Justice Kanyeihamba Dead

Today, we mourn the passing of Justice (Rtd) Prof George Kanyeihamba; a man fashioned not for convenience, but for conviction. I knew him not only as a towering jurist, but as a historian of his own story, a teacher of reluctant students, and a man whose stubbornness was rivalled only by his sense of justice. I visited him in hospital in his final days. Part of his leg had been amputated. He was on dialysis, his body failing after a long and noble fight. He lay there unconscious, still and silent; yet even in that stillness, he bore the unmistakable air of a man who had wrestled greatly with life and never surrendered easily. Frail in body, yes, but the memory of his strength filled the room. The old legal giant, now at the edge of the final verdict, remained defiant in spirit. Even in silence, he seemed to resist the fading light with the same resolve he once brought to courtrooms and causes. We stood by his bedside. We said our prayer. I leaned in, whispered greetings from my family, and offered my final farewell. He always told a good joke. He once narrated how he found his guard asleep on duty, took away the gun, and waited. In the morning, the guard nervously reported that robbers had come and taken the gun, but he had fought them off bravely. Prof listened carefully, nodded, went back inside, brought out the gun, handed it to the guard, and said “I am the robbers.” Another time, in open court, this time as counsel, he rose and told a joke so humorous and so crude that it jolted even the dozing backbench. When he was done, he sat down and, without apology, declared: “I was merely trying to keep the court awake.” He warned a senior colleague once, only half in jest: “If you dare introduce me as your teacher, I will spill the real beans that I was a young lecturer, and you were a mature entrant.” Such was the man, humourous, never unserious, always fair and impossibly firm. He joked, he judged, he taught; and he never yielded where truth was at stake. A former attorney general. A former judge of the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights. A former justice of our Supreme court. A towering legal giant. Few remain of that generation. Let history never forget the energy, the life, and the courage that the Benjamin Odoki-led Supreme court, on which he sat, breathed into our jurisprudence. Case after case, that court carried the burden and the promise of a new Constitution, testing its limits, defining its soul, and giving shape to a fledgling republic’s legal identity. As he crosses the rubicon, may he meet and greet Justices Joseph Mulenga, John Wilson Tsekooko, Arthur Oder, and Alfred Karokora; jurists from different walks who brought vitality and honour to an apex court finding its feet in a new constitutional dispensation. To those of us to whom the law is both our trade and our calling, Scripture offers not just comfort, but command: “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight and the sin that so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.” Hebrews 12:1 Let us honour these servants of God, who with their pens tried to bring much clarity to our law. Let us recall their work. They are for sure – our great cloud of witnesses. May his soul rest in eternal peace.