Banyoro form associations to fight for their land rights

For more than 5,000 years, people in Bunyoro Kingdom have never had individual ownership of land. Even when the colonial and post-colonial governments introduced and encouraged individual and titled ownership of land in most parts of the country, many Banyoro preferred to continue using their land collectively for the benefit of everyone.

If a person wanted to use any portion of land, they contacted the village local authorities or elders for an allocation for grazing cattle, growing crops or to construct a family house. This communal ownership of land without titles or certificates seemed to work well for the people of Bunyoro and would have probably continued to serve them properly had it not been for the discovery of huge quantities of oil in the area which has suddenly turned the land in the region into a much coveted item.

Enters land grabbing
Land speculators and land grabbers invaded the region and have been using money-hungry youths born in Bunyoro to acquire huge chunks of communal land mainly riding on the loophole of the non-existent land titles or certificates for the communally owned land. The activities of the land “speculators” in the area have brought them into conflict with the indigenous communities who use the land communally.

Hoima and Buliisa have become a beehive of activities. All roads leading to the oil wells are under construction, many people are setting up hotels and accommodation facilities in towns like Hoima, and mud and grass thatched homesteads are slowly developing into trading centres in formerly rural Bunyoro.

Away from these trading centres are huge chunks of land with grassland savannahs and short trees that are favourable for cattle grazing and farming. It is these huge chunks of land that attract land speculators.
With the problem of land grabbing intensifying in Bunyoro, some villages came up with the idea of forming Communal Land Associations with an aim of getting one voice to fend off the grabbers.

Some of the associations formed include Kakindo Communal Land Association in Buliisa Town council, Buliisa District and Butimba Communal Land Association in Kiziranfumbi sub-county in Hoima District.

According to Mr Robert Kyamanywa, the Chairman Kakindo Land Association, they were forced into forming the association when unusual things like many surveyors turning up unannounced in their area and marking some trees with white paint, started happening.

“We asked one group of surveyors what had brought them to our land and they told us that an investor (names withheld) had bought off 472 acres of our communal land and wanted to have a title for it. That rung our alarm bells,” he says.

Mr Kyamanywa says, with such alarming developments taking place on the their land and basing on sensitisation meetings on community and individual land rights of Ugandans facilitated by civil society organisations (CSOs) in particular the National Association of Professional Environmentalists (Nape), they decided to form a communal land association.
Fr Fred Musimenta of Butimba village Kiziramfumbi Sub County in Hoima recounts a landlord who had brought papers that residents sign on confirming that they are the rightful owners of that land upon which each person was to receive Shs150,000.

“We had been sensitised by Nape on how to defend for our rights as a community. We held several meetings in our village and mounted a vigorous campaign against the so called landlord who later disappeared from our community. We thereafter agreed to form a village land association because we know there are many other greedy people intending to grab our land in the Bunyoro area,” he narrates.
Mr Julius Mugungu, the chairman of Kakindo Local Council added that the communal land association has helped them to unite the people and discourage them from attempting to sell their small pieces of land where they have their homesteads and gardens, to land grabbers.

“NGOs such as Nape have helped us to understand the different schemes used by speculators to grab land. So even when somebody comes offering money for our land, we chase them away because this land has been for our community for hundreds of years,“ Mugungu says.

He states that ever since they organised themselves into a land association, they have registered tremendous successes and that they are now helping other neighbouring villages of Kisanse East, Pondiga and Nguedo among others in Buliisa, to start similar associations.

He said, as an association, they have been able to request friendly civil society organisations to facilitate lawyers to go and sensitise the people about their land rights which has boosted the people’s morale in defending their land from grabbers.

Planning to acquire their own title
Ms Alice Kazimura ,the Coordinator of Kakindo Orphans Care, a local community based organisation (CBO) in Buliisa and one of the leaders of the land association says, they are working on a process of acquiring a title for their four square miles of community land and the title will be in Kakindo Land Community Association’s name.

“For us as people looking after orphans in this area, we know the importance of land. If we let the grabbers take our land, where shall we plant crops to feed the children?” she asks.

Mr Allan Kalangi, the Manager of Nape’s Sustainability School Programme says, “What is shocking is that land grabbers in most cases work hand in hand with some government officials in the lands registry. The fact that communities have now decided to form themselves into land associations is a clear indication that they are now much aware of their rights to land as provided for by our Constitution and the government should give them all the necessary assistance and cooperation,” Kalangi says.

He added that the district leadership should also intervene quickly and issue people with customary land certificates as they wait to get proper titles.

mssebuyira @ug.nationmedia.com