Critics on land allocation are not well informed!
PRESIDENT Yoweri Museveni’s direct involvement in identifying, accessing, changing and directing land use from redundancy to mega strategic-multibillion-shilling investments has generated heat led by Uganda’s usual superficial elite.
PRESIDENT Yoweri Museveni’s direct involvement in identifying, accessing, changing and directing land use from redundancy to mega strategic-multibillion-shilling investments has generated heat led by Uganda’s usual superficial elite.
From a historical perspective it is the norm in a sea of backwardness, which Uganda is to resist even noble causes because there is always a strong urge to preserve relics of the past.
While it is generally acceptable that Museveni’s direct involvement itself reflects a deep lack of government strategic view on land law and use policy, the responses from the critics are at best ill-informed, reactionary and motivated by ill-will.
It is true that some of the criticisms, especially from the urban poor are based on ethnic, communal and cultural nostalgia that land in Uganda should be ‘owned and used’ by black Ugandans. Yet the same black Ugandans have been in possession of this land for centuries without adding any sustainable value to it even for their own individual socio-economic benefits beyond unsustainable rudimentary survival as petty peasants!
The resistance to an otherwise noble cause of attracting foreign and domestic investments for jobs, tax revenues, and socio-economic transform should not surprise watchers of social developments the
world over. Under the guise of culture, most Baganda including the purported elite at Mengo, led resistance against the immunisation of children against the six killer diseases, which is why Buganda region has the lowest national coverage!
It should be remembered that although many Africans today profess Christianity as a higher form of religion, their forefathers resisted it even with machettes as exemplified by Kabaka Mwanga’s massacre of the early Christian pages at Namugongo, which turned them into glorified martyrs. Formal school education has been resisted to-date including the Universal Primary Education without offering an alternative but claims that children are better off chasing birds from rice fields or looking after goats! In 1990 when President Museveni proposed and began returning properties expropriated from Asians of Ugandan origin by Idi Amin, the elite, led by Eng. Daudi Magezi (RIP) kicked up dust in the NRC claiming that indigenous Ugandans were being denied economic opportunities. Yet at that time the “indigenous Ugandans†who had inherited fully stocked shops and supermarkets in the 1972 “Economic War,†were merely selling bananas, ndaggala, mmumbwa and smuggled sugar, salt and soap in shops on Kampala road!
Again when Museveni proposed in 1992/3 that the new constitution should be debated and promulgated by a new directly elected Constituent Assembly (CA) the usual pseudo political elite led by Adonia Tiberondwa (RIP), Yona Kanyomozi, Francis Butagira, Paul Ssemogerere, Damiano Lubega, and Cecilia Ogwal tried to resist it claiming Uganda could not afford the high cost. They instead argued that the hand-picked NRC, and the ‘leaders’ of the old moribund political parties should be the ones to entrust with framing a new constitution. As they say, the rest is now history because Museveni triumphed.
Today, those in defence of the former state-owned Uganda Television (UBC) who resist the re-allocation of the 16 acres for the construction of Hilton Hotel Uganda have forgotten that that same property was once a first class hospital for the colonial officers, and was only transformed into government offices after independence. The senior officials and staff at the UTV/UBC have only been bribes, and offering obsolete media services to the public, don’t need public sympathies, least defending. It is therefore normal and proper that government and private individual should alter the use of their property in accordance with changing economic circumstances.
The Wavah media empire, which owns WBS is proof that you don’t need even one acre of land to have a working TV studio, and that, should be the way to go. And apparently our elite don’t actually read because if they did, they would have known that years back the Kampala City Council (KCC) actually changed the city land use and Nakasero area is now part of the business centre. That is why even many of the former private residential buildings have either been demolished and high-rise commercial premises built, or just modified to suit business and office requirement.
As for the relocation of public primary schools Shimoni, Nakareso, and Kitante it is important to know that these are now UPE schools generally no longer serving the urban affluent class where they are located. They serve the urban poor who live in the periphery of city centre like Namuwongo, Luzira, Kireka, Kawempe, Kasubi, Makindye Ggaba, and Zanna.
Therefore the argument that the urban poor are being affected is superfluous. Government should instead relocate and build new primary schools in the peri-urban where the so-called poor live for their children to reduce the distance they presently travel.
Museveni’s critics are happy that wives of policemen occupying 70 acres of prime land at Nsambya, Naguru, and Ntinda, and defecating in shallow pit latrines that pollute Kampala’s water supply is better investment than industries!
The critics cannot see that the unhygienic roasted peanuts, bogoya, malwa, kwete, and enguuli these women sell are a health hazard, has no value addition, and contribute no revenue to the treasury!
The proposal to give part of Mabira forest to SCOUL for sugarcane should be opposed because there are other viable alternatives that neither government nor SCOUL have explored, but SCOUL only want land on the cheap, and in Museveni’s quest for investment they find a soft door. SCOUL can improve techniques, contract or lease open land from individuals, and when they fail government can buy land to give them.
But unfortunately Dr Joe Oloka Onyango, and Ken Lukyamuzi on alleged crusade to protect the environment are not known to have any private forests of their own to demonstrate their interests in environmental awareness.
I bet that in his Kiyeyi village, Nabuyoga sub-county, West Budama, Oloka Onyango has no tree to his name, and Lukyamuzi’s house is in a swamp in Natete!
Ends
From a historical perspective it is the norm in a sea of backwardness, which Uganda is to resist even noble causes because there is always a strong urge to preserve relics of the past.
While it is generally acceptable that Museveni’s direct involvement itself reflects a deep lack of government strategic view on land law and use policy, the responses from the critics are at best ill-informed, reactionary and motivated by ill-will.
It is true that some of the criticisms, especially from the urban poor are based on ethnic, communal and cultural nostalgia that land in Uganda should be ‘owned and used’ by black Ugandans. Yet the same black Ugandans have been in possession of this land for centuries without adding any sustainable value to it even for their own individual socio-economic benefits beyond unsustainable rudimentary survival as petty peasants!
The resistance to an otherwise noble cause of attracting foreign and domestic investments for jobs, tax revenues, and socio-economic transform should not surprise watchers of social developments the
world over. Under the guise of culture, most Baganda including the purported elite at Mengo, led resistance against the immunisation of children against the six killer diseases, which is why Buganda region has the lowest national coverage!
It should be remembered that although many Africans today profess Christianity as a higher form of religion, their forefathers resisted it even with machettes as exemplified by Kabaka Mwanga’s massacre of the early Christian pages at Namugongo, which turned them into glorified martyrs. Formal school education has been resisted to-date including the Universal Primary Education without offering an alternative but claims that children are better off chasing birds from rice fields or looking after goats! In 1990 when President Museveni proposed and began returning properties expropriated from Asians of Ugandan origin by Idi Amin, the elite, led by Eng. Daudi Magezi (RIP) kicked up dust in the NRC claiming that indigenous Ugandans were being denied economic opportunities. Yet at that time the “indigenous Ugandans†who had inherited fully stocked shops and supermarkets in the 1972 “Economic War,†were merely selling bananas, ndaggala, mmumbwa and smuggled sugar, salt and soap in shops on Kampala road!
Again when Museveni proposed in 1992/3 that the new constitution should be debated and promulgated by a new directly elected Constituent Assembly (CA) the usual pseudo political elite led by Adonia Tiberondwa (RIP), Yona Kanyomozi, Francis Butagira, Paul Ssemogerere, Damiano Lubega, and Cecilia Ogwal tried to resist it claiming Uganda could not afford the high cost. They instead argued that the hand-picked NRC, and the ‘leaders’ of the old moribund political parties should be the ones to entrust with framing a new constitution. As they say, the rest is now history because Museveni triumphed.
Today, those in defence of the former state-owned Uganda Television (UBC) who resist the re-allocation of the 16 acres for the construction of Hilton Hotel Uganda have forgotten that that same property was once a first class hospital for the colonial officers, and was only transformed into government offices after independence. The senior officials and staff at the UTV/UBC have only been bribes, and offering obsolete media services to the public, don’t need public sympathies, least defending. It is therefore normal and proper that government and private individual should alter the use of their property in accordance with changing economic circumstances.
The Wavah media empire, which owns WBS is proof that you don’t need even one acre of land to have a working TV studio, and that, should be the way to go. And apparently our elite don’t actually read because if they did, they would have known that years back the Kampala City Council (KCC) actually changed the city land use and Nakasero area is now part of the business centre. That is why even many of the former private residential buildings have either been demolished and high-rise commercial premises built, or just modified to suit business and office requirement.
As for the relocation of public primary schools Shimoni, Nakareso, and Kitante it is important to know that these are now UPE schools generally no longer serving the urban affluent class where they are located. They serve the urban poor who live in the periphery of city centre like Namuwongo, Luzira, Kireka, Kawempe, Kasubi, Makindye Ggaba, and Zanna.
Therefore the argument that the urban poor are being affected is superfluous. Government should instead relocate and build new primary schools in the peri-urban where the so-called poor live for their children to reduce the distance they presently travel.
Museveni’s critics are happy that wives of policemen occupying 70 acres of prime land at Nsambya, Naguru, and Ntinda, and defecating in shallow pit latrines that pollute Kampala’s water supply is better investment than industries!
The critics cannot see that the unhygienic roasted peanuts, bogoya, malwa, kwete, and enguuli these women sell are a health hazard, has no value addition, and contribute no revenue to the treasury!
The proposal to give part of Mabira forest to SCOUL for sugarcane should be opposed because there are other viable alternatives that neither government nor SCOUL have explored, but SCOUL only want land on the cheap, and in Museveni’s quest for investment they find a soft door. SCOUL can improve techniques, contract or lease open land from individuals, and when they fail government can buy land to give them.
But unfortunately Dr Joe Oloka Onyango, and Ken Lukyamuzi on alleged crusade to protect the environment are not known to have any private forests of their own to demonstrate their interests in environmental awareness.
I bet that in his Kiyeyi village, Nabuyoga sub-county, West Budama, Oloka Onyango has no tree to his name, and Lukyamuzi’s house is in a swamp in Natete!
Ends