Religious leaders should lead struggle to stop land grabbing
Uganda’s population has gone up and this has been accompanied by high crime rate, including land grabbing. Unfortunately, it is the wealthy and influential people who engage in grabbing people’s land with impunity.
They use their money to rob people of justice in court. Some of them have even gone ahead to threaten people whose land they are targeting.
With such rising cases of immorality, it would be unfortunate if the church decide to go silent about it because it has the potential to lead to violence in future.
With the proposed land law suggesting forceful seizure of land without compensation, this problem will most likely escalate as the rich and powerful take advantage of the proposed law to unlawfully evict the poor and helpless people.
It is quite absurd that people who are supposed to exhibit dignity in society have instead turned out to be land grabbers.
The major purpose of government should be to protect people and their property. This right is stipulated in the social contract theory of governance where persons in a state of nature willingly come together to form a State that would become a neutral arbiter.
According to John Locke, laws could only be legitimate if they sought to achieve the common good. In Uganda, with the entire current land quagmire, where is the common good?
The social contract theory, which is based on democratic leadership, should be reflected in our societies. You cannot deprive people of their livelihood and you expect peace.
The question we should ask is, how just is this the proposed land Bill? A law that is not just is not law, but rather it is a corruption of laws. My humble plea is that our Parliament should not accept to corrupt the law. When we talk about development, nobody hates it. The issue is that people want to be fairly compensated for their land.
Nevertheless, the State should strive to ensure that it tries to sort out the land grabbing criminality if peace is to prevail in the country. There is anger over this matter and that is why we saw many elderly people shed tears when they appear before the land probe committee.
They shed not because they do not know the law, but because they have failed to get justice.
The religious leaders should spearhead the struggle to clean up the land mess in the country because the land thieves are always part of the congregation.
People need to be taught how to live a just life learning from the story of Ahab and his wife.
Patrick Gukiina,
[email protected]
