By Caxton Peter Kasozi-Batende, caxton26@yahoo.co.uk

There will be a host of new ideas galloping around Uganda’s lawbook, seeking admission but each must first win its spurs. The judge’s function is known to preserve the innocents but we live in a time of existence of some judges in the judiciary service who are not neutral players but instead are politically parasitic. This does not mean that no judges are capable of being politically unparasitic, the concern is that they are manipulatable by the state or by the bigwigs in the state, or by the organs of the state to justify remanding incomunicado an accused or sentence an accused on what is into light confession acquired through duress or threats to confess to falsely implicate an accused to uttering in court fabricated information. But the judges are conscious of their limitations in making rulings.

Developed states introduced the ideology of protecting a witness’s identity from being disclosed to the defendant. Withholding the name and address of persons giving evidence against the defendant.  The court may also decide that the defendant cannot be present in the courtroom while the protected person is giving evidence. The prosecution alleges that people who were asked to help the police were assured by the latter that their identities will never be disclosed.

The idealogy became extended to the International Criminal Court (ICC), the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), in the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL), in South Africa and Uganda.

The challenge in the African states is that of the integrity of the criminal justice system. It is very easy for a party having a personal vendetta to allege fabrications against someone, the police use bargains or bribery for fabrications to be the information that the courts rely on. Police induce confession through torturing until the tortured agrees to cooperate with the police to say to the court what is been told to say. In other scenarios, the state’s organs exert pressure on the police or judge to rule the case in favour of the state’s prosecution team. It is not news that there is corruption among police officers and police influence over the judiciary in the administration of justice.

Witness anonymity is an incidence where the prosecution seeks the court to order that the identity of the witness is not disclosed in or in connection with the proceedings. This may involve the withholding of the witness’s name and that the witness may use a pseudonym, may be screened, may have their voice modified or may not be asked questions which might identify them.

The rationale is to protect informants from finding themselves or their families in danger if their identities were disclosed, or to protect the sources through which the information was obtained, so that not to jeopardize future operations of information gathering, the source would dry up, in the situation of undercover police persons.

The basis upon which the witness anonymity aspect was proposed is that the prosecution has a vital role to play in delivering fair trials. In developed countries where that principle is used, the police abandon continuing with the case, once the police detect that the likelihood exists for the allegations to be untrue. Unlike in African countries, the police itself foremost is behind the making up of the case against the arrested. 

I am mind-hurt seeing the things I talked about in conversation praising the NRM’s capture of power eroded away. Uganda has slipped back into what were the days during Idi Amin’s and Milton Obote’s time in power. An ordinary person does not feel secure anymore.

In summary, a defendant in a criminal trial is entitled to know the identity of witnesses who seek to incriminate him. To be able to exhume previous convictions /“bad character” of the anonymous witness as one example. Exhume previous contradictory assertions by the witness in other cases as another example. Evidence of contact between the anonymous witness and the accused is another aspect worth, not overlooking, this could bed police officers who have played a significant part in the investigation. The circumstances in which the anonymous witness came to the prosecution’s notice is another aspect worth unearthing.

In conclusion, it is of the essence for Uganda’s Constitutional court to arrive at a position Uganda should not simply copy to its legal book the principle of anonymity-witness used in the developed states. The courts in Uganda need to rule that  “an anonymity order should be regarded as the special measure of last practicable resort”. Otherwise, a list of miscarriages of justice would floodgate. The concern of credibility of the accuracy of the information needs to be at the foremind of the constitutional court and Supreme Court. The cornerstone must be giving a fair hearing as a right in the interest of justice, to the satisfaction of the court in the course of providing a defendant with a fair trial.

Uganda is having persons who get to know about what is done in countries where the doctrines of separation of powers, rule of law and democracy, are 98% clearly noticeable, in developed countries a Head of State is interrogated by the police. You cannot bribe a policeman in those countries. You can recall Ex-Prime Italy’s Prime Minister Bori Silvio Berlusconi’s bribery and sex scandal trial, France’s ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy’s corruption scandal trial,  Benjamin Netanyahu Ex- Isreal’s Prime Minister trial, Boris Johson Partygate scandal investigation and penalty fine by the police, Criminal probe against Donald Trump, Corruption probe against Ex-President Zuma and Bill Clinton about the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal.

In conclusion, in such countries, the state, a state’s organ nor the police or member of the public can easily be pinned on an innocent person. Because allegations are subject to rigorous scrutiny by the police and the Crown Prosecution Service, as well as the judges enjoy the freedom of independence. The dynamics in countries whose criminal legal process system is less influenced by corruption are different from countries where anyone can walk to the state prosecutor and the judge and impose an influence on the way a case should be handled.  

The writer is a legal practitioner in the United Kingdom.

Caxton Peter Kasozi-Batende

caxton26@yahoo.co.uk

WhatsApp: +2567550142644

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By Brian Kanaahe

On 20th September 2022, Uganda health authorities declared an outbreak of Ebola disease(EVD) – the first Ebola disease outbreak caused by the Sudan virus in Uganda since 2012, according to the World Health Organization(22nd Sep 2022). The declaration followed the confirmation of an Ebola patient from the Madudu sub-county in Mubende district, central Uganda. On 25th September 2022, the Ministry of Health announced a cumulative number of 18 confirmed and 18 probable cases had been reported from Mubende, Kyegegwa, and Kasanda districts, including 23 deaths, of which five were among confirmed cases.

The President, while addressing the country, announced a localized plan to strengthen active surveillance, amidst other restrictions that were previously deployed to curb the spread of COVID-19, including the closure of entertainment joints and places of worship.

“There will be a curfew in Mubende and Kasanda districts starting from 7 pm to 6 am. Public, and private transport and Boda Bodas are not permitted to move in Mubende and Kasanda districts to curb Ebola. People traveling across Mubende and Kassanda are permitted to move only after obtaining police clearance and not allowed to stop or pick up a person in the two districts,” he said.

It is a time like this that we must reflect on our level of preparedness in an all-compass public health investment to anticipate, prepare, and efficiently respond to such pandemics at the Individual, Community and National levels.

We know what to do as a country. Uganda has invaluable hands-on experience handling such pandemics and has offered technical support to other nations who have in the past suffered from such public health concerns. The true tongue-in-cheek question is how do we sustain such a public health system in a resource-constraint environment are in or better yet, we’ve been conditioned to believe we’re in to prepare for the inevitable – the next pandemic?

Partnerships are the low-hanging fruits. It looks obvious but the challenge is whether we are deliberate to make this work sustainably at the local level. How many communities have multi-hazard community action plans? How many districts have multi-hazard contingency plans? To what extent are they funded? How much of that funding comes from the local community public-private partnership innovations? In the case of EBV, Ministers of Health and government representatives from nine African countries recently met at a High-Level Emergency Ministerial meeting on Cross Border Collaboration for Preparedness and Response to Ebola Disease Outbreaks in Kampala, hosted by the World Health Organization. Well-structured public-private partnerships designed with communities at the center, harnessing the power of young people, striking the balance between soft support (training, mentorships, coaching, continuous medical education) and hardware support (Logistics Personal protective equipment)encourage the heightening of health surveillance system and ease the flow of information and coordination of a concerted effort.

As a Pracademic, I am happy to see Academic institutions starting to move in sync with national health issues. We are now living in an era where research is directly tied to pertinent healthcare issues being faced in our communities. This, however, comes with a sustained level of investment. It is a fact that a lot of the information utilized during the COVID-19 pandemic was adopted from the knowledge gained through the investment in HIV, Tuberculosis and Malaria research over the past 20 years. We, therefore, need to see more of this as we learn to anticipate and prepare for effective responses to pandemics.

Finally, information is a major piece of the puzzle. As we prepare for another pandemic, we need to ensure that all information disseminated to diverse groups is consistent, clear, straightforward, and where possible, in as many local dialects as possible. Platforms such as radio, which has the highest consumption statistics in Uganda, and social media are invaluable mediums in ensuring the proper information reaches its targeted consumers.

The writer is a doctor (public health in Disaster nexus enthusiast) and is the Director of Disaster Risk Management at the Uganda Red Cross Society.

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