Kavuma’s professional career began in 1975 as a state attorney in the Attorney General’s chambers (Solicitor general’s department), from where he was seconded to head the legal department of National Insurance Corporation (NIC), rising into the position of corporation secretary.
In 1981, Kavuma was on the move; he left public service and went into private practice under the firm Kavuma & Company Advocates. It later metamorphosed into Kavuma, Katureebe & Company Advocates, a law firm he formed with current chief justice Bart Katureebe.
JOINING POLITICS
Kavuma wasn’t your ordinary judge and had political ambitions early on in his career. He first served in the Resistance Councils (RCs) of Mpigi between 1986 and 1988. Kavuma’s links with NRM came to the fore when President Museveni appointed him deputy minister of Finance in charge of Custodian Board in 1988.
He then had a stint as a deputy director, legal affairs, at the NRM secretariat, before getting elected to represent Kyadondo South in the Constituent Assembly in 1994.
Museveni’s generosity towards Kavuma wasn’t about to end and he subsequently appointed him as minister of state for Justice and Constitutional Affairs and later selected him as the junior minister of Defence in 1998, an appointment that came at the height of Uganda’s military involvement in DR Congo.
It is during this time that Kavuma got embroiled in a national controversy when he insisted, while appearing on Light House Television, that Col Jet Mwebaze and his colleagues were alive after their helicopter crashed in the Rwenzori mountains yet reports and evidence suggested otherwise.
Later, the government confirmed Mwebaze’s death, leaving Kavuma as the scapegoat. Looking back, Nicholas Opiyo, a human rights lawyer, says the Mwebaze incident was enough to discredit him from becoming a judge.
“He wouldn’t have qualified [to be a judge] if background checks were done.”
Nevertheless, President Museveni appointed Kavuma, a self-professed NRM diehard, a judge at the Constitutional court in 2004. From then on, Kavuma’s decisions were going to attract public scrutiny. So, his appointment laid out the trajectory he was going to take in his judgments for years he would spend in the judiciary.
‘PRESIDENT CANNOT BE CHALLENGED’
The first test came when Gen Henry Tumukunde, then at the rank of brigadier, fell out with government. He petitioned the Constitutional court challenging President Museveni’s order, as the commander in chief, to force him to resign from parliament where he was representing the army.
On March 7, 2005, Kavuma and three other judges dismissed the petition but one judge dissented. Of the four judges who dismissed Tumukunde’s petition, Kavuma’s judgment shocked the legal fraternity when he reasoned that ‘decisions of the president cannot be challenged.’
Later, following an appeal by Tumukunde, the Supreme court, led by Justice George Wilson Kanyeihamba, quashed the judgment by Kavuma and his colleagues, saying it was unconstitutional for Museveni and the army leadership to force the former spy chief and bush war veteran into resigning from parliament.
BLACK MAMBA
Kavuma’s appointment coincided with the era in which Museveni’s rivalry with Dr Kizza Besigye was becoming more uncouth and, at times, bloody.
With the 2006 presidential elections ripening, Besigye expressed ambitions of standing against President Museveni, for a second time forcing the state to resort to dark arts.
On November 15, 2005, Besigye was arrested and consequently charged with treason, an offence that attracts a death sentence, and rape, an offence he had allegedly committed as far back as 1997.
As the population was coming to terms with the arrests which were construed as an attempt by Museveni to derail Besigye’s campaign machine, the unthinkable happened.
On November 16, 2005, the Anti-Terrorism Task Force Urban hit squad, commonly known as Black Mamba, stormed the High court in Kampala oozing with artillery and henceforth rearrested Besigye and 22 other suspects, who had been granted bail.
The following day Besigye and his co-accused were produced before the General Court Martial (GCM) and charged with offences such as terrorism and illegally being in possession of firearms. All these charges would later crumble. The GCM was presided over by General Elly Tumwine.
The arrests and High court siege drew condemnation, with several leading lawyers and judges terming it as an affront on the independence of the judiciary.
Justice Edmund Sempa Lugayizi, who was handling the case, couldn’t take it anymore. He stepped down while Justice James Ogoola, the then principal judge, described the raid as the ‘rape of the temple of justice’.
With the battle lines drawn, the Uganda Law Society (ULS), mobilized its topnotch lawyers who included. Godfrey Lule, Peter Mulira, David Mpanga, who was and still is Besigye’s lawyer, and Medard Lubega Sseggona, who is now Busiro East legislator. They dashed to the Constitutional court, where Kavuma was waiting, challenging the actions of the state as illegal.
Since it was a constitutional petition, a panel of five justices was assembled led by then deputy chief justice Leticia Mukasa-Kikonyongo and comprising, Galdino Okello, George Engwau, Constance Byamugisha and Kavuma, himself.
The petition by ULS raised several issues that would go ahead to impact on Uganda’s jurisprudence for the years to come. What, nevertheless, was key here among all the issues raised by the law society was the independence and impartiality of the judiciary which was compromised when the Black Mamba attacked the High court.
Four Justices: Kikonyongo, Okello, Engwau and Byamugisha ruled that the attack was unconstitutional since: ‘It not only threatened the independence of the judiciary and impartiality of courts at the time but continued as a looming danger.’
On the contrary, Justice Kavuma dissented, asserting that it was fine for the military to attack the High court.
He stated: “the deployment of a unit of the UPDF at the said court and the acts undertaken thereunder were first and foremost for security reasons based on intelligence information available to those responsible for the security of this country and secondly for ensuring that the accused did not disappear from the course of justice.”
He further rubbished submissions by ULS lawyers which were to the effect that intervention of the military at the High court was neither necessary nor requested for by judicial authorities. He also saw no merit in ULS’s arguments that the High court should have been alerted about the operation beforehand.
“It is not always necessary or practicable to do so,” Kavuma started.
“This being a security matter, the dictates of the nature of the intelligence information available to the executive and the nature of the operation called for in the circumstances must have, understandably, rendered it impracticable for such advance information to be divulged to the authorities.”
“I take judicial notice of the fact that many times intelligence information regarding security operations and the decision to conduct them and indeed the reasons for such operations are matters treated with extreme confidentiality and secrecy in the interest of national defence and security.”
In his judgment, Kavuma did not shy away from pointing out how much power, in his view, the Constitution gives to the president.
“The decision to deploy the UPDF at the High court that day and the acts that accompanied it, are certainly a matter that lies within the province of the executive authority of this country which Article 99 of the Constitution vests in the president,” Kavuma ruled.
