Lands state minister Dr Sam Mayanja has faulted district and city land boards for irregularly reallocating expired leases, thereby unjustly depriving citizens of their land.

Mayanja said district and city land boards also purport to automatically re-enter running leases on public land.

This is contained in his administrative circular to the chairperson of Uganda Land Commission (ULC) and all chairpersons of district and city land boards, dated February 2, 2022.

“The ministry has noted with concern the practice by the ULC and district land boards of irregularly reallocating expired leases and/or purporting to automatically reenter running leases on public land, thereby unjustly depriving citizens of their land.

“This is to bring to your attention Article 237 (3) of the Constitution of the Republic of Uganda 1995, which recognises leasehold as a distinct land tenure, alongside customary, freehold and mailo tenure systems,” he stated.

Mayanja also wrote that the incidents of the leasehold tenure are spelt under section 3(5) of the Land Act Cap 227, which provides that leasehold is created either by contract or operation of law on specific terms and conditions, under which a lessor (landlord) grants a lessee (tenant) exclusive possession of land for, usually, a defined period, and, usually in return for a premium and ground rent.

“As such, once a lease has been granted to a person, that lease becomes the property of that person as a tenancy and subject to the rights indicated in the 1995 Constitution and the Land Act Cap 227,” he explained.

Mayanja also explained that leases granted by ULC out of Government land or leases granted by district land boards out of former public land (statutory leases by former controlling authorities abolished by the 1995 Constitution) are regarded as public leases.

“Both the ULC and district land boards are mandated to hold in trust for the people of Uganda the reversionary interest on these leases. It is, therefore, imperative that the ULC, as well as district and city land boards, follow the guidelines on the Administration of Land under the Land Act, Cap 227, especially guidelines 4.2 and 4.3,” Mayanja contended.

He said the guidelines 4.2 and 4.3 say “in exercising the powers of a lessor, the district land board (city board/Land Commission) shall not automatically re-enter a lessee’s land and that renewal and extension of leases on initial and full terms for all citizens shall be automatic”.  The guidelines further state that “in the case of non-citizens, they shall be eligible to renew”.

Issues directive

“This is, therefore, to direct that you strictly comply with the abovementioned guidelines when handling leases, especially those held by citizens,” Mayanja ordered.

The minister also ordered that these are constitutional rights of all citizens of Uganda and must be observed by ULC, district/city land boards being the statutory bodies authorised by the 1995 Constitution to grant leasehold tenancies to the citizens of Uganda.

“Any purported automatic re-entry of a lease shall not be registered (noted on the Titles Register) nor will such a re-entry be recognised by the ministry as affecting any existing rights of the owner of a lease. By copy hereof, the commissioner for land registration is hereby notified,” he warned.

The land boards have, for long, been accused of corruption.

“It is appalling to see what these land boards are doing. They just do things; they allocate government land; they do not do any accountability for dues they are collecting,” Mayanja told New Vision in an earlier interview.

He said their investigations had shown that some land boards are also culpable for giving away communal land, under the pretext that the land is reserve government land, such as a wetland, and that the communities that inhabit it are ‘squatters’.

This has resulted in the untold suffering of ordinary Ugandans through rampant evictions.

“Almost all government land is gone. When I was in Bukalasa, the district surveyor told me that there is no public land in the area any more. So, if the Government wants to do a project in Nakasongola and Bulemezi (Nakaseke and Luwero), it will have to just buy land, yet the Government had a lot of land there,” Mayanja said.

Land boards speak out

Most of the district land board bosses New Vision contacted denied the allegations levelled against them.

“We are public land trustees. The reason it is called public land and why we give leases with conditions is because there is something called a covenant, which is a contract. It says ‘we are giving you this land on condition that you develop it’. Now, we first give a developmental lease of five years and the purpose of that is to ensure that you do not put the land to waste or hoard it,” the chairperson of Kampala district land board, David Balondemu, said.

Balondemu said once one does some developments on the land and there is work in progress, they extend the lease.

“Now, for instances where someone gets a developmental lease of five years and keeps renewing it every other five years, honestly, city land is not for keeping, it is for developments. In such instances, we have no choice but to offer land to other people who have applied for it,” he added.

Balondemu, however, hastened to add that they always put a human face on the instances where someone has developed the land and they are unable to renew the leases by giving them a fair hearing.

Peter Ssenkungu, a member of the Masaka district land board, denied the allegations of corruption levelled against the boards.

“Anybody acquainted with the mandate of what we do knows that we do not give out land because that is the mandate of the lands office. They are the ones who identify land and make land titles,” he argued.

Ssenkungu claimed that the Government only provides for the existence of land boards without giving facilitation.

“How can you expect them to be effective in carrying out their mandate? Even things like paper are not provided. Some of us do not have office space. That is the problem,” he added.