When Kiryowa Kiwanuka met Uganda’s legal Yip Man, Isaac Ssemakadde

Gun Rights

Part One of the pulsating action-packed movie, IP Man, is about sacrifice and resistance to colonial domination.

Set at the advent of Japan’s invasion of China, one Chinese fighter, Yip Man (Donnie Yen), has to rise to the occasion and recapture the honour of Chinese identity but also fight for sovereignty, by exhibiting the resilience and stellar character of Chinese Kungfu. Something akin to what Isaac Ssemakadde is doing for the legal profession – reinvigorating their relevance to an ongoing anti-colonial struggle.

But I need to start this story from the beginning. In the movie, there is a character – a Chinese native – who travels from the north of China to a small town in the south to challenge southern Kungfu masters so as to defeat them and declare their Kungfu as weak. Some form of internal colonialism.

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This was before the Japanese invasion of China. This character Master Jin (Loui Fan) is an outright bully as he rampages through the south. He has beaten almost all midlevel Kungfu masters before he encounters Yip Man, a gentle, confident, reclusive Kungfu maestro. It is an understatement to say Yip Man takes Master Jin back to school.

Behind closed doors, Yip Man disciplines Jin like he was a school child. But Master Jin can neither admit nor deny that he has been beaten. Isn’t this the exact thing Isaac Ssemakadde is doing to our AG, DPP and some lowbrow attorneys about town?

Counsel Ssemakadde is not IP Man in terms of lifestyle and decorum: Ssemakadde is loud and deliberately indecorous – a necessary strategy of struggle of the time. But the ‘legal rebel’ is undoubtedly a legal Yip Man of our time. His resume as advocate of the High court and Supreme court speaks for himself.

Just like Donnie Yen in the movie, our Ssemakadde has cut a revolutionary posture, and exhibits readiness to take risks in pursuit of justice from invaders and bullies.

MASTER JIN AND MUIRA

Attorney General Kiryowa Kiwanuka, also endearingly called KK by friends and associates, embodies two characters in the Yip Man movie: the native bully Kungfu Master from the north, and the colonial Governor of the invading Japanese colonialists, Miura (Hiroyuki Ikeuchi).

In that long juicy piece authored in July 2021, Isaac Ssemakadde tells us that KK was and perhaps remains the “errand boy of the president and his family, and later hired gun for the ruling party,” and something he has been for the last 20 years. And in 2021, he was “recognised and rewarded with the highest political honour,” as Attorney General of Government.

As Ssemakadde noted, “Ugandan presidents have been replacement governors ever since” by the colonial office in London despite so called independence (Kalundi Serumaga’s review of William Pike’s book published recently in The Elephant, so scintillatingly makes this case), and “an Attorney General is an official appointed by such presidents and working under their authority.”

Just like that character Miura. But even before becoming AG, those close to the bowels of State House say Kiryowa Kiwanuka was a very powerful man, who, in his own words, is “too dismissive” and loves “insisting on himself.” Having been the main client for Yoweri Museveni for a long time, who has now “appointed every member of the “independent” Judicial Service Commission, and every judicial officer from registrar to the judges and justices of the superior courts,” Kiryowa Kiwanuka has been an accomplice all this time.

Ssemakadde would tell us that KK forms “a cabal of powerful and well-connected law firms and other lobbyists” which is “known to assist many hopefuls to get the call, and to obstruct “the undesirables” from meeting the head of state… “and packing the superior courts with “cadre judges”, and the lower courts with “DNRA” – i.e. the Descendants of NRA fighters and comrades.”

The legal rebel was ballistic. The story goes that if a new businessman, diplomat, gold investor or coffee dealer or other with big money jetted into town, KK and co. had a list of friendly law firms and private advocates which the newcomer will have to choose from for legal representation.

To this end, unfriendly, supposedly opposition-leaning firms would never near these juicy positions. This made comrade KK super powerful, “too dismissive” and “insisting on himself.” His own words.

TOO MANY BLOWS

One of the distinguishing features of Yip Man’s fighting style, Tai Chi, is that it unleashes far too many blows in a single move. Like a submachine gun. The opponent doesn’t know where the blows are coming from, and cannot even count them.

See, as soon as KK became AG, our Yip Man – in his role as public intellectual – wrote a long explosive piece, “AG Kiryowa Kiwanuka is wrong man for the wrong job,” castigating both the existence of the position of the Attorney General – as a useless and oppressive colonial relic – but also the person of Kiryowa Kiwanuka himself.

The piece is worth re-reading because in there, the legal rebel touches the major afflictions of Uganda’s justice system: cadre judges, unfriendly firms, and the problem with a colonial judicial system. As the gods would have it, three years later, building on his knowledge of the law and public identity as a brave and ruthless attorney, Ssemakadde emerges as president of the Uganda Law Society (ULS).

In the spirit of the 2021 memo, the first karate kick was kicking Kiryowa Kiwanuka out of the governing body of the ULS. If the memo was read well, the next kick will have Kiryowa Kiwanuka appearing in court not to defend the AG’s seat in the ULS council, but to defend the relevance of the AG’s office itself in Uganda’s judicial structure. Too many blows.

The interesting part in all this is that KK must be struggling with how to respond: of course; he has to. But considering his “too dismissive” persona, he now finds himself in a dilemma. Should I face off with a supposedly small man, and risk being defeated publicly, or should I
pull some dirty games from behind the curtains?

More interesting for movie watchers now is that the hunter has become the hunted, and too many blows are coming at rapid speed. KK must be working the phones, making promises and scratching his head.

But as ever, the cause is far higher than Yip Man’s personal stake, and Yip Man is even ready to take the bullet for China’s independence and identity than be humiliated. Even in death, our Yip Man is victorious. Good luck, comrade KK, but watch your back. Tai chi is a very sophisticated fighting style.

yusufkajura@gmail.com

The author is a political theorist based at Makerere University

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