VP’S TEAM SURVIVE MOB OVER EVICTION

Aug 04, 2009

TWO assistants of Vice-President Gilbert Bukenya yesterday narrowly escaped being lynched by angry residents in Wakiso district.

By Francis Kagolo

TWO assistants of Vice-President Gilbert Bukenya yesterday narrowly escaped being lynched by angry residents in Wakiso district.

Bukenya’s lawyer, Teddy Nantongo and his secretary at his Kakiri office, Joyce Turyahikayo, survived a mob in Mpeggwe village, Kakiri sub-county, who accused them of siding with a landlord involved in a land dispute.

The fracas began when the two arrived in the village for a meeting together with Kampala-based businessman Justus Thembo Katesigwa who wants to evict them from the land.

“Why are you travelling in the same car with our enemy? Isn’t this a ploy to end our struggle against illegal eviction?” some 200 angry residents shouted as they pelted the landlord and Bukenya’s aides with stones.

Armed with sticks, axes, pangas and stones, they said they had invited Bukenya, their area MP, to stop the “illegal” eviction but were surprised to see only his aides in the company of the landlord.

“Why is he dodging us?” one resident asked as others chased and stoned Katesigwa’s car. The lawyer’s pleas that Bukenya had sent them to resolve the longstanding dispute fell on deaf ears. They accused the VP’s secretary of conniving with the landlord. “You refused to take our letter to the Vice-President. You want us to be evicted. Can you leave?” Moses Matovu, a member of the village council, shouted at Turyahikayo.

By then, enraged men and women had encircled her.

Attempts by the two to meet village leaders failed as chairperson Lameck Balaba shunned them, prompting them to flee.

The dispute kicked off in 2008 when Katesigwa started to survey the land, albeit with resistance from the residents. When he returned in May, he engaged soldiers, according to the residents.

“The soldiers declared a curfew on the village. They beat and arrested whoever crossed their boundaries. One soldier lifted me from my house and caned me six times,” 24-year-old Joyce Nassali said. LCI chief Balaba said over 300 families face eviction from the 561-acre land that covers the entire village.

Residents said the land belonged to the Buganda kingdom and Katesigwa acquired it illegally.

“This was part of the land owned by the Nankere sect of the Mamba (lung fish) clan (one of the Buganda clans). We got it after the 1900 Agreement,” said Francis Kinyira Balwana, a clan leader.

He said a former clan leader, Erieza Wangubo, had kept the land title under the custody of Mpungu Advocates, a Kampala-based law firm, in the late 1990s. But the firm closed before they got back the title, he said.

However, Katesigwa, who works with Rio Oil petrol station in Wandegeya, rubbished the claims as “baseless”. He said he bought the land from the Non-Performing Assets Recovery Trust (NPART) in 2003.

The Trust was charged with recovering loans and investments made by the Uganda Commercial Bank. “I bought it at sh5m from NPART,” Katesigwa said, adding he wanted to evict the tenants and set up a goat farm.

The incident is the latest in a series of recent land wrangles as a result of the appreciation of land and the rapid population growth. Last week, an angry mob in Kayunga district set ablaze a land agent who had gone to inspect a plot together with prospective buyers. Another landlord was lynched a fortnight ago in Mubende district and his vehicle set ablaze.

The Institution of Surveyors of Uganda at the weekend revealed that close to 500 fake surveyors are operating in the country.

The institution accused quacks of being behind some of the land disputes by surveying people’s land illegally and forging titles.

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