Purpose for which the govt wants to take land is suspect
The problems in our land management sector can be attributed to official disregard of the sanctity of the Constitution and the breakdown in institutional supervision which have led to abuses. Our Constitution contains a Bill of Rights in Chapter Four which sets out specific guarantees of personal freedoms and rights as well as limitation on government’s power in judicial and other proceedings.
The Bill of Rights traces its origin to the Magna Carta or the charter in which English liberties were granted by King John in 1215 under threat of civil war. Clause 39 of the charter stated that “no freedom shall be… imprisoned or dispossessed except by lawful judgment or by law of the land.” The Magna Carta is replicated in our Bill of Rights, which provides “The rights and freedoms of the individual and groups enshrined in this Chapter shall be respected, upheld and promoted by all organs and agencies of government and by all persons.”
Among the protections enjoyed in this way is the freedom from deprivation of property under section 26(2), which provides that no person shall be compulsorily deprived of property except where prompt payment is made of fair and adequate compensation prior to taking possession, among other conditions.
The government now seeks to take away this protection under the Constitutional (Amendment) Bill by giving itself power to take over property after depositing in court compensation determined by its own valuer. The Bill is silent on what happens after the compensation has been deposited in court and who will meet the legal cost imposed on the owner by such action.
Furthermore, the purpose for which the government wants to take over property namely for “infrastructure and investment” is suspect because roads are being constructed without hindrance and government is not in the investment business. If the rumours are correct that government wants to acquire land to give away to non-African investors, then this will run counter to what has been the practice for more than one hundred years where governments of the day protected African owners against non-African displacements as was the case in Kenya and the Rhodesias.
The colonial policy beginning from 1916 aimed to ensure that land owned by Africans was protected against rampant acquisition by European investors.
The original policy of the Commissioner (Governor) Sir Harry Johnson, however, was to have part of the land reserved for Africans and the rest free for investors and quite a few sales were made to non-Africans through this arrangement. However, this policy was stopped by order of the Secretary of State in London in 1916 and all such sales were converted into 99 year leases.
The government’s attempt to wrongly dispossess Ugandans of their land is accompanied by impunity in the land office where some officers’ conduct seems to be above the law. The law does not matter anymore to some of these officials.
For example, in 2014, a senior official at the Lands office advised the government in an official letter that all land registered under the 1908 system ceased to exist in the 1930s and proceeded to allocate such land to land grabbers who were issued with freehold title deeds over mailo land. The result of this official’s illegal action was to create two owners over the same piece of land and most of the disputes which have led to the Constitutional (Amendment) Bill spring from this illegal action.
This official disregarded the provisions of section 29 of the Registration of Titles Act, which provides that “Any person in whose name any land is registered under the Registration of Land Titles
Mr Mulira is a lawyer,
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