Ignatius Musaazi family, investors fight over ranch

Graders at the disputed land in Nakaseke District. PHOTO/DAN WANDERA
What you need to know:
- The family claims it has owned the land since 1973 while the investor claims government gave them a lease.
The fight over ownership of the 10 square mile Kaaya Ranch in Nakaseke District has taken a new twist with the family of Ignatius Musaazi, who formed the first political party in Uganda during the colonial era, claiming their land was transferred fraudulently to investors.
While the families of late Ignatius Musaazi and late businessman Cranmer Kaaya say they are the rightful owners of the ranch under a lease agreement secured in 1973, Mr Ahmed Moses, one of the directors of Tanzania-based Marwa Farms, said the firm has owned the land since 2015 after purchasing it from Mr Tom Kaaya, an administrator of the Cranmer Kaaya estate.
Tom Kaaya died in 2022. Mr Moses argues that Marwa Farms now owns the land after it also secured a lease from the Uganda Land Commission (ULC) . He, however, did not disclose when ULC gave the firm the lease. Rev Richard Kaaya, a son of the late Kaaya and one of the administrators of Kaaya Ranch, accuses a section of the government departments including the ULC of flouting the land leasing process to change ownership of the land that rightfully belongs to the families of Musaazi and Kaaya.
“We applied to have the lease for the 10 square mile ranch land renewed through the Nakaseke District Land Board. But a fraudulent process that we are now fighting through the courts of law saw the lease handed over to foreign investors through the ULC. Foreign investors under Marwa Farms are now blocking us from utilising our land. We have decided to make our appeal to the President of Uganda to help check the illegalities by the different government officials,” he told Daily Monitor on Wednesday.
Ms Melian Musaazi Kirabo on behalf of the administrators of the late Ignatius Musaazi family, said her family and the family of the late Cranmer Kaaya still own the Kaaya ranch land. “In 2013, the administrators of the Ignatius Musaazi family together with the executors of the estate of the late Cranmer Kaaya applied to renew the lease for the 10-square mile land located at Butebere Village in Nakaseke District. We don’t know about the Marwa Farms that claims ownership of the land.
There was a public hearing organised by the ULC where parties including Marwa Farms failed to turn up,” she explained. Ms Kirabo added: “We appeal for fairness under the constitutional provisions that provide for fairness and equality as citizens of Uganda. Because of the unfair handling of the matter regarding the 10-square mile of land that our families have owned since 1973, we call for a review of all the processes through which the ULC recently handed over a land title to Marwa Farms as new owners despite the existing legal proceedings on the same land.”
But Mr Moses said Marwa Farms took possession of the land after applying for a lease through ULC.
“We have been on this land for the last 10 years. ..We are surprised that we have people trying to sabotage the ongoing projects on our 6, 400 acre-land at Butebere in Nakaseke where we have invested in different projects. We have so far utilised three square miles out of the 10-square mile land. But we are being inconvenienced by encroachers on sections of the land,” he said.
Mr Moses added: “We appeal to the relevant government departments to take this matter seriously to avoid losses by the investment companies.” Ms Daisy Nakandi, the spokesperson for the ULC, said she needed more time to check the status of the disputed land in the registry. By press time, she had not yet provided any new details relating to the Kaaya ranch land row.