SAM MAYANJA, the new minister of state for Lands, is amplifying tensions in Buganda by seizing on the divisive issue of mailo land to loudly call for its abolition.
The persistent calls for reform have drawn a strong backlash from Buganda kingdom officials. Interviewed recently, David Mpanga, Buganda's minister in charge of Research and Special Duties, said the kingdom will strongly resist any government move to abolish Mailo land tenure system. He told Baker Batte Lule that Buganda will fight the illegal expropriation of legally acquired property.
The kingdom seems to be unsettled by what appears to be an agenda to abolish mailo land. How worried are you about this possibility?
We say that Buganda nyaffe; it's our mother and what we normally refer to is land. It's where we are born, where we live, where we get our livelihood and essentially when we die that is where we are interred. It should be underscored that upon the appointment of Hon Sam Mayanja to the docket of minister of state for Lands, his writings on this issue brought some level of anxiety and concern.
He has views that mailo ownership is wrong and illegal, unjustified and that it should be scrapped without the owners being compensated. He also has a history of writing about the Kingdom of Buganda, which has a large interest in mail land. It's in relation to those writings and an anticipation that might become the stand of government that there is call for a debate.
So far, things don't become government policy because the minister has said something about them. They become government policy when there is a cabinet paper that is approved and then translated into a bill that is taken to parliament. So, we are not debating government policy but the views around mailo land.
President Museveni is on record saying that mailo land tenure system is evil and perhaps that explains the appointment of Mayanja who espouses similar views. Don't you think the time has come to open up debate on mailo land?
We have heard the president say certain things about mailo land. But statements of government officials including the highest in the land don't become government policy until they are processed. So, I still maintain the position that there is no government policy that is being debated.
What is there are proposals that might end up being policy. What is undeniable, though, is that there are issues in land ownership and the tenure. There is a problem of land administration; the land register is no longer 100 per cent reliable in telling you who is the owner of the land, or even in relation to boundaries. There is a problem in relation to titles; people losing their land in the land registries.
There are problems of overlapping administrative entities with powers over land. You've got the ministries, you've got State House, Resident District Commissioners, Police, the LCs, all of these cause lack of cohesion in administration and enforcement.
You have deficiency in land dispute resolution. Even with the best tenure system, you will have disputes over land so at the best of time, you must have these disputes swiftly resolved and most importantly legitimately resolved. The winner must understand he's the winner and the loser must understand he's the loser with the right to appeal.
This has largely failed. The High court Land division is the headquarters of backlog, but the cases that get to the High court are only the tip of the land wrangles. Lastly and most important, infecting all these things, administration enforcement and dispute resolution is corruption and impunity.
What we have are people using force; where do they get this force? They are blocking legitimate claimants from accessing administration of dispute resolution. They are using corruption proceeds to buy land. People are stealing money from government and the private sector and hide it through buying land.
They don't want to abide by the customs because mailo is a tenure that anticipates customary tenancy, which precluded that the landowner and the tenant were to coexist. One has a right of ownership and the other has a right of occupancy. So, some people have bought land and don't want to consent to theses customs and just want to drive everybody off the land.
So, the kingdom's proposals are that we need to find level-headed, calm and even-handed means of resolving these challenges. We need to go back to the basics so that these new phenomena are resolved.
One of the arguments against the mailo land tenure system is that it created two classes of people; the landowners and the landless yet before the 1900 Agreement people owned land. That's why the president keeps saying there is need to correct an historical injustice. Do you see relevance in that argument?
One of the biggest shortcomings of missionary education has been a wholesale application of concepts we pick from Europe and elsewhere and apply them without adjusting them to what is actually on the ground. We have people with titles to land and people who occupied the land by law.
Land ownership did not entitle you to disregard the land occupant. It's also not strictly true that we have people who are landless. We have people who don't have titles to the land they occupy by right. It's an important distinction because we have customary tenure, which is mostly prevalent in northern Uganda and part of eastern Uganda which occupation is by clan or community.
Why do you never hear people say people who occupy land by customary tenure are landless? If the title to that land expressly anticipates that there is somebody occupying that land and limits your use of that land, which mailo land does, you can't strictly say that the occupant is landless. We shouldn't use terms like landless because that may mean refugees who have no place of their own.
So, let's not bring foreign concepts and use them here. Right from Busuulu and Envujjo law, any payments around occupancy have been nominal. Most occupants have been living happily on mailo land for a very fractional amount of money or if at all.
So, mailo doesn't cause evictions; they are caused by highhandedness, corruption and we see evictions across the country in places where there is customary ownership like Amuru, Apaa, Buliisa, Osukuru, Busongora and everywhere there is a resource and an interest to people who have access to guns and illicit money.
What would you say to those who say those opposed to land law amendments are a tiny group of elites who have for long dominated a mainly hapless landless people?
In everything, it's important to listen to what the people say and then watch what they do. It's very critical. When we talk about mailo land, it's taken as if it's the only land tenure system that came out of the bad 1900 agreement. Where did the land that government occupies and which is held by agencies like Uganda Land Commission, District Land Boards, National Forestry Authority, Uganda Wildlife Authority, come from?
You think that the British found some land here but brought some other on ships and put it here so that what was native land became mailo and what the British brought in was freehold and government land? If all private ownership of land was as a result of the 1900 Agreement, why doesn't the government which professes to love and wants to work very hard for the landless as they call them, lead by example and title the people who are on government land?
There are occupants on government land. This land was also not empty prior to 1900. There were people there, there are people on government land right now. Why when they are on private mailo are they sanctified bibanja holders and I'm not saying for a minute that they are bad people.
But when they are on government land, they are called encroachers and squatters. Go out and read those publications, the same people will call them squatters when they are talking about people on NFA, UWA or ULC land ... if actions were the yardstick for judging, come and see what the kingdom of Buganda is doing around getting willing people land titles.
If we talk about leasehold tenure, we are talking about a legal form of land ownership. Where is government's effort to title people who are on its land? So, to my mind, what is said is important but what is done is far much more important. So, to go back to the question, there is no class war in this.
And every time you try to do those things on populist basis everywhere in the world, the economy has tanked. The threat of expropriation will cause a lot of people to re-think the money they have invested in this country and what they might invest.
This is because if they have taken your land today simply because you acquired it through 100 people who benefitted from a historical injustice, every time you do that, you are telling people that once that bonanza is over, there will still be poverty and you will have to raid other things.
That path is very slippery and it's the reason we are speaking out not because it an elite versus masses struggle.
Every time government has tried to bring any land law, it has been met with resistance from the kingdom. Look at the 1998 and 2010 Land Acts and the proposed amendment to compulsory land acquisition. So, how do you solve this problem once and for all?
We are trying to engage and find some constructive solutions; that doesn't make it opposition. If I say let's do the right thing, that's an engagement that seeks to ensure that we do the right thing. If there was no problem, there wouldn't be a need for reform.
If what had been done in the past that the kingdom you say opposed, then why is it not working? Maybe it's time to consider the main drivers of land wrangles. Let's deal with draining that swamp, but we can't do that if as always it's been that kind of demonization and name calling; that shouldn't happen.
This is not about opposing; we are saying that you are about to do something that is detrimental to progress and stability. There is nothing wrong with pointing out these things in order to get a solution that works for everybody. All the things that are said during a crisis and they are actually not after solving that crisis might actually be exacerbating that crisis and that is what we are saying.
In 2013, the Kabaka signed an agreement with President Museveni, which among other things reduced the bad blood between the two parties. Should anyone be worried that the bad blood is crawling back?
The Baganda have a saying, alwogerako siyaluleeta, that if you talk about a disease, it's not you inviting it but I get the impression that when the media speaks about these things, they want them to come back. We are not engaged in negative propaganda against the government.
We are not engaged in being adversarial for adversarial sake. We are saying; let's engage in a calm, level-headed debate about a matter that is very important for everybody. Let those who live in the air or water leave us talk about land. If we all live on land, then let's all engage with respect from whichever side you are coming from. We are not bringing discord but we are saying don't bring discord by expropriating property.
Throughout the interview, you have appreciated that there are sticky issues on land; how then do we find a lasting solution?
I can't say that I know everything but there are people who know something and that all those people should be speaking out on something they know calmly and rationally to get to the solution.
Government should popularize the lease tenure system because I know it's being used by the government, Buganda Land Board, the Catholic and Anglican Church, among others. The lease gives security of tenure and is transferable.
The other thing is the Land Fund; which was put in place to compensate landowners. Let's look and see whether it has been effective and how it can be improved. There are solutions, which can be arrived at with level-headedness not expropriation; it's not the answer.
Have these proposals dampened the mood of Kabaka's 28 coronation anniversary?
They haven't; in fact, when you asked me for this interview, I told you that it should wait until the end of the coronation anniversary because there are very few kingdoms in the world, which can trace 36 crown bearers. The Kabaka is the embodiment of our aspirations, culture and our hopes and expectation for what to come.
So, through that, we hope that his reign will be the reign in which this issue of land is resolved amicably in much the same way as his enthronement was. There had been war, there had been instability and chaos but all these were brought to an end through understanding of the concept of coexistence. We think that even the land question can learn something from the restoration of the kingdom.
bakerbatte@gamil.com
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