Proposed changes to land law are anti-steady progress

The Katikkiro of Buganda was recently quoted saying: “We are going to reject that law. Taking people’s land without their consent is abuse of people’s rights on land, which we shall not accept.” We all know that a Katikkiro is the leader or otherwise the administrative head of the affairs of Buganda Kingdom.

His opinion is not only that of his cabinet, or of the king, but is presumably also the position of all the subjects of the kingdom. With this, therefore, the emphatic use of the word “we” in Katikkiro Charles Peter Mayiga’s statement is not a slip of the tongue but a sign of the numerical strength of the populace opposed to the government proposal to change land laws.

One would wonder why the good Katikkiro is at the centre of opposing the proposal for amendments in the legal framework governing land in Uganda. My guess is that it’s because the government wishes to start taking over private land with neither consent nor compensation of the land owner, until further notice.

The genesis of this matter can be traced back to the National Conference on Mineral Wealth held in October 2014, where the President categorically said that government would change the law to allow intending investors in the mining industry to access private land that contains minerals without negotiating with the land owners. His rationale was that “the people who have to give you consent are the people who own the minerals, and that is the government. The other man (landowner) has no consent to give because the property is not his”.

This government’s proposal to amend Article 26 of the Constitution on property rights was also reiterated in 2014 by the then minister for Investment Gabriel Ajedra. However, for some reason, theArticle was never amended in the Constitution (Amendment) Act, 2015, only to have this contentious issue resurrect during a Cabinet retreat at Kyankwanzi, just months after the 2016 general elections.

The timing and authoritative approach in which government is pushing for the amendments merits the defensive response from the general public. Currently, cases of evictions from land have become more frequent due to the increased demand for land. These evictions are even more worrying for rural Ugandans who communally own land or have unregistered land.

The anger and defensive stand has continued to manifest through incidents such as Karamojong elders and youths frustrating mining activities in Karamoja over land, the nude protests in Amuru District, and the more recent threats to lynch the Anglican bishops in Mukono over Uganda Christian University land. Not to mention the fact that there are more than 4,000 Ugandans living in Internally Displaced Peoples Camps in the oil-rich Hoima due to development-induced evictions.

Development-induced land acquisition has been on the rise across the country and this can only get worse given the ambitious development targets that the government has set. The National Development Plan 2 (NDP II), whose aim is to attain lower middle income status by 2020, contains many infrastructural development projects such as roads, railways, airports, power dams, refineries, oil pipelines, etc. These are bound to increase pressure on land across the country hence increasing human displacement.

I believe that passing such a draconian amendment and other land laws will deprive Uganda’s land rights movement of over two decades worth of achievement. The milestones in the legal regime governing land include the 1995 Constitution, four progressive amendments to the Land Act, Cap 227 (1998, 2001, 2004 & 2010); and the recent Supreme Court decision in the case of UNRA Vs Asuman Irumba and another (2014), where the highest court in the land unequivocally pronounced itself on the need for free, prior and informed consent as well as compensation before compulsory acquisition of land by government.

This judgment was in respect to Section 7 of the Land Acquisition Act, Cap 226.
I thus implore the government not to flash 20 years of progress down the drain.

Mr Muhindo is a lawyer and human rights advocate and project officer at Global Rights Alert.