The Madhvani quest for Amuru land

GULU

After the guns fell silent in northern Uganda after two decades of civil war, new battle lines were drawn over land.
Rarely does a day go by without the authorities in Acholi sub-region recording cases of forcible evictions, murder and violence related to quarrels over land. By nature, land conflicts are complex and difficult to resolve.

When the Acholi emerged from internally displaced people’s camps (IDPs), they retreated to a plundered backyard, with livestock and other wealth decimated, leaving them with land as the only valuable fallback. Most families were starting from scratch.

With most traditional boundary markers lost due to years of neglect, scrambling over land was the near inevitable result. At last weekend’s dialogue on land and investment in the Acholi sub-region, held in Gulu, undercurrents of a proposal made by the Madhvani sugar barons in 2006 to secure 40,000 hectares of land in Lakang Village, Amuru District, were palpable.

The Madhvani Group wants to establish a sugarcane estate, with backers of the project, especially government officials, arguing that the land in Acholi, after years without being tilled, is fertile and suitable for farming.

However, the project has been greeted with skepticism by local politicians, who point at potential sinister reasons on the side of the government. This project best illustrates the rift over land in the Acholi sub-region.

Speaking passionately at the dialogue, Mr Livingstone Okello-Okello, the former Chwa County MP, says the extent to which President Museveni has meddled into the quest for land by the Madhavani’s is “suspect” and has not helped allay fears of the locals. Allegations of land grabbing in Acholi against Mr Museveni’s household date back to the 1990s when MPs in the 6th Parliament, accused his brother, Gen Salim Saleh of attempting to grab Acholi land using a company called Divinity Union Ltd.

Gen Saleh had suggested that Acholi land could be turned into the food basket of Uganda. Under the proposal, IDP camps were reportedly supposed to be turned into ‘urban centres’ with the people restricted there and stopped from returning to their cultural heritage - the land.
Talks between Mr Museveni and Acholi leaders over the proposal are yet to bear fruit.

“We are not even sure whether there is serious intention to grow sugarcane there [in Amuru]. You can’t say that you want 40,000 hectares in one district, there is no such estate in the entire African continent,” Mr Okello-Okello says.

Mr Reagan Okumu, the Aswa County MP, who has been in the thick of negotiations over the land, insists the locals must be given priority in projects being mooted by investors.

“People argue that land must be given to investors who have capital to develop it and in turn employ the Acholi. Prof Tarsis Kabwegyere told me about Red Indians in North America, who lost everything in the name of development and that Acholi peasants have no option but to face the same,” Mr Okumu says.

The mood in Acholi is for the land to be used as the people’s equity in any investment. No one should just walk in and get land. However, Prof Ogenga-Latigo, the former Leader of Opposition in Parliament, who has since ventured into farming, says the controversy over Amuru land is being used to “misdirect debate on the issue of investment in the Acholi sub-region”.

“That land [in Amuru] is not typical customary land, the fight over it is not about breach of Acholi customary land ownership because that was land which belonged to the Uganda Wildlife Authority,” Prof Latigo says.
The professor is among those who have been accused of hobnobbing with Mr Museveni and the Madhavanis as the protracted battle for Amuru land roars on.

He adds: “The people take claim [on that land] and say this is mine [but the claims are] not founded on custom or registration. That is the only piece of land where you will not displace people from their places of origin that they left during the war.”

Justice Alfonse Chigamoi Owiny-Dollo attributes the controversy over the land in Amuru to the lack of registration of the land which has left a vacuum which is fuelling contests. “Had Amuru land been registered, we would never be discussing it. Customary land without registration is like a citizen without a passport. Customary land can be registered as customary tenure in perpetuity which means that you own it forever till kingdom come,” Justice Owiny-Dollo says.

Justice Owiny-Dollo, a former minister in charge of northern Uganda, explains that the use or the way in which customary land is inherited “is in accordance with custom”. “Customary land does not mean that you cannot put a factory on it,” Justice Owiny-Dollo says.

Promoters of the land give-away say Madhavani will construct much-needed infrastructure projects like roads, health centres and schools while locals benefit from the outgrowers scheme. But Mr Okumu explains that Uganda should be wary of suffering the fate of countries like South Africa, Zimbabwe and Kenya where land disputes continue to threaten stability.

The unhappy precedent of Madhvanis’ Kakira Sugar Works in Jinja, in the Busoga sub-region, does not point to a direct correlation between economic growth and hosting sugar factories. Busoga sub-region still grapples with one of the highest poverty rates in the country in spite of Kakira’s long existence in the area.

Similar contradictions between a large sugar estate and surrounding mass poverty prevail in Lugazi where Sugar Corporation of Uganda Limited plies its trade. After years of socio-economic turmoil resulting from the two-decade insurgency, much of Acholi sub-region is stuck in the twin grips of mass poverty and infrastructural malaise.

Mr Martin Mapenduzi, the Gulu LC 5 chairman, says the region badly needs investments to spur growth through taxation, with Gulu Municipality now collecting only Shs400 million out of a projected Shs700 million last year. “Ojuna Division in Lira Municipality collects more money than Gulu District local government because of the investments there,”Mr Mapenduzi says.

Mr Mapenduzi tries to offer fresh insight by quoting a paper authored by Makerere University’s Prof Mahmood Mamdani, arguing that “land to the east of the Nile was developed as a labour reserve area while that to the West of the Nile was developed as a commodity reserve area”.

According to Prof Mamdani, with the colonial state taxing peasants in northern Uganda, the only way they could get access to cash was to move to the “political south” and work for a wage in plantations, coffee farms or in the police and the army.

Prof Mamdani adds that in contrast, peasants in the political south were encouraged to grow cash crops like cotton, coffee and so on, to get cash to buy the necessities of life.

It seems the search for a reversal of this inequitable dichotomy has only just began in the north where strongly opposed views are now also confronted with the unique tensions resulting from the discovery of large oil reserves in Nwoya District. The view is that a rich vein of oil is sloshing about under large tracts of Acholi real estate – a very tempting prospect.

The word on the street is also that speculators are looking to take advantage of the persisting post-war confusion in rural Acholi to make a killing by stealing the rich lands for what lies beneath. Oil in Acholi could very easily be the fuel that could either spur development of a sub-region denuded of all its past wealth and glory or inflame the simmering conflict over land.

Meeting to resolve land conflict flops

In May, a President Museveni-initiated meeting to break the deadlock over the land-giveaway to the Madhvani Group for a proposed sugarcane estate ended in a deadlock.

The Gulu District chairperson, Mr Martin Ojara Mapinduzi, questioned why the President is insisting that the 40,000- hectare land be handed over to the Madhvani Group. “If it is to grow sugarcane, let the locals do that and then sell it to the Madhvanis,” he said.

Mr Musa Khalil, who spoke on behalf of Acholi religious leaders, reportedly said the government should convince the locals that the project will improve their lives. “There is need for consultations involving the religious, cultural and political leaders and the people so that there is no bloodshed,” said Mr Khalil.

President Museveni, however, said the people opposed to the factories are enemies of the areas they come from. A press statement issued by State House quoted the President to have said, “…modernisation lies in factories…factories act as magnets to the people and this translates into development.”

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