I love law, as a profession. When I was an O-level (high school) student, I decided that I would become a lawyer. No, I had no clue what it entailed. I just wanted to be like John Wycliffe Rutagyemwa Kazoora. He was the lawyer. His was a household name in my neck of the woods, dwarfing any other lawyers from Kigyezi and Ankole. He had consolidated his fame with his presence at the Uganda Constitutional Conferences in London. Though I had never cast an eye on him, my parents and their friends had praised Kazoora so often that I “knew him.”  

Then there was Godfrey Lukongwa Binaisa QC, Sir Dingle Foot QC, Abu Mayanja and Byron Georgiadis – the four men who enthralled us with their language and fame during the great Sedition Case of Uganda vs Rajat Neogy and Abubakar Kakyama Mayanja. Truth be told, whereas I read a lot of the news reports about the case, I had no clue about the legal arguments themselves. All I knew was that the defendants had annoyed President Milton Obote and that they had hired “the best lawyers in the world.” 

We had done our reading about these lawyers and had heard tales about their exploits in the courtrooms. No doubt some of their legal conquests were exaggerated by the narrators, but we were at that stage of life where skepticism was not allowed to interfere with our excitement. 

We had our experts to guide us, you understand? Senior boys at school who seemed to know these things. Some even knew the Ugandan lawyers personally, which meant we knew them too – by osmosis. We loved a good debate and frequently took sides on serious political questions and issues of the day.  

Africa’s rulers were fascinating subjects. Their words mattered. They played with the English language in a manner that left us wanting more, even when, in retrospect, some of us had no clue what they were talking about. Gamal Abdel Nasser, Haile Selassie, Julius Kambarage Nyerere, Rashid Mfaume Kawawa, Oscar Kambona, Kenneth David Kaunda, Harry Nkumbula, Simon Kapwepwe, Jomo Kenyatta, Tom Mboya, Leopold Sedar Senghor, Ahmed Sekou Toure, Ngwazi Hastings Kamuzu Banda, Apolo Milton Obote – powerful figures who dominated the news on a continent that was just emerging from colonial rule. Their words mattered. Their props – walking sticks, fly whisks, caps and such – added weight to their pronouncements. 

The political issues were many and engrossing. The Uganda Crisis since 1966; the Nigeria-Biafra Civil War; Vietnam; America’s Civil-Rights struggles; the assassinations of Tom Mboya, the Kennedys and Martin Luther King Jr.; the Arab-Israeli War; Rhodesia’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence; Tanzania’s Arusha Declaration; Uganda’s Common Man’s Charter; military coups d’état all over Africa north of the Equator,  especially the shockers in Ghana and Nigeria – weighty matters that we subjected to serious debate. 

Yes, mathematics and science subjects were very interesting. We had excellent teachers that made those subjects comprehensible, enjoyable and very attractive tools for successful careers. But they lacked the drama of the arts subjects which were a mandatory path to the three careers that I found most attractive – law, political science and journalism, in that order. 

Journalism had men like Ben Kanyangyeyo, a Munyankore news anchor on Uganda Television, whose elocution in the English language was as natural as that of one raised in London. Unlike many of today’s news anchors in Kampala, Kanyangyeyo’s interaction with the English language was not forced. Just like the great George Bisobolwa after him.

Then there was Israel Wamala, a Muganda Old Budonian at the British Broadcasting Corporation in London whose Focus on Africa, complete with a video newsreel program, became addictive. I wanted to be like these men. 

Political science was also highly attractive because of the men who dominated the decade. No, not the politicians that were running the place, but the men at Makerere University, top among them Professor Ali Al’amin Mazrui, the Head of Political Science, who dissected the consequential events of the day for us.  

But law was in its own class, brought to a high point by the drama of the Neogy-Mayanja trial that began in January 1969. The timing was perfect. I was starting Senior Three and would be taking my O-level examinations at the end of that year. So, the courtroom drama, relayed to us on the airwaves and in the newspapers, was very much alive as I tackled the question of which academic path to take – sciences or the arts. It was an obvious choice. 

To study law, one needed to pursue arts subjects at A-level. So I decided that I would study English, History and, I think, Geography as my principle subjects. As any good kid of my generation, I informed my parents during the school holidays that I wanted to be a lawyer. When my father recovered from the momentary shock of my blasphemy, he vetoed my plan with a firm and reverberant “no!” that invited no response. “I want you to be a doctor!” he declared. 

My timid attempts to explain my preference were quickly squelched with a finality that would sound strange to today’s teenage ears. My mother, a faithful and often successful defender of her children in our teenage troubles, kept her silence. She would confess years later that not only did she agree with my father, she also knew that his choice for me was not subject to discussion. The rest is history.

By God’s grace, I enjoyed my father’s choice. If I had to do it all over, I would most likely choose medicine again. Yet my love and respect for the legal profession endures. There remains a tiny itch to study law, a sweet delusion I know, but one that just doesn't go away, even with the reality of fading grey cells.

Whereas I have never had to go to court as plaintiff or defendant, I have stood before judges as a witness in trials involving professional colleagues or parents of abused and neglected children. I have also assisted lawyers in reviewing legal cases against physicians. In all these encounters, I have been impressed by lawyers’ attention to detail and their commitment to their clients’ right to justice. 

Of course, I have dealt with my own lawyers in many business and other commercial transactions. Their ability to read, interpret and caution me on the tiniest details I have missed in a document has always been fascinating. And they have saved me a lot of money and from bad deals.

In many of these interactions with lawyers, I have allowed myself to dream about what could have been, had the Major General - for that is what we called my father – endorsed my dream. Would I have practiced law? Would I have pursued journalism, just like the BBC’s Israel Wamala and CNN’s Chris Cuomo, both of them lawyers?  Would I have crossed over to active politics, like many lawyers have done, and joined the battlefield of parliament? We shall never know. 

 On this “Love Your Lawyer Day”, I salute my personal lawyers and all in the legal profession whose work keeps society orderly and minimises the chaos of our Darwinian world. Blame my father that I did not join you in your noble profession. Or praise him for sparing the African the pain of enduring, as Abu Mayanja would have said, my high falutin’ disquisitions.