Kayunga: A hotbed of land wrangles

Kampala

President Museveni spent Wednesday in Kayunga District chiefly to find a way of resolving quarrels between land owners and tenants, less than a month after police chief Kale Kayihura visited Sembabule District on a similar mission.

The President’s visit to Kayunga was on the invitation of Ms Aidah Nantaba, the state minister for lands. Ms Nantaba is captured in a video by the local Bukedde TV channel posted on You-Tube asking the President to reassure afflicted tenants in Kayunga of his support and food supplies, to which the President answers in the affirmative.

This incident is the latest demonstration that Ms Nantaba has the President’s ear and is willing to take on “land grabbers”, which tenants like very much.
She has, therefore, won over the hearts of many who she has protected from eviction or restored to their land in recent months. But she has also been reviled by landlords, who accuse her of inciting the tenants against them.

Ms Nantaba’s actions have also attracted a dozen of court cases filed by landlords, sending fears through the Attorney General’s chambers as to what would happen if the government were to lose the cases and be ordered to compensate the affected landlords.

Mr Moses Karangwa is one of the embattled landlords in Kayunga. He says he bought a chunk of land at Kinamawanga, Bbaale County in Kayunga and compensated the tenants he found there, but that Ms Nantaba later reportedly ordered the tenants to return to the land. He has gone to court.

Tenants complaint
The tenants, on the other hand, say they were paid very small sums in compensation for their plots, some say as low as Shs500,000. They also claim that Mr Karangwa, the ruling NRM party’s chairman for Jinja District, is just an “agent” of bigger people in the government. Emboldened by Ms Nantaba’s support, the tenants now refuse to leave the land and are potentially violent.

Ms Nantaba, who is the Kayunga Woman MP, chairs a committee appointed by Mr Museveni in February to stop illegal evictions of tenants and return those who were illegally evicted back to their plots.

She inherited a job many had done before with limited success. Her committee took over from another State House-based one chaired by Ms Gertrude Njuba, which was also preceded by another committee appointed by the President to counter the Buganda King’s Central Civic Education Committee (CCEC) led by Mukono Municipality MP Betty Nambooze.

CCEC’s actions were born out of fears by Buganda Kingdom that proposed amendments to the land law were meant to facilitate land grabbing in Buganda. Mr Museveni, on the other hand, argued that the law needed to be strengthened to better protect tenants from eviction. The amendments were passed in 2010.

But evictions continued, especially in central Uganda and the oil region, especially Bunyoro. In 2001, for instance, Mr Museveni banned land deals in Bunyoro as a committee he appointed carried out investigations. It has never published its findings.

Land wrangles in the oil region were thought to be fuelled by speculation, with buyers hoping that oil would be discovered under their titled land.

Kayunga tenants, landlords clash

Kayunga has been the scene of intense land wrangles for years. In 2009, a landlord was burnt to death by people who accused him of attempting to displace them from their land. Amidst the chaos, police deployed there to contain the violence. But it did not abate.
About a year ago, at least 20 landlords said they were fleeing Kayunga after tenants threatened to attack them.

This came after a landlord in Busaabira and Kyamugongo villages, Mr Paul Mutabaazi, effected a court order and demolished houses of nine tenants with the help of police officers, rendering them homeless.

The angered tenants accordingly ranked Mr Mutabaazi “number one” on their “wanted list”. Kayunga is one of the places in central Uganda with fertile soils. It borders Lake Kyoga to the north and some areas were still heavily forested until recently. But the potential for land-related violence in the area is high, just as it is in many other places.

Mr Kintu Nyago was on the President’s committee that mobilised bibanja holders (tenants) in the lead up to the land law amendments of 2010. Mr Nyago says the “definitive” solution to the land question, particularly where mailo land is concerned, is for the government to buy out land lords and let tenants gain control of the land.

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