How six surveyors survived lynching

Six  surveyors and a landlord on Tuesday survived lynching by angry tenants in Nawandagala Village, Kayunga Sub-county in Kayunga District, who accused them of trying to grab their land.

 After the surveyors’ narrow escape, the tenants turned their anger on the former’s vehicle, registration number UAQ 208M, and vandalised it and later tried to set it ablaze, only to be barred by village leaders.

 Ms Rosette Sikahwa, the district police commander, said the area village chairperson, Mr Ali Baliza, has been arrested on charges of inciting violence and malicious damage to property.

The land in question belongs to 70-year-old Ali Ddamba and measures 200 acres.

According to Mr Yasiin Kamulegeya,  a councillor representing Kayunga Sub-county, it all started when  six surveyors in company of the landlord, Mr Ddumba, on Tuesday at around 11am arrived in Nawandagala Village.

“They parked the vehicle and disembarked with their gadgets used in land surveying. However, some sitting  tenants on the land in question who were attending a funeral in the village saw them and informed their colleagues who also mobilised and abandoned the funeral and attacked them,” Mr Kamulegeya explained in an interview on Wednesday.

Mr Ddumba said he had hired surveyors led by Mr Godfrey Malobo from Mukono Zonal land office to open boundaries of  his land in order to transfer its ownership from his late father’s  name, the late Ezefania Ddumba.

Another witness said when the landlord and surveyors saw the mob, which was wielding sticks, stones and machetes, they sensed danger and tried to flee the scene only for the landlord to be captured and held hostage for some minutes as they beat him up.

He was only saved by village leaders, who restrained them and set him flee.

The surveyors abandoned their vehicle and fled into a nearby bush and coffee plantation as they were pursued by angry residents.

The angry mob using stones shattered the wind screen and windows of the vehicle and also cut the tyres.

The wreckage is now parked at Kayunga Central Police Station.

Later, the police arrived in the village to save the surveyors but they could not trace their whereabouts.

Mr Ddumba, who this reporter found at Kayunga Central Police Station on Wednesday, said he had held many meetings with his tenants to inform them of his plan to open boundaries of the land and thought they had accepted.

“I can’t evict more than 200 tenants, I want to open boundaries and the deputy RDC wrote a letter to area leaders, informing them about the exercise,” he said.

Mr Ddumba accused some local leaders of inciting tenants into turning against him.

DPC Sikahwa said the police are still investigating the incident promising that more arrests of people who took part in mob action would be arrested.

Trend

Kayunga District has in the last two decades been a hotbed of land wrangles and in 2010 this culminated into the burning to death of a landlord in Makukulu Village, Kayonza Sub-county, by his tenants after he attempted to sell off the land on which they lived without their knowledge.