Leave land conflicts to the Police, courts - Mengo

Aug 28, 2009

The Kabaka recently appealed to the Lukiiko in Mengo to avoid bloodshed over land wrangles between landlords and tenants.

The Kabaka recently appealed to the Lukiiko in Mengo to avoid bloodshed over land wrangles between landlords and tenants.

How are you going to do this?
As a kingdom, we are going to encourage dialogue between landlords and tenants.

Since the 1900 agreement, we have had landlords and tenants. Before the 1900 agreement, the Kabaka used to send officials to superintend over land in the kingdom and all the people there used to regard this official as the one entrusted by the Kabaka to watch over this land.

In Buganda, occupants of land have always known the existence of a higher authority from time immemorial.

When the registration of land started in 1900, it simply formalised that relationship and made legal, and that is why we never witnessed such big wrangles over land in Buganda.

So, we are going to encourage dialogue. The tenants should sit down with landlords and agree on how either side should make use of the land.

Then, what do you think is the cause of the wrangles now?

It is politics. You see, we are living in times when some politicians must win the favour of the peasants willy-nilly. They will do anything to endear themselves to the peasants.

They will tell these peasants that their problems are the landlords so that the majority of the tenants who do not have land support them in their causes.

But we must also realise that pressure on land is growing with the growth of population and the different economic activities that require big chunks of land like commercial farming and animal husbandry.

This creates pressure on land. Investors who want to engage in commercial farming want such big chunks of land and people who can sell them that land.

In the process, it may be inevitable to evacuate some tenants. But that should not be a problem because this is not the first time this country has had commercial farming.

Kakira and Lugazi sugar works’ plantations are located on very expansive pieces of land where negotiations between the owners and the developers was done.

Politics has been around since the olden days. How come it has culminated into wrangles at this point in time?

We come from a background of a “revolution” and you had the President (Yoweri Museveni) talking about ‘my peasants’.

I think these are just political statements intended to endear himself to the masses. When you are under a regime which comes from a background of war, there is a tendency to try and please the masses even under illegitimate circumstances like the current land issues.

How will you protect tenants from landlords or landlords from tenants?
The strongest weapon is the law.

We are going to teach the masses, at least in Buganda, that the law is their protector. That law enforcement agencies are their weapon; this includes the Police and the judiciary.

We know that there are weakness within the judiciary and the Police Force.

We are even aware of the shortcomings in the law here and there, but that is all there is. It is better to deal with weak laws than to deal with no law at all! It is better to deal with a judiciary with all its weakness than to have no judiciary at all.

In short, whoever feels threatened by the actions of the landlord should run to the courts of law, and whichever landlord feels his rights have been trampled upon by tenants or by any body else, he should also run to the Police and the courts of law.

In spite of the weaknesses, that is the only option we have because in a civilised society, no one takes the law in his hands.

That is why it is extremely unfortunate when the President urges tenants to resist evictions because that is a negation of the rule of law. Without the rule of law, you will have anarchy, violence and death.

How far has Mengo gone with its discussion with the Central Government on land issues?

From the time the country submitted its views to the Odoki commission in 1995, we have advised the President and his Government that Local Governments should be empowered in meaningful terms to handle land related issues because solutions can be found by the local community.

But under the 1995 Constitution, ambiguous definitions of tenants were introduced and this was given effect by the 1998 Land Act.

What do you mean by ambiguous definitions of tenants?

You see, there has been this attempt to create dual proprietorship over land, where a tenant regards him/herself to be at par with the landlord over the same piece of land.

Now, this must fuel conflict.

What is important is to define the relationship between a landlord and a tenant, but that definition must be fair to both parties.

The Busulu and Envujjo law that was passed during the colonial time did this very well and we urged the Government to reintroduce the Busulu and Envujjo law even at the time of the Odoki Commission and during the 1998 Land Act debate.

But all those proposals were rejected, and it is not surprising that violence has occurred.

Do you think if your proposals had been adopted, violence would have been averted?

Definitely. Because the Busulu and Envujjo law protected the tenants. You could not evict a tenant under the Busulu and Envujjo law of 1928. But that same law recognised the proprietary rights of the landlord.

A tenant who would use one’s land to generate wealth was obliged to pass on part of that wealth to the landlord and at the end of the day both parties were happy.

And where there was need for evicting a tenant, you had to negotiate with a tenant well knowing that he or she had lesser rights than you as a landlord.

And you would not evict them if they went to court until they exhausted the court structure.

But Government argued that the law was too old and the Busulu and Envujjo were too small to befit today’s landlord.
No. It is the Land Act of 1998 that put a ceiling of money payable to a landlord at sh1,000. No matter whether you use my land and you make sh10m a year, you give me sh1,000. No matter whether that plot of land is in Rubaga or Nakasongola, as if both pieces of land carry the same value. It was still sh1,000.

There was a fixed fee under the (1928 law) that a tenant would pay to the landlord and then there was Envujjo, which was based on the product or the value that the tenant realises from the land.

If someone was occupying a kibanja (plot) of 10 acres and he harvested 100 bags of coffee, he would pay something bigger than someone who harvests 10 bags of coffee.

What had you proposed as the new rate of Busulu and Envujjo?

You cannot put a proposal. That is why you have to leave it to the Local Government, because different areas produce different products and different pieces of land generate different amounts of money.

So, it is fatal for you to suggest that someone in Nakasongola pays sh1,000 and someone in Masaka also pays sh1,000 because these areas differ and do not generate the same amounts of revenue.

In summary, then, why is Mengo opposed to the Land Amendment Bill?
The Land Bill will create anarchy in this country.

The bill tried to do away with the court. The first version of the Bill was giving the minister of lands judicial powers, but the minister is a member of the executive.

They have different roles. The Land Bill was trying to introduce criminal elements in land matters.

How?
Because of the proposals to imprison people. If a tenant sells land without telling the landlord, he can be imprisoned.

So, you can clearly see that the Land Bill is eliminating the idea of dialogue between the two, the idea of a negotiated settlement between the two and it is imposing elements of a criminal nature.

The Land Bill was also going to legalise illegal occupants of land. It became almost impossible under the bill to evict an illegal occupant of land and any court order that was to that effect was talked about as being null and void. So, the Land Bill is dangerous for the country.

So, what do you propose as Mengo?
There is no need for the Land Bill. As Mengo, we propose that the Government should enforce the rule of law. We have sufficient laws on the books to deal with land-related matters.

We have had soldiers evicting people. Why don’t they get arrested and prosecuted? If you trespass upon my land, there is law on the books. Why
don’t they put those laws into effect?

We have had people masquerading with guns in these land issues, there are laws against moving around armed with firearms.

Why don’t they put them into effect? In a nutshell, we have the courts of law. Government should empower the courts of law to hear these cases and dispose them of.

But some officials from Mengo, especially from Buganda Land Board (BLB) have been implicated in illegal evictions as well.

No. People from BLB have not evicted anybody. What happens is that somebody who is interested in Kabaka’s land, somebody who identifies any piece of land for development will come to the BLB in Bulange and then the Board will tell that person to go and deal with the occupants on that land.

We have even told those intending developers to first inform us on the compensation they have paid to the sitting tenants to ensure that they do not cheat them.

What happens is that after all this process is undertaken, politicians pounce on this issue because they have political agendas and they want to portray the BLB in bad light. But the BLB does not evict people.

The Kabaka owns 350 square miles of land. If there were evictions of people off that land, there would be absolute chaos in this country.

How about the incident at the Ranch on the Lake in Wakiso where tenants were saying that Mengo was not paying them money equivalent to the value of the land?

It was not Mengo paying people at Ranch on the Lake. The developers identified the piece of land. They came to Mengo and we told them that we cannot lease you that land unless you compensate the sitting tenants.

We told them that they had to sit with them and negotiate agreeable amounts, and then inform us how much they had agreed to pay. We wanted to be sure that no one was being cheated.

Some of these people are quite vulnerable. They were 300 families. Now, three families out of 300 came up and said they were not compensated and the press made it a big issue.

What of claims in Nabweru, Wakiso district, where BLB officials said (the Kabaka has decided) that they sell off land for tenants who had huge chunks?
Well, I cannot competently comment about the wrongdoings of the officials in the BLB.

People have abused the Kabaka’s name since the days of Sekabaka Kintu. People can always use the Kabaka’s name to advance their own interests. But BLB has a policy.

If such a member of staff is found out, he will be punished because this is not the official policy of BLB. If a particular official of the board mistreats tenants or uses the Kabaka’s name to advance his own interests and we find out, he will be in trouble with us.

According to documents we have from the Uganda Land Commission, Kabaka Mutesa II and Kabaka Mutebi have land in Bunyoro. Do you have the titles as Buganda?

I am not aware of any land owned by the Kabaka in Bunyoro. The Kabaka does not own land in Bunyoro. That is not true at all. But even if he did, what is wrong with the Kabaka owning land in Bunyoro?

Don’t the Banyoro own land in Buganda? The senior officials of Bunyoro kingdom own land in Buganda, what is the big deal? But it is not true. The Kabaka does not own land in Bunyoro.

Bunyoro says the land belonging to Baganda absentee landlords in Bunyoro was grabbed with the help of colonialists (British). Would Buganda support returning the land to Bunyoro?

Three hundred years before the English came to this part of the world, Buganda was conquering land from Bunyoro. The whole of Masaka and Rakai districts were captured from Bunyoro in the 16th century.

When the English came, Baganda allied with them for purposes of getting superior weapons to beat an old enemy. This has nothing to do with imperialism. This is a strategy of gaining strength.

What I would not want is for politicians to make this an issue because they want to make a perpetual conflict between Bunyoro and Buganda.

They keep on hyping this theory of Buganda helping the British to colonise Bunyoro.

With or without Buganda, Bunyoro was going to be colonised by the British. Were the Baganda the ones who colonised Kenya or Tanzania?

So, would you support (paying off) absentee landlords in Bunyoro?
The best thing to do always in these things is to have a negotiated settlement.

I don’t know whether people know that the Kabaka of Buganda was in control of Kiziba in northern Tanzania by the time the British came.

The Kabaka was in control of the whole of Busoga. Busoga was paying taxes to the Kabaka by the time the British came. So, are we going to go back to these kind of issues?

How about the Baruli-Banyala claiming that they do not support federo and are not Baganda yet they constitutionally fall within Buganda ’s territorial boundaries. What do you comment about it?

That is no issue at all. That is an issue which is being instigated by politicians.

How do you plan to handle it?
We shall continue communicating with the ordinary Baruli at the grassroots. They are very loyal to the Kabaka. The Kabaka has been there, all of us have been there.

We are not going to get bothered by 20 men who are interested in playing politics.

When the Kabaka went to Buruli in 2008, the kind of welcome he received from the Baruli ceases to make us worry. We are going to deal with authentic elders of Baruli.

Don’t you think it can result into the redrawing of Buganda boundaries to demarcate the new kingdoms within Buganda?

I do not think so. It is politically motivated … so, it will last for as long as the politicians are encouraging them to rebel and it will die down as soon as those politicians stop.

The Speaker of Parliament was of the view that you sit with the Baruli-Banyala and iron out the grievances. Are you willing to talk to them?

No. We are not going to talk to a group of 20 politicians who are being set up. Like I said before, we are in contact with the real and authentic cultural leaders of Buruli.

We can’t talk to these people who went to the Speaker of Parliament. So, why should we be bothered by 20 self-seekers?

Buganda has been here for over 1000 years. We have never heard of a Sabaruli. It is not possible that he came about two years ago.

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