Kasango: A gifted lawyer who freed many, but died in chains

The money in question had been meant to pay pension and gratuity of more than 6,340 pensioners between 2011 and 2012.
Kasango was jointly sentenced with former Public Service top officials; Jimmy Lwamafa (nine years), Christopher Obey (14 years) and Stephen Kiwanuka Kunsa (nine years).
At the time of his demise, Kasango was serving a 16-year imprisonment. The judgment in his appeal against the sentence had surprisingly not been delivered four months after the hearing was completed.

High Court Advocate John Isabirye, in a Facebook post, noted that Kasango was mistreated by the judicial system and it is likely that he may have been alive if his request to get his passport back so that he could seek treatment for a perennial heart problem was honoured.  
“When Bob attempted to apply for his passport from the trial court to seek better medical attention, the trial court laughed him off as one who was simply intended to delay the trial!!” he wrote.

Mr Isabirye said Kasango expressed frustration over the inordinate delay in disposal of his appeal when he visited him in prison where he taught the law to inmates.
Kasango breathed his last at Luzira’s Murchison Bay Hospital at around 8pm on Saturday, according to Uganda Prisons Services spokesperson Frank Baine, as he was reportedly due for transfer to Mulago National Referral Hospital.
“Kasango had a long medical history with his heart and we have been coordinating with his family to see that he gets treatment … It has never been good news when someone passes on,” he said of Kasango whose jail term ran to 2034, but could, on remission, have been released as early as 2029.

Kasango’s run-ins with the law
Despite having been described as a brilliant advocate, his lawyering did not go without a spate of dents that left him battling lawsuits and disciplinary actions during his later part of his life.
As the shocking news of the demise of Kasango spread yesterday, the Uganda Law Society (ULS), a professional body that brings advocates together, expressed its sadness about his passing.

“It is with great sadness that we announce the death of our member Advocate Bob Kasango. Further details will be communicated in due course,” ULS president Phoena Wall Nabasa tweeted.
However, in a swift rejoinder, lawyer Isaac Ssemakadde, a member of ULS, tweeted: “Crocodile tears: It’s with great hypocrisy and thick tongue in cheek that Uganda Law Society president announces the death of a disbarred and disgraced lawyer, citizen Bob Kasango, who was shunned by many during his life’s trials and tribulations.”

In 2017, the Law Council, struck Kasango’s name off the list of practising advocates after finding him guilty of fleecing a client of billions of shillings.
This was after the client entrusted him to sell her house in the upscale Kololo neighbourhood of Kampala, but the client never got the proceeds amounting to $385,000, at the time an equivalent to Shs1.4b. However, trouble started when another person showed up, claiming to have earlier bought the same house at $80,000 (Shs300m).  

Despite Kasango allegedly selling the said house to two buyers, he never remitted money to the owner of the house.
The other run-ins that Kasango had at the same time, was when he had financial battles with Tooro Kingdom Queen Mother Best Kemigisa. Court went on to order him to compensate the Queen mother with more than Shs3b.
The Queen mother had entrusted Kasango with the duty of receiving the cash from the Lands ministry permanent secretary on her behalf following a land deal.

Earlier in June 2015, Justice John Eudes Keitirima, while appearing before Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee that was probing the Shs165b pension scam, said the signature on the document that authorised payment of more than Shs15b to Kasango’s law firm, had been forged.
Justice Keitirima , who had served as a deputy registrar in the Civil Division of the High Court for almost three years, informed Parliament that the documents that Kasango used to get money from government bore a stamp that did not belong to that court.
The pension scam cash also saw Kasango clash with fellow lawyer, John Matovu.

This was after counsel Matovu told MPs on the Accounts Committee of how he entrusted him to collect costs from government on his behalf since he was known as “Mr fixer” and a good debt collector, with wide connections in government.
Lawyer Matovu had successfully represented more than 6,000 retrenched civil servants and was entitled to costs.
Mr Matovu told MPs that his involvement in political cases involving Opposition members like Dr Kizza Besigye, could complicate his transactions with government, the reason he approached Kasango to collect the costs.

To that effect, Kasango was accused of forging court documents to access payments which would otherwise have gone to Counsel Matovu, who had been involved in the pensioners’ case since 1998.
In an emotional Parliament session, counsel Matovu went on to describe Kasango as a “devil”.           

What friends say of Kasango

Veteran journalist John Njoroge, who worked closely with Kasango at the Independent magazine, lavished him for his largesse, which saw Kasango buy Mr Njoroge his first car.
The duo first met in 1998 when Kasango was studying at St Peter’s College while Mr Njoroge was at the neighbouring Manjasi High School, both in the eastern Tororo District.
Fate would bring them together in late 2007, this time in Kampala, where the lawyer-journalist friendship blossomed. 
 “Bob bought me my first car,” said Mr Njoroge in a warm recollection yesterday. 

“I had won an award in France, but the award money was delaying to come through; so, Bob surprised me when he got his personal money which I used and bought a car. I also remember [that] he would give us lunch money at the Independent when things were tight,” he added.

Mr Charles Odoobo Bichachi, the public editor of Nation Media Group-Uganda, who previously worked with Kasango at the Independent magazine, said Kasango was both generous and a fearless defender of media freedom, especially in the early 2000s.
“[There was a] mixed public perception [about Kasango], but as a lawyer, he was a very smart advocate,” Mr Bichachi said of a publication of classified information case the State brought against them.
He had been arrested over the story alongside Independent magazine proprietor and veteran journalist Andrew Mwenda.
“I knew we were finished [and] for sure, I was scared of this case,” Mr Bichachi recalls.

Kasango promised to battle the indictment and, true to his word, the State lost interest in the case and dropped it.
“We have media defenders like [Monitor external lawyer] James Nangwala, but the other [person] at that time was Bob. He stood out to represent journalists at the time when there was an onslaught by the State … [against] independent journalism,” Mr Bichachi said.

Following news of Kasango’s demise, Mr Mwenda tweeted: “My brother and best friend, Robert Aldridge Kasango aka Q, just died in Murchison Bay Hospital inside Luzira prison this [Saturday] evening. One of the best lawyers ever, Q was also an intellectual, a great poet, journalist, sports analyst, humanist and a very kind and generous soul. RIP.”
Close associates intimate that relations between the two had notable ups and downs.

Mr Patrick Matsiko, an editor at Daily Monitor, recalls that he first knew Kasango in 1999 while covering the Julia Ssebutinde-led Commission of Inquiry into Uganda Police and the deceased was then a lawyer for former CID Director Chris Bakiza.
“I remember him as a brilliant and illustrious lawyer …of his generation.  In 2010, I had the occasion to work closely with him at The Independent Publications where he was a co-director. Kasango was a man with a big heart,” Mr Matsiko reminisces.

He said when Kasango superintended the company for six months, he understood personal problems of staff and often helped out.
“That’s when I understood him better. He had an eagle’s eye for money. It’s absurd that Kasango has died in prison. He was serving a sentence imposed on him by court, but death was not part of the sentence,” Mr Matsiko said.