Govt halts private titles on customary land

The government has paused transactions in customary land in Acholi Sub-region, including conversions of ownership by new buyers to freehold. 
The Lands ministry’s decision follows legal guidance by the Attorney General that such dealings be stayed until ongoing investigations by a government verification committee are completed. 

Mr Kiryowa Kiwanuka, the principal government legal advisor, citing a February 20 Constitutional Court decision, notified the topmost technocrat in the Ministry of Lands not to allow registration of freehold titles on customary land in Acholi. 

“… considering the … judgment … coupled with the Executive Order No. 3 of 2023 [that President Museveni issued in May on eviction of the Balaalo],” he noted in his December 8 letter, “this is to advise that you halt issuance of titles in in the Acholi sub-region to allow the verification committee and customary institutions verify the legitimacy and ownership of land by individuals who have claimed ownership.” 

The court’s determination arose from a 2019 petition filed by retired Justice Galdino Okello and others against the Attorney General, challenging the constitutionality of district land boards in Acholi Sub-region administering degazetted land and former public lands, which previously were customarily owned swathes. 

The Constitutional Court held that “customary institutions have not been stopped or barred by any law from recognising on their own volition ownership of persons under customary tenure or to play a customary role in demarcating land under customary tenure system within their area of responsibility if that is their customary role, before anybody may even apply for a certificate of customary ownership or to convert such recognised land under customary tenure which any person owns under customary tenure into freehold tenure through registration”. 

Based on this decision, the Attorney General in a rejoinder to a November 20 letter from the Lands ministry permanent secretary seeking guidance on whether to process or halt applications to register acquired customary land under freehold, advised that such transaction should for now not be formalised.   
The Constitution, and the Land Act, provide for four types of land holding in Uganda: customary, prevalent mainly in northern and eastern Uganda; leasehold, found mostly in cities, urban areas and government land; mailo, notable in Buganda; and freehold, which is spread across the country.
 The Lands ministry spokesman, Mr Denis Obbo, on Wednesday said they had halted consideration of “hundreds” of applications by new buyers of customary land to convert it to freehold, which is land holding in perpetuity.
 By comparison, customary land is owned communally either by a large family, clan or tribe within recognised norms and customs of a community, meaning no individual holds rights to transact in such land.
 “As a ministry, we don’t take for granted the Attorney General’s advice and he only talked on freehold titles,” Spokesman Obbo said.  “We shall oblige until after the findings of the verification committee are released, but it does not stop us from carrying out the issuance of certificates of customary ownership.” 

Land transactions in mainly Acholi, but broadly northern Uganda stretching from West Nile across Lango and touching Karamoja Sub-region, have turned a tinderbox due to claims that moneyed individuals, working with local accomplices, are irregularly buying huge swathes and displacing thousands of vulnerable indigenous people.

READ:Guidelines on buying that customary land

 Addressing the Balaalo dilemma: A political solution

 Nearly two decades of Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebellion in northern Uganda, during which millions were uprooted from ancestral lands and huddled in Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps, added a new layer of conflict as returning civilians could not locate the borders of their lands or found powerful individuals had grabbed their land. 
The changing land ownership gained national attention with the influx of marauding cattle keepers from western Uganda, commonly called Balaalo, prompting President Museveni in his May 19 executive order Number Three to order them to leave northern and eastern Uganda.
 Implementation of the directive flailed after the President’s brother Gen Caleb Akwandanaho, widely known by his nom de guerre Salim Saleh, intervened on grounds that the planned evictions would be in haste and disadvantage cattle keepers who acquired land in the area legally.  He also reported receiving petition from natives in northern Uganda against the removal of the Balaalo, who Chief Justice Alfonse Owiny-Dollo said were proxies for ministers, military generals and other government bigwigs. 
After months of ping pong, and eviction deadline deferrals, President Museveni guided that nomads who bought and paddocked land, with water on site, would be free to stay but those with unfences swathes vacate on the basis of complaints by residents that the free-range livestock destroyed their gardens, posing risk of hunger and food insecurity.

 The evictions of non-compliant Balaalo, an expulsion codenamed Operation Harmony, began last month, but many of the districts quickly abandoned it, citing lack of resources to hire vehicles to move the animals or establish holding grounds for cattle owners wished to sell. 
The Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF), which alongside police and other sister security and intelligence organisations, detailed hurdles impeding the eviction exercise.   
Col Deo Akiiki, the UPDF deputy spokesman, cited claims of bribery, blackmail and connivance. 

Informers within eviction implementation committees, officials noted, provided information to the Balaalo to evade eviction during the day and return to kraals with their animals at night.   
“The people looking after these cows (due to connivance) run away with the cows and we have to chase them until we get them,” Col Akiiki said, adding, “There is also failure to meet the standards like the four strands of barbed wires, there are farms that are not meeting the standards and they are driving their cows into the neighbouring farms that meet such standards.” 

Unnamed individuals also issued intention-to-sue letters to resident district commissioners, who as heads of security committees in their areas of jurisdiction led the operation.  In addition, a volunteer filed a case in court to challenge the evictions, arguing that it violated the constitutional rights of Ugandans to live or settle in any part of the country.  
However, leaders mainly from Acholi, among them Kilak South Member of Parliament Gilbert Olanya and former Aruu legislator Odonga Otto as well as Chief Justice Dollo and Justice and Constitutional Affairs minister, Mr Nobert Mao, have in one voice said all Ugandans, except the Balaalo, are welcome. 
In answer to our question on why the application of his legal opinion was being restricted to Acholi when customary-related land conflicts are widespread elsewhere in the country, Attorney General Kiryowa yesterday said: “We have general land problems everywhere, but this [guidance] was specific because of a specific challenge that was being addressed in northern Uganda. I have not [formally] received a complaint from another part of the country … we can only act on a particular request…”
Fears have mounted over rising conversion by individuals to freehold of otherwise communal land because the law assigns to a freehold title holder perpetual ownership, including the right to use the land in any way they wish, its sale, rental, lease or disposal at will.
Claims by Acholi leaders that the Balaalo represent interests of untouchables in government have fueled suspicion, prompting Land ministry to clothe itself with the Attorney General’s legal amidst increased demand for freehold title registration on customary land.
Spokesman Obbo told this newspaper that applications they have received for conversion of customary land into freehold number “hundreds”, but non for now will be processed pending the government’s verification team completing inquiries into acquisition of the swathes. 
“… [consideration of the applications] will require the Attorney General to issue us another guidance, we don’t want to do things that are illegal,” he added. 
The land question has remained central to Uganda’s body polity, and one of the country’s intractable post-independence problems, prompting President Museveni to appoint a commission of inquiry led by Justice Catherine Bamugemereire to inquiry into land matters in the countrywide. 
In July 2020, Justice Bamugemereire’s commission which between 2017 and 2019 scrutinised 8,528 complaints from 123 of Uganda’s 145 districts and cities, in a report to President Museveni recommended, among others, that all customary land be titled to stop wrangles.  It also said Mailo land tenure be abolished. 
The government has not implemented any of the commission’s resolutions. 

What others say
Mr John Ssenyonga, a cattle keeper, said he bought 500 acres in Palaro Sub-county in Gulu District where he is rearing more than 200 herds of cattle.
 “Some of us have bought land and are complying with the presidential directive. I beg the community of Acholi to allow those of us who have bought land and are in compliance with the directive by the President to stay,” he said.

 In Pader District, the herdsmen have since occupied areas in Angagura, Atanga, Laguti, Ajan, Latanya, Lapul and Pader sub-counties. The district chairman, Mr Fearless Obwoya, said cases of harassment and land grabbing by the herdsmen have been documented in villages around Aswa Ranch.
 “There are no issues of land grabbing in Pader, except Aswa Ranch land, and we have agreed to evict those indisciplined Balaalo herdsmen.”
 Cases of disagreements and disputes during the eviction exercise, or Operation Harmony, are being mediated by an ad hoc committee led by Chief Justice Alfonse Owiny-Dollo, according to Col Akiiki.  The teams on the ground are mandated only to verify the compliance status of the Balaalo and kick out non-conformists.
 In comments on the operation, Justice Owiny-Dollo said: “If you sold land (to Balaalo), we have instituted a committee that is on the ground to vet, they will come there to establish the clear ownership of the land.”
 He added: “Once we find that you (Balaalo) didn’t buy the land from the right owner, or you bought it without following the customary laws, you will be evicted. For the Balaalo herdsmen who followed all those customary protocols for buying land, they will not be evicted.”

 An earlier Balaalo Verification Committee chaired by Prof Jack Nyeko Pen-Mogi, the acting Uganda Land Commission chairman, in an October report named dozens of the nomads in grabbing land and terrorising locals.
  “Some Balaalo acquired land through intimidation, manipulation, and destruction of gardens, leading to poverty and eventually forcing the locals to sell their land cheaply. They (Balaalo) engage in proxy buying of land, which creates a threat to land ownership rights of the local population,” the authors noted in the report.

 The study conducted between June and August 2023 also revealed that the Balaalo posed a security risk to the regions due to their involvement in illegal activities, among them deploying violence on local communities and encroaching on swamps and other eco-fragile areas.  “Some community leaders, including Local Council [officials] connive with police [detectives] to stifle cases against the Balaalo, further exacerbating the problem. Balaalo bribe these leaders. Some Balaalo are reported to have guns and military uniforms,” Prof Pen-Mogi’s team reported.
  The study covered seven districts in West Nile, five in Acholi, four in Lango, three in Teso, four in Karamoja alongside Kween in Sebei Sub-region.

 The committee’s findings highlighted that the majority of the settled herdsmen acquired land through purchases, but not renting.   It established that only eight percent of the land owned by the Balaalo in north and north-eastern Uganda is titled.