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Angry peasants react
On April 15 some angry residents of Bugabo village in Kalagala sub-county Luweero District set fire to a bulldozer that was razing crops on disputed land. According to media reports the bulldozer was acting on instructions of an investor – a description often given to any rich-looking land buyer, often a foreigner.
In another recent case in Buzu Village in Mukono District, residents blocked roads and rounded up people including UPDF soldiers who had come to survey land they had purchased. They beat them up and vandalizing their vehicles.
But BLB Legal Manager, Dennis Bugaya, who also doubles as the Public Relations Officer, defends the move saying it will help tenants avoid being evicted easily.
“Buganda giving out lease title is not new and it was being done as far back as the 1960s,” Bugaya said and he brandished a file whose papers have turned brown with age to make his point. He said it is a lease title given to a company which wanted to grow tea in Buyaga County (now part of Bunyoro) by the late Kabaka Edward Muteesa. He also showed that the lessee had used the title to acquire a loan from DFCU to develop the land.
When told that it possibly worked because the lease was awarded to a company owned by foreigners and yet Mengo was now leasing to people in Buganda who have cultural rights to the land, Bugaya pulled out another stack of files. These are white and brand new and he says they are lease titles for applicants eager to have them.
“Before we officially announced the new offer we had issued about 300,000 lease titles usually of five years especially for people with plots in urban areas,” Bugaya said.
On why the lease is just 49 years, Bugaya said they can be flexible in some few cases and he cited the example of the Kigo Mirembe Villas where the financiers wanted a longer lease to guarantee a loan to the investor and they gave them 99 years.
He explained that some urban areas like Kampala and Wakiso where local authorities require someone to have an approved plan before they start constructing houses, they also require proof of ownership of land and holders of BLB lease titles will now qualify.
On the question of what happens when someone’s lease expires, Bugaya said BLB would be open to discussing a renewal and would not evict anyone after the expiry of their lease.
Lawyers differ on leases
Several lawyers have also given their view on the Mengo proposed lease scheme and the intricacies involved in the acquisition of a lease.
A lawyer in Kampala, Julius Galisonga warns those taking on leases to take note of several issues like the time frame of the lease.
“Before you sign, you must be sure where you are going to shift to when the lease expires and you cannot pay the premium any more or the landlord is not interested in renewing the lease.
“When you are a kibanja holder you have chances of get permanent ownership like the people of Buyaga and Bugangaizi where the government is processing land titles for them but this can’t happen if you are a lease title holder,” Galisonga advises.
Many Buganda MPs; including Henry Kamya Makumbi (Mityana South), Christopher Kalemba (Kakuuto), Ibrahim Ssemujju Ngánda (Kira Municipality) Robert Migadde (Buvuma ) are said to support the leasing arrangement.
But another lawyer, Nalukoola Luyimbazi of Nalukoola, Kakeeto Advocates and Solicitors, says getting a lease is good for kibanja holders. He says it makes it very hard for them to be evicted.
He encourages Bibanja holders to explore even other ways of securing their tenancy apart from getting a lease title. He says they can negotiate with the landlord and forfeit part of the land in exchange for titled ownership. Alternatively, the landlord can pay off the tenant to vacate the land or the tenant paying the landlord to allow them process a land title in what is called “ókwegula” in Luganda.
Nalukoola, however, warns those taking on lease titles that they must scrutinise the agreements very well regarding issues like terms of renewal after the expiry of the current term, the usage of the land as it’s specified since some leases are strict on the nature of activity to be carried out on the land. Lastly he advises those who cannot understand the legal language to employ the services of legal experts before they sign.
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editor@independent.co.ug
Pse leave Kabaka’s land to Kabaka. His lineage is a biological entitlement and totally has northing to do with his subjects or employees/servants or friends or masqueraders save for individuals he so elects to benefit from his land in gift or business transactions.
Thanks for the story that sow a lot of authoritative move by the Kingdom who should have use a wind wind move and must a swell adhere to the national constitution . PAUL
The issue of the Kabaka being entitled to those 350 square miles (and the other lands he did not buy but claims) is as contentious as is the Nile Treaty that awarded the right of use of the Nile waters to Egypt. Just like the Nile Treaty dis-empowererd (in political jargon “dis-enfranchised”) the Nile basin countries from using the Nile for irrigation, the 1900 Buganda Agreement also does the same to people in Buganda. There could have been reasons for the Colonialists to think my great great grandfather did not warrant the use of the Nile waters at that time, but the case with the Buganda Agreement that allotted so much land to one person was a bribe for the Kabaka to allow them colonialists plunder our forests of timber and entrench themselves in our country for servitude. The Kabaka has no right to continue claiming that so-and-so many square miles are his just like the Egyptians have no right to prohibit us from using the Nile waters for our survival. Look at the drought that just occurred in Uganda, would Uganda really have been in such a situation if it were Israel? No way, they would have made the British and their blue-eyed boys the Egyptians go to hell! We Ugandans are tired of these inequities that were brought upon us by colonialists, some of whose interests were just slave trade. It is high time the British came to answer some hard questions. Why did they not give my grandfather so many miles as well, or allowed him to use the Nile? These are questions which politicians should force the British to answer now! Were we not considered to be people? did they think we were baboons not to aspire for equity and development? I believe that the Kabaka might have bought some land, that he is entitled to call his, but the one of the 1900 agreement we should give him only three (3) square miles (I feel this is fair equity) and the rest goes to Baganda! As for the Nile, let the Egyptians go hang, if not let the British give them the Thames River, for all they care!
Should Buganda still be grateful to President Museveni? In other words, is President Museveni the grantor of Buganda’s eminence in the Uganda history? Is the Bunganda Kingdom being rightly condemned for the land woes? Why is “Uganda” not “Unkore”, or “Usoga”, or “Ucholi”, or “Unyoro”, or “Uteso?” We can be better answered, if we are served with the right history. Why am I bringing in other regions of the country in a problem that seems to be essentially Buganda’s? The reason couldn’t be more clearer than an “isolationistic policy” being played out against Buganda. Buganda is being portrayed as: “selfish”, “greedy”, “backward”, “eccentric” and “chauvinistic” by people who do not share our views and history. But is this the case? I see it differently, in Mukono district there is a place called “Kisoga” signifying that majority of the inhabitants are “Soga.” In Wakiso district, along the Entebbe road there is a place called “Kitoro.” On Mawanda road, there is a place called “Kifumbira.” In the centre of Kampala there is a place called “Arua park.” Buganda has married and married off its sisters to men who are not necessarily of their kin, including to two former Presidents (Miria Obote and Sarah Amin). We are by form and substance, “Nationalistic.” However, the demand of our “Independence” seems to invoke this void that we are eccentric people. But what does history say? Buganda has demanded unequivocally for an independence status since the times of Ssekabaka Mwanga the more reason Buganda was not declared a colonial territory but rather “a protectorate” in 1894. One will want to recall that due to the agitation of an independent status, Mwanga was desposed in 1897. By 1900, when “Buganda” “signed” the “agreement”, Buganda was under “occupation” and “ruled” by a 3year old “King.” Buganda’s adversaries have used the “contents” within the “Buganda Agreement” to discredit Buganda’s values. They taken on every chance to put a “stain” on every one claiming to be a Muganda. But the 1900 “Buganda Agreement” was not done in the true spirit of Buganda. It was a “Colonial order” instructing on the way business was to be done going forward. The order created a new class of “Chiefs” who were meant to form a new centre for power contrary to that of the King. Consequently, after the Buganda Agreement, similar agreement were signed by other kingdoms and by 1902, we had the “first ordinance in council.” This among other things, laid down the legislative framework on which “Uganda” was to function. So, if Buganda is accused of signing the 1900 agreement, why aren’t similar accusations labelled against those Kingdoms that also signed?
The issue of “Ekyapa mu ngalo” is a “negotiation” out of a predicament and goes a long way with the current economic dynamism. The 1900 agreement defined the land tenure system that we are currently following. It created “mailo land” and “Crown land.” The spirit that formed the “Uganda land commission” is the same spirit that formed the “Buganda land board.” Mailo land created “landlords” by implication it also created the” landless.” The “Busulu and Envujjo” law of 1928 was to mollify this situation. The creation of “Bibanja” meant that people who didn’t own land could utilise it for commercial benefit if only they could pay a tax but could not own the land. With the growing commercialisation of land this gone on to create more conflicts on land. Two people could express different commercial interests and neither is to carry out one. For instance, Mengo could want to sell land it owns but on that piece of land there is a “Kibanja holder” who would have wished to build rentals. Mengo cannot sell its land because of a “Kibanja holder”, the Kibanja holder cannot construct his rentals because he does not have a land title. It is a stalemate. What Mengo is doing is to “make sense” out of “Bibanja holdings.” That someone can pay certain amount of money to obtain a “lease title.” And with a lease title someone can “own” land for a specified period of time. In another country or in certain regions of this country, government(s) has/have gone on to “compensate” landlords in order to settle the landless in what is normally termed as “redistribution of wealth. Have you heard about the “Sheema Cooperative Ranching Society?” It is an interesting case study.
This failing magazine is now using the Kabaka on its cover to sell more copies
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