By Mulengera ReportersIn her Standards, Utilities & Wildlife Court at Makindye, Chief Magistrate Gladys Kamasanyu deals with all sorts of suspects.From those charged with petty offences such as illegal power connection, cultivating or grazing in a wetland to those facing more serious offences such as vandalizing telecom infrastructure and operating radio stations without license, they all end up in her court. Even those found in possession of prohibited items such as ivory are equally brought before her.At times, the situation gets tensed up with prosecution witnesses and accused persons going native, crudely shouting at each other. Sometimes, lawyers turn on each other and the argument gets heated up.On other occasions, it’s the elderly mothers or wives of unrepresented accused persons wailing to demonstrate extreme vulnerability upon their loved ones getting their bail grants cancelled, or getting themselves remanded or even sentenced to long jail terms.Such vulnerable persons break down and helplessly wail in Court-and Her Worship Kamasanyu has to stomach and sit through all this as it happens right there in her face. She takes it in all with grace and a smile while giving words of good counsel.She rebukes those trying to bully others while at the same time shielding victims of such aggression. She encourages those coming to her Court to give evidence while making their case to fearlessly tell Court all they saw and know. She is motherly to accused persons who stand before her to defend themselves, many of them young men barely in their 30s.Many of them are unrepresented and have to cross examine prosecution witnesses. Kamasanyu is always in Court on time and she is also patient; often sitting in past 7pm. She never breaks off to go for lunch and always casually tells lawyers to emulate her stamina and stay put (as opposed to seeking unwarranted adjournments) “because I’m a judicial officer who is well paid.”Her smile always refreshes people in Court and inspires hope in the hearts of those she has just sentenced to jail terms and their emotionally broken relatives too.Sometimes cross examination can become belligerent and very stressful but Kamasanyu keeps lightening up the Court room with jokes and freely speaks a number of languages.She deliberately reaches out to old women whose children or relatives happen to be the accused persons in the dock. She also goes out of her way to make sure that the accused persons get to understand the charges and what is generally at stake.Sometimes, the accused persons take to the dock to declare they would like to plead guilty and have a plea-bargaining deal with the state prosecutor but Kamasanyu is always eager to make sure they haven’t been coerced or manipulated but are being guided by the appropriate understanding of the legal system and what generally is at stake.Clearly in a bid to make sure that everyone feels at home inside her Court, Kamasanyu encourages accused persons, witnesses or even their relatives to address Court in the language they understand and are comfortable with.As she walks into court, she won’t hesitate stopping abit to look at the suspects and randomly call out names of those she knows to ask them “how is Luzira?” She knows many such suspects by name and won’t hesitate greeting any of them in their native language while wearing a wide smile as she takes her seat.If they (lawyers, prosecutors, suspects etc) look exhausted, Kamasanyu will loudly describe them as such and even crack a joke about it. She is sarcastic and cracks jokes virtually with everyone inside her Court room.This puts everyone at ease. She won’t hesitate casually calling out defense or prosecution counsel if she realizes they didn’t prepare well enough for the case.If one turns out to be floppy Counsel clearly messing up a client’s case, Kamasanyu will still call them out but in a jocular friendly way. She also likes innuendo and will virtually joke about everything.Kamasanyu is also workaholic and clearly public-spirited and won’t hesitate declaring an accused person free and order for their release once she realizes that prosecution lawyers aren’t taking their work seriously.She won’t hesitate sitting up to 9pm and always gives priority to bail applications especially on Mondays because she is cautious to ensure that those who always get arrested during the weekend don’t end up rotting in prison and have their personal liberties constrained without sufficient cause.Her jokes don’t know boundaries and she will crack a joke targeted at anyone inside her Court room.Recently, she released an elderly man on bail but she casually called on him to reflect on his age and stop committing offences against wildlife.He was being prosecuted for ivory-related crimes and he had been on remand. “Please go and live in peace and kindly don’t commit those sorts of crimes again. At 55, what exactly do you want with our elephants? Go and live in peace because I don’t expect you in this court again,” Kamasanyu declared as the freshly-released/bailed suspect bowed and prepared to walk out with his relatives. This caused laughter inside the tightly packed Court room.On another occasion, she rebuked a defense lawyer who was pressurizing her to acquit an accused person, a company whose industrial and manufacturing activities had encroached on a wetland in Nama Mukono.She jokingly told Counsel to balance between his desire to make money and the indiscriminate consequences, like flooding in Kampala, which result from environmental degradation. She casually asked him where he will enjoy his money from as Counsel if the entire Kampala gets submerged into floods.On another occasion, Kamasanyu encouraged the unrepresented accused person to hug a prosecution witness with whom he had just quarreled while cross examining him.The bulky guy (accused person) was so belligerent and said no, prompting a widely-smiling Kamasanyu to suggest that he (complainant/prosecution witness) buys him lunch instead. This jocular intervention by Kamasanyu caused laughter and cracked up what had been a tensed up Court session.On another occasion, she joked to an elderly woman who was determined to continue standing surety for her polygamous husband, who ends up being re-arrested for several other offences within days of being granted bail.Kamasanyu jokingly asked the elderly woman, in her native Luganda, whether she was prepared to continue putting up with such uncertainty to the extent that she too might end up being arrested and locked up some day.On another occasion, a suspect daringly asked a complainant (whose generator he had vandalized and stolen resulting into his imprisonment) to buy him KFC and Kamasanyu, who took note of this from some good distance away, encouraged the complainant to do as asked ”kubanga munange bino byansi byakuleka.”On another occasion, a suspect who had been on remand for several months, over telecom equipment vandalism allegations, indicated he wasn’t ready to proceed cross-examining the prosecution star witness because he hadn’t had adequate time to read through the 11-page document that prosecution had delivered to him two days earlier.The stubborn suspect, who has appeared before Kamasanyu several times to the extent that she now knows him by name and by all his aliases, asked for a several weeks’ adjournment, which the Magistrate reluctantly granted.She jokingly asked him: “Why do you want to continue being a loss to this country? Why don’t you want this to end? Don’t you know that we the Ugandans are spending on you every day you remain locked up in that place? Don’t get used to being comfortable in Luzira prison because that is all costing the country and it’s not your home,” Kamasanyu casually teased, prompting the suspect to provocatively and fearlessly shot back with: “Mum I understand all that and I want it all to end so that I go to rejoin my family because I’m their sole bread winner but I don’t want to rush because it can end into miscarriage of justice. I don’t want to rush and jeopardize my case because your honor you are always telling us in this Court that we all here to ensure that justice is done.”Kamasanyu took note of the accused person’s concerns but quickly demanded to know what he spends his time doing in Luzira if he can’t manage to peruse an 11-page document in two days.“Whatever it is that you spend your time doing in Luzira, God is seeing it all and He won’t be happy with you because you are hurting your health.” The suspect responded that he spends much of his time watching TV at Luzira and mainly Christian programs for his spiritual nourishment. He said that the American Pastor Benn Hinn ‘s most recent visit to Uganda left him spiritually a deeply changed person.Laughing out loudly and sarcastically, Kamasanyu probed him “tukakase, kyogamba Benn Hinn yaakolamu omulimu?” The young man responded with “very much so and I’m these days a very much changed man as Your Honor will soon be seeing.” Kamasanyu responded that this had better begin to manifest sooner than later.“Olabika otulimba because I don’t see you behave like someone from whom enough demons have been exorcised. You don’t seem saved as yet,” Kamasanyu joked back prompting the accused person (a young man in his mid-30s) to declare “good night mum,” as he walked away from the dock.As he walked back to rejoin fellow suspects seated in the back chairs (from where they get themselves hand cuffed), the same suspect noticed a huge man seated in the visitors’ section. He stopped over to exchange pleasantries and as they greeted, Kamasanyu asked “Eeh you know each other? How come?”The visitor explained “I have arrested him before for that other case Your Honor in which you convicted and sentenced him while still based as Buganda Road before you relocated to Makindye.”On hearing this, Kamasanyu vigorously shook her head while wearing a wide smile. She finally recalled and told the man “Ooh I remember that kumbe you are the one who gave that very important evidence?”The man explained there is nothing personal and that they always talk with the suspect whenever they stumble on each other. “He even asked me for lunch earlier today and I bought it for him.”Kamasanyu responded with “that’s good because those boys go through a lot and sometimes, society needs to understand them better.” As of that time, the prison warder, whose physical exhaustion Kamasanyu had earlier on joked about, had already marched all the suspects out to the waiting Luzira prisons bus.Kamasanyu added: “It’s good you bought him lunch bambi because hunger can kill them here. I don’t have a budget but I try to improvise to make sure they have something because they spend here a whole day and we be hungry together. I’m at least providing for them to take porridge each time they come to Court because that’s what I can afford.”It was at this point that she realized the man who had bought lunch for the suspect was among the state prosecution witnesses who had come to give evidence in a criminal matter which she never touched because of time.With all the remorse written on her face, Kamasanyu apologized to him (for twice coming to court and going back home without testifying) as she always does while assuring him that his case would be prioritized the subsequent Monday or Tuesday (whichever will have been agreed and resolved upon between herself and the prosecution lawyers whose case this particular witness had come to aid by giving evidence against an accused person).Another outstanding moment recently had Kamasanyu defend a breastfeeding accused person (a young mother) who the Court Orderly had asked to move out because her baby was crying a lot in Court and in the process disrupting Court business, as she waited for her time to give evidence.“Wama you remain there seated because there is nothing wrong you have done. These men [pointing at her own Court Orderly, a Policeman called Bumba] take us women oba for what? As if he knows what it means to be a mother and what we generally go through to raise those children,” Her Worship Gladys Kamasanyu casually declared, a joke that caused everyone in Court that afternoon to explode into endless laughter. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).