting but Kamasanyu, cheerful as always, didn’t do that. She instead started hearing the day’s scheduled cases; characteristically cracking endless jokes while teasing lawyers and other court users present.
One of the many jokes she cracked was casually asking one of the defence lawyers as to why he was continuing coming to Court with a huge A4 notebook to have hand written notes as opposed to parting with a few million shillings to buy an iPad, like hers, and avoid having to expend his energy writing everything witnesses say.
“Counsel that’s unacceptable in 2025. Imagine for us in the Judiciary long moved away from that system of writing notes. We used iPad. How about you Counsel, who is still a young man and supposed to be IT savvy?”
Aware this was the usual Kamasanyu banter, the lawyer didn’t take it personal. He simply smiled and promised to go speak to his IT person back at the office and do as advised. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
