How Museveni’s big mistake became a rich lottery (Part 2)

He also spoke of a good chap in Kapchorwa who is growing so much barley, he’s run out land. He alone supplies a beer company with 80 per cent of its barley!

The response to the first part of this column last week, “A Revolution Museveni Didn’t Plot Is Happening In Uganda’s Bushes” caught me totally by surprise.

It received the kind of excited responses usually provoked by a controversial political or social column. The first article reported that rich Ugandans are running with their money and opening maize, matooke (banana) and other food farms bigger than the ones for sugarcane and tea.

And, as a result, there are showrooms selling new tractors and implements propping up all over the place – very “unUgandan” things.
In a Twitter post, Denis wrote (rendered here in regular English): “If you ever drive to Arua, you will be amazed by the number of tractors you will see on the roadside just after Karuma before Pakwach.”

From Ronald: “Speaking of tractors, in Amuru a client who needed to sell off five old ones had 10 bids for each tractor. Pleasant things happening.”

The Independent chief Andrew Mwenda called to reveal that a mutual buddy of ours, who used to be a worthy journalist at The Monitor, moved to work with DFiD, before ending up as a fellow at Harvard University, returned and headed straight to the fields in Nakasongola where he is now a designer farmer.

He also spoke of a good chap in Kapchorwa who is growing so much barley, he’s run out land. He alone supplies a beer company with 80 per cent of its barley!

What the hell is going on? I think we are seeing the fruits of the 1988 dismantling of the State produce marketing boards that was overseen by James Wapakhabulo, when he was minister of Cooperatives, and the near-crazy liberalisation of the agricultural commodity market in Uganda.

It was painful, and even devastating to groups in places like Ankole, where the Banyankore Kweterana Cooperative was an economic powerhouse, and Masaka. For President Yoweri Museveni, there was the additional benefit that the demise of the cooperatives scattered the power barons associated with it, allowing the young ruling NRM to supplant them and impose its domination.

That said, the death of the cooperatives also allowed new infrastructure to be built away from the old “traditional crop” (coffee, cotton, tea) supply routes, and fresh players in agricultural machinery not tethered to corrupting State subsidies to emerge. They are coming into full bloom now.

The other critical factor was the passing of the Land Act (1998). That law did two things, which has had unexpected outcomes. First, it recognised communally-owned land and made it possible to title it. Secondly, it provided that if one had lived on registered land unchallenged for 12 years or more, then it was theirs.

President Museveni’s vote-driven orders of recent years for squatters not to be evicted draws its inspiration partly from this latter provision. Mwenda’s view of this is that Museveni’s interventions were potentially harmful to the growth of the commercial agriculture I have described, because it introduces uncertainty.

I agree with him about the uncertainty, but take a different view on its effect. The title of my column last week, “A Revolution Museveni Didn’t Plot Is Happening In Uganda’s Bushes” was imprecise, I must concede. Museveni has played a key role in the current rush of money into agriculture; just that it was not the way he intended.

Both the 12-year-squatter-takes-it provision of the 1998 Land Act, and Museveni’s recent incitements of land encroachers to stay put, actually created a positive disruption.

Absentee landlords and owners of large tracts became afraid that they would lose their land. That all squatters had to do was go and live there, and Museveni would fight for them to stay put. This forced Ugandan landowners, largely a conservative lot, to do something unthinkable – lease their land to other people to farm or raise cattle.

The delayed effect of the 1998 Land Act, and Museveni’s populist anti-capitalist pro-squatters orders, had the effect of a land tax – something that, ironically, his government has resisted. It finally freed investors in land from the burden on ownership.