COMPETENCE AND COMPELLABILITY OF WITNESSES INTRODUCTION Under law of evidence, competence is potrayed through the ability of a witness to give evidence at trial. This is determined by a court of law that a witness is qualified to be ‘heard’ since a competent witness must have capacity of a person to give evidence. Not all people have that capacity, such as the old people, insane, children, they may give evidence but they are subjected to exceptions. Compellability can be termed as a state of a competent witness to be forced to give evidence in court even when he is not willing to do so. Compellability means whether a particular witness can be subjected to the compulsory process of court to induce him to testify , for example can that person be summoned? If such person refuses, can he be arrested and imprisoned for contempt of court? Sometimes not all witnesses are compellable especially if they enjoy certain privileges. COMPETENCE OF WITNESSES: Rules governing competence: - The general rule is that all persons are competent unless they suffer from a certain disability. Furthermore *section.117 stipulates that: All persons shall be competent unless the court considers that they are prevented from understanding questions put to them or from giving rational answers to those questions by tender years, or extreme old age, disease of body/mind or any other cause of the same kind. Therefore disability is not inability since a lunatic is not incompetent to testify unless he is prevented by his lunacy from understanding the questions put to him or her and to also give reasonable answers rational. In the case of ** R v. HILL **However this does not insinuate that the witnesses are in postion to answer all questions put to them, for example incase the answers can incriminate him or her. Thereby he or she enjoys certain privilges thus *exceptions to the general rule under *section 117 is that “All persons shall be competent unless the court considers that they are prevented from understanding questions put to them or from giving rational answers to those questions by tender years, or extreme old age, disease of body/mind or any other cause of the same kind” thus all competent witnesses are compellable thus are compellable to give evidence Competence of special categories of witnesses : In criminal cases, an accused is competent but may not be compellable under *article 28 (3)(b)(g) of the constitution of Uganda.