Dr Busingye Kabumba scored aggregate four in PLE in 1993. At O-levels he was the 15th best student in the country and the best at Namilyango College.
At A-levels, Kabumba was the best in Uganda scoring Quadruple A in History, Economics, Literature and Divinity (HEL/D).
At Makerere University, he one of the two students who got a first class in Law.
One can say that from a young age, Kabumba was infected with “high achieviasis”, a condition that develops from living in close proximity with “high achievers.” His father, the late Dr Iujka Kabumba was managing director of National Insurance Corporation and later, board chairman of NSSF.
His older brother, Kabumba Kwesiga, was the 14th best O-Level student in Uganda in 1994.
As a senior lecturer at the School of Law, Makerere University, Dr Kabumba is famous for his meticulousness and his dogged dedication to scholarship.
He can be friendly and serious at once.
He can also be stubborn about his ideals.
“Once he believes in a certain ideal or perspective and he’s sure he has his facts, you can’t shake him from his position,” says a former law student who still engages Kabumba in debates.
For instance, take his view on divorce in marriage. Kabumba believes that there should not be grounds for divorce in marriage.
He has even argued in an academic paper that a partner in a marriage relationship should be free to “love and un-love” without any baggage.
“Love, marriage, family, intimacy are things far too important to be subjected to pretence or compulsion. The law should allow human beings to live, and let live – to love, and to un-love. Simply said, the law should let human beings be human,” he wrote in his paper titled: The right to ‘unlove’: The constitutional case for no-fault divorce in Uganda.
The paper appeared in the Africa Human Rights Law Journal in 2021.
Kabumba has little or no time for leisure activities.
If he is not in class teaching, you are most likely going to find him in the library researching for a paper he could be writing for an academic journal or preparing for a lecture.
He is also agnostic and does not worship any “foreign” religion. We have been told that this, for some time, created tension in his marriage to Roseline Nsenge, the chief magistrate at Kira Court.
The disagreement was whether or not to give their children Christian names. In the end, they found a middle ground.
Yet Kabumba is arguably most passionate about constitutionalism, a subject that can consume him for hours. He is regarded as one of the best constitutional scholars of his generation.
He writes a weekly column in The Observer on various issues in the constitutional arena, in which he gives his interpretation and opinion on key court rulings and decisions of the legislature.
Little wonder he has rubbed some people the wrong way following an examination question he set for his students on some of the hypothetical decisions made by Speaker Anita Among.
Now Prof Barnabas Nawangwe, clearly under some external pressure, wants the principal of the school of Law to investigate Kabumba and explain how such a question could be entertained. Sources say Kabumba could be suspended or given a simple reprimand.
In reply to Nawangwe, Kabumba has already posted on X that academic freedom is protected by the Constitution.
In an interview with Daily Monitor in 2010, Kabumba said his plan in the long term is to be “a leader of thought” for Ugandan society.
“We need some people who can step back and do some thinking on behalf of society because many people are too busy either with politics or making money to think about where our society is going. I am trying to contribute to public discourse,” he said.
In a politically fractious society like Uganda, the journey to achieving such a plan was bound to be riddled with challenges. Not that this bothers Kabumba.
