Isaac Ssemakadde: Wild-haired, wild-eyed and wildly dressed rebel with a cause

If you were to set a current affairs quiz today asking which prominent Ugandan personality was born on September 15, the question would be struck down on appeal, for it has two correct answers: President of the Republic Yoweri Museveni and president of the Law Society Isaac Ssemakadde.

The latter, who is exactly half the former’s age, is a human rights lawyer born in 1984, the year George Orwell’s dystopian state completed taking full control of the citizens’ body and mind, and the last man resisting also ended up loving the mighty Big Brother.

Ssemakadde’s election to lead the Uganda Law Society (ULS) last weekend was the first to arouse so much interest in the Ugandan public outside the legal community. For here was a wild-haired, wild-eyed and wildly dressed guy seeking to lead the country’s lawyers, whom the public associates with sharp suits, Mercedes Benz with trappings that define elitism and money. Ssemakadde has no money.

The election also recorded the highest voter turnout in ULS’ history and the dreadlocked rebel won it with a dizzying landslide, nearly tripling the opponent’s ballots.

Congraturations Mr President🙏🫡 pic.twitter.com/EeyOU4Aa3D

— My Lawyer (@NoreenKatabarwa) September 29, 2024

And the first casualty of Ssemakadde’s battle is clarity in interpreting what his mission is supposed to be. Even some in his campaign team have a narrow interpretation of their man’s role and, hopefully, Ssemakadde himself doesn’t narrow down his focus from what he has been professing. 

Here, the narrow perception is perceiving the ULS boss’ job as fighting the government of the day as the January 2026 general election draws near. Yet the emerging view even among Uganda’s topmost political opposition leaders, whose legitimate job it is to seek the lawful removal of Museveni from power, now state publicly that they consider it a futile exercise.

Top opposition leaders are now openly stating that they are only taking part in electoral activities to use the campaigns to take their message freely to the people, because this is the time when they cannot be stopped by the State apparatus. They confirm that the governance issues afflicting the country are now so deep and their beneficiaries so widespread that focusing on removing one man is not the solution. 

Read: BUWEMBO: To get Mabirizis off your backs just take your duties seriously

On the other hand, they agree that there are enough gains made over the years that need to be preserved yet an abrupt change of command would upset everything, requiring many years before order is restored.

Now, the Law Society is not just another professional body to promote members’ interests. ULS is a national body created by an Act of Parliament to, among others, “protect and assist the public in Uganda in all matters touching, ancillary or incidental to the law, and to assist the government and the courts in all matters affecting legislation and the administration and practice of law in Uganda.”

When the vast majority of the country’s qualified lawyers -- half of them presumably wealthy and respected – chose to pick an openly angry rebel who says he thinks anti-clockwise as their leader, they knew what mandate they were handing him and what he can use it for.

For lawyers are best placed to fix the things that need fixing, but have defeated politicians, public administrators, religious and cultural leaders.

And the Judiciary.

Just a month prior to the ULS elections, for instance, the high court ruled that so-called service awards --hefty sums of money that a few MPs can be given through a process in which they participate, even though it is not provided for in the public finance system -- were lawfully awarded. The President himself has complained of grand corruption orchestrated by officials in the Treasury and in Parliament.

Read: Museveni’s move on ‘official’ graft leaves MPs in detention

Just days to the ULS elections, the President fired the top officials of Kampala Capital City Authority after the death of scores of people who were buried alive under a collapsing mountain of garbage generated in the city and was being dumped at a site whose decommissioning had been ordered a decade earlier. 

Investigations have “revealed” what everyone already knew: that the city’s top management team’s attention was repeatedly reminded of the documented requirement to decommission the garbage dump. 

Such developments may sound shocking, but they are the staple on the country’s media. With non-governmental sectors such as religious and cultural institutions, NGOs proper and the business community being as frequently accused as the public servants, the special mandate of the ULS has never been so relevant. 

But when Mr Ssemakadde gets down to work “protecting and assisting the public in all matters touching, ancillary or incidental to the law and assisting the government and the courts in all matters affecting legislation and the administration and practice of law in Uganda,” the reaction of the stakeholders will determine how effective and relevant he will be. 

To begin with, beneficiaries of the ills afflicting society, who are likely enjoying the status quo, are rather too many. Half of the quarter of a million paid public servants could be liking it, since they earn while delivering at the bare minimum required of them and work with private sector crooks to steal a quarter of the budget, as the Inspector General of Government repeatedly reminds us.

Besides, so many paid public servants, this over-governed country have some two million people who will be voted to fill elective positions and another two million-plus who will lose the elections to them and remain bent on unseating the winners/incumbents – all these in a population of 46 million. The lower-level elected leaders (local councillors) are almost essentially corrupt, as they illegally charge for any service they render.

And how much cooperation can Ssemakadde expect from the Judiciary, where the main arena of his battles will lie? His daily routine includes fighting judges, officers of the court, and non-legal administrators in justice institutions.

Will the public help Ssemakadde in a country where they feel like they hire and pay the persons who undertake to fight for them or will they turn against him when he most likely doesn’t deliver the desired blow against the pervasive corruption? 

Will the political opposition help Ssemakadde when he is poised to steal their popularity even as he may not, and cannot, transfer it to the ruling party?

In a nutshell, the Big Brother Ssemakadde has to fight is not numerically one individual. His Goliath has four million heads and he will need four million slings and as many stones to slay him. Unless four million people actively join him. 

By the time Ssemakadde and Museveni celebrate their next birthday around this time next year, the country will be in the deep of fierce political campaigns.

Can the nation hope that the two birthday boys will jointly discuss how to make the election season less bloody and divisive than the previous ones, a matter that lies in both their mandate? That is to assume that everyone understands the role of the Law Society?