It’s not true that the British took away from peasants 8,000sq miles of land

Recently a writer in one of our dailies suggested that the mailo land system should be abolished so that the country remains with only one land tenure namely freehold for purposes of uniformity.
Mailo is just one of the four variants of freehold. The others being grants by the Governor under the Crown Lands Ordinance, native freeholds and adjudicated freeholds. Native freeholds were granted by the British colonial administration pursuant to the 1900 Tooro Agreement and the 1901 Ankole Agreement under which approximately 255 square miles were allocated to the king and a few of the most senior chiefs in private ownership and 125 square miles were allocated to them as official estates.
In 1955 when Zakaria Mungonya became the first minister of lands, the protectorate government announced proposals to encourage individual ownership of land among the indigenous people. These proposals were overwhelmingly rejected as the people were suspicious of the government’s motives.
However, due to Mungonya’s influence, pilot schemes were set up in Kigezi, Ankole and Bugisu districts to adjudicate individual title under customary law and once the land was adjudicated, the holders were issued with freehold titles under the Registration of Titles Act.
Mailo in Buganda was different from the other freeholds in the sense that it was neither handed out as such and its ownership to non-Africans was restricted.
According to A.B.K. Mukwaya, who was in 1950 a researcher in land matters at Makerere’s East African Institute of Social Studies, “The framers of the Buganda Agreement of 1900 worked as regards its allotment clauses on the assumption that they were only confirming in a permanent form the ancient rights and privileges of the allottees of square miles.”
“In practice, they soon found that the rights so conferred on individuals constituted a fundamental change. Therefore to legalise and regularise these rights and to differentiate them from those of a freeholder in English law, a name was found for this system….”
The ancient rights, which were confirmed in this way, included clan rights, the rights of the king and his chiefs, individual proprietary rights (obwesengeze) and individual rights of occupation (obusenze.)
It is, therefore, not true that the British took away from the peasants 8,000 square miles of land, which they distributed among chiefs, who collaborated with them. Indeed only 308 square miles were given out to the Queen mother of Mwanga (16), the Queen mother of Daudi Chwa (10), 8 square miles each to four senior princes (32), the princesses, sisters and relations of the Kabaka (90) and 8 square miles to each of the 20 county chiefs (160). Under a memorandum dated July 25, 1900, a total of of 613 square miles were attached to county and sub-county chiefs’ offices in trusteeship and 92 square miles went to three missionary societies in trust for the native churches.
The case of the three regents must be considered as special. Each received 20, 15 and 10 square miles respectively under a memorandum signed by the Commissioner on February 13, 1900 which reads: “In accordance with the verbal agreement arrived at today…. I promise to allot the following areas of land in further compensation to the persons named……”
Under section 15 of the Agreement, Buganda was estimated to comprise of 19,600 square miles, of which 9,000 square miles were crown land (freehold) and 8,000 square miles were malo. Out of the 8,000 square miles only 3,600 square milos were allotted and an even lesser figure was issued with title deeds.
Accordingly in theory, government can have access to 16,000 square miles in Buganda without interfering with private ownership.

Mr Mulira is a lawyer. [email protected]