Where two titles exist on same land, law protects the first one
Recently, I participated in a radio talk show on the land issue in which the government was represented by an official from the Ministry of Lands. I left feeling that we are about to witness an unprecented grabbing of land.
Answering one of the questions, the official claimed that the land registers under the Registration of Land Titles Ordinance of 1908, were closed in the 1930s, which means that when the land office issues new titles to third parties under the current Act, a situation of double titling would arise leading to conflicts between competing owners. This should not be the case because the present law provides that where there are two title deeds in respect of the same land, the first one to be issued is the one protected by law.
Secondly, the claim that the register under the old law was closed in the 1930s is simply incorrect because section 32 of the Registration of Titles Act provides that the register under the 1908 Ordinance, shall be closed so far as concerns of land kept under that Ordinance has been brought under the new Act.
This false claim coupled with the fact that microfilm records were illegally removed from the Commissioner for Survey, who does not support frauds in the land office, has raised fears that there is a plan to steal peoples’ land on a grand scale.
The concept of land as a marketable commodity was first introduced in Buganda by the Arabs between 1840 and 1850. Later individualisation of land interests was supported by Christian missionaries who were very close to leading chiefs. In 1892, one of the chiefs Mika Sematimba visited England and was quick to appreciate the advantages of individual ownership of land.
On his return, Sematimba influenced his colleagues to take advantage of this revolutionary idea. By tradition, only rights over land and not interests were granted by the Kabaka, in whom all land was vested, but in the 1890s, Kabaka Mwanga started to sell interests to his subjects in exchange for ivory, which provided him with a new source of revenue.
Accordingly, by the time the 1900 Agreement was made, chiefs and individuals owned private interests in land through purchase from the king. That is why section 15 of the Agreement reads: ‘One thousand chiefs and private landowners will receive the estates of which they are already in possession….’
The discontent which arose against the 1900 land settlement was due to the omission by the lukiko (Buganda parliament) to legislate on two important issues: First the law concerned only landowners and not their tenants and about this, the 1906 Land Committee, which implemented the agreement commented, ‘with regard to tenants and cultivators of the mailo land owners, it would seem that they are tenants at will only since the Baganda have not yet developed any system of leasing.’
This meant that the persons who had rights granted under the old traditional system became unsecured tenants of the new mailo land owners. The legislation also omitted mention of clan land. These omissions led people such as Kabazi Miti, Serwano Kulubya and Daudi Basudde who had returned from years of study abroad to mount a campaign to redress in the 1920s.
The result was that the Busulu and Envujjo Law of 1927, which stabilised land matters until the appearance of the phenomenon of “peasants” and their protection by the central government whether lawful or unlawful occupants of land.
The Land Act protects only lawful and bona fide tenants while under the Busulu and Envujjo Law, nobody could be an unlawful occupant since the procedures for acquiring land were respected.
Mr Mulira is a lawyer,
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