Bunyoro lost counties: Joy as rightful land owners get titles

What you need to know:

  • Ownership. Last month, President Museveni commissioned a land office in Kibaale by giving 254 land titles to tenants in Buyaga and Bugangaizi.

KIBAALE.

Bamwira Bamwira, a resident of Karuguza Town, Kibaale District, feels liberated after getting the land title for his two small plots of land where he has been a squatter for the last 90 years.
Bamwira, 95, is among the few elderly local residents who tasted the bitter cold war to regain part of Bunyoro Kingdom counties of Buyaga and Bugangaizi, formally referred to as the ‘‘lost counties’’.
The lost counties currently form the current Kibaale, Kagadi and Kakumiro districts.
The people in the two counties, which had been given to Buganda Kingdom by the British colonialists in 1900, later voted to return to Bunyoro Kingdom in a referendum.
Bamwira describes the annexation of the lost counties to the referendum held on November 4, 1964, as a fresh event in life which resolved the colonial injustices halfway.
Asked to explain what he exactly means; Bamwira says: “The referendum brought back our counties, the chiefs were removed, we stopped paying the Buganda-imposed taxes but the government then did not give us our land titles and we have been squatters on our motherland for all these years.”
Like Bamwira, many natives of Bunyoro saw the return of the lost counties as a sigh of relief, though the same kicked in land injustice that has dragged on for decades.
This meant that the referendum did not address the issue of land ownership as it was expected then.
The Uganda Land Commission chairman, Mr Baguma Isoke, who is also a senior citizen in Kibaale District, explains that after defeating the then Bunyoro king, Omukama Kabalega, the British administration and its collaborators took away Buyaga and Bugangaizi land under mailo tenure system.
“The surveying and mapping of mailo land parcels first happened here (Buyaga and Bugangaizi) by the British in 1927. The land titles were issued out to the collaborators in 1928. These titles were first kept at Mengo, the headquarters of Buganda Kingdom, and later taken to Mityana land offices,” Mr Baguma reveals.
He recounts that after the 1964 referendum, the land titles were taken to Fort Portal land offices.
In the 2002/3 Financial Year, the Uganda Land Commission under the ministry of Lands enacted the Land Fund to kick-start the process of compensating the absentee landlords willing to relinquish interests in land which was occupied by millions of tenants across the country.
Mr Baguma says government, using the Land Fund, has since 2002, purchased 200,000 acres of mailo land from absentee landlords in Bunyoro, Tooro, Buganda and Ankole sub-regions.
“So far, 61 per cent of the purchased land is in Bunyoro, particularly in Kibaale, Kagadi and Kakumiro districts, which constitute the former lost counties of Buyaga and Bugangaizi,” Mr Baguma says.
He further says: “The land purchased in greater Kibaale is only five per cent of the total mailo land that is supposed to be purchased and restituted to the rightful owners in the districts of Kibaale, Kagadi and Kakumiro. This has been done in a bid to redress the past colonial mistakes and correct the land injustices meted against Banyoro by colonialists and their collaborators.”
So far, 504 land titles have been transferred to the rightful owners.
Last month, President Museveni commissioned a land office in Kibaale by giving 254 land titles to tenants in Buyaga and Bugangaizi at a function in Karuguza. To many natives; this was liberation of their land after more than 100 years of living as squatters on their motherland.
The 254 beneficiaries are part of the Buyaga Block 244, Plot 19, Karuguza in Kibaale Town, which formerly belonged to a one Aguste Birimumaso.
Mr Baguma’s concern is the more than 176 land titles which have for more than 100 years never been claimed by any person.
Responding to this issue recently, President Museveni said: “We will distribute these land titles to other people if their owners who collaborated with the British fail to claim them.”
The President blamed the current land troubles in the country on the past mistakes committed by the colonialists, who he said ruled Africa through divisionism based on tribalism.
The Lands minister, Ms Betty Amongi, while speaking at a recent function in Kibaale District, warned the beneficiaries of land titles against using them carelessly and risk losing their land.