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No One is Above the Law Farewell speech delivered by Mr. Justice Barnabas Albert Samatta, Chief Justice of Tanzania, on the occasion of his retirement, on 19th July, 2007, at the Court of Appeal grounds in Dar Es Salaam Every journey, regardless of its character, must have an end. As many of you assembled here know, I began my professional journey fortyone years ago. Today that journey will come to an end. At the outset, I wish to express my profound gratitude to his Lordship the Chairman, the Honourable the Attorney General and the Distinguished President of the Tanganyika Law Society for the very kind things they have said about me. I am humbled by those remarks. I wish to thank the Honourable Prime Minister, the Honourable Minister for Justice and Constitutional Affairs and the Honourable Deputy Minister for Justice and Constitutional Affairs for gracing this occasion. The honour you have paid me by your presence here this morning will be a source of great strength for me as I start my retirement life. During the years I worked as a State Attorney and, later, Director of Public Prosecutions, and during the thirty one years I have worked as a Judge, in Zimbabwe and here at home, judges, registrars, directors, magistrates, State Attorneys, advocates and many lay men and women, including members of the supporting staff of courts, extended to me unforgettable co-operation. If my life at the public bar and the bench has been a happy one – and it was – it is to their co-operation that I owe most of it. In the course of discharging my functions, I learnt a lot from them, and I hope they learnt something, however little, from me. To all of them I wish to say thank you. Naturally, my special thanks go to my learned brothers and sisters in the Court of Appeal and to the highly dedicated officers and members of the supporting staff of that Court, past and present, 230 RULE OF LAW VERSUS RULERS OF LAW for their unwavering support and exemplary commitment to duty. I feel I was very privileged to have worked with such a committed and distinguished team. I wish them to know that I greatly enjoyed working with them. My Lords and Ladies, the Judiciary must continue to play its role of ensuring that democracy in our country grows and our people enjoy the personal freedoms guaranteed to them by the Constitution of the country. This least harmful organ of the State must not weaken its resolve to protect the weak against the oppression or tyranny of the strong and the ruthless. Those exercising State power must never be left in doubt that transgression of the people’s basic rights will be met by the fury of the law. Judicial officers must always remember that, to use the words of the drafters of the Preamble to the Bangalore Principles of Judicial Conduct:, “the implementation of all the other rights ultimately depends upon the proper administration of justice”. Judges and magistrates in this country must continue, even at the risk of being labelled as ultra conservatives, to defend the independence of the Judiciary. As everyone trained in law knows, there can be no personal freedoms if courts are not independent. But that independence will survive only if it is used as a tool for upholding justice. If it wielded for purposes other than that it will wither and its enemies will celebrate. Corruption is one of the greatest enemies of the independence of the judiciary. Although the Transparency International recently rated our Judiciary the least corrupt in East Africa, the war against corruption in the Judiciary should continue. The road to justice is the only road a judicial officer should travel on. He or she must not even contemplate traveling on the road to political convenience or compromise of principles. My Lords and Ladies, I recognize that I need not remind you that it is of the utmost importance that the Judiciary fulfils its role of upholding Constitutionalism and the rule of law in our country. Judges should always remember, while discharging their function of interpreting the country’s Constitution, that they are the chief guardians of the supreme law and fundamental democratic values embodied in it. Those values include rule of law, equality before the law and multiparty system. Unfortunately, some political leaders do not seem to recognize that, having given way to Constitutional supremacy, party or Parliamentary supremacy is a doctrine which...

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