Thousands face eviction in three Wakiso villages

About 35kms southwest of Kampala lies three villages where more than 5,000 residents have for the past 12 months lived in fear, not knowing whether they will be evicted from their homes.  

A land dealer, Ms Berna Nakato, is laying claim to more than 200 acres of a 1,044-acre swathe of land on which their homes sit. The land located on Busiro Block 53 is where the villages of Busamba, Kinyika-Gayaza, and Ngondwe-Kanziro in Namayumba Sub-county, Wakiso District, are found. 

In December 2022, Ms Nakato was hired by some members of the late Gabudyeri Lubajja’s family to survey the land. Her payment was to be 150 acres carved out of the property. She would go on to buy an additional 50 acres from the family.

READ: Govt puts 30 caveats on contested Wakiso land

Residents, investor  face off over eviction 

Now, she is sub-dividing the land, leaving the locals uncertain about the future; their third party rights to the land as tenants (bibanja holders) under threat in an affair which sheds new light on the ongoing scourge of illegal evictions across mainly central Uganda.

Their fate was already hanging in the balance when the grandchildren of the late Lubajja began fighting over the land. On one side of the family row are Josephine Mpamulungi, Teddy Namusoke and Mathias Mulumba. On the opposite end sits Richard Semitala and Eustarous Ssegantebuka, who hired Ms Nakato.
The Mpamulungi side of the family sued the others in December 2022 at the family division of Makindye Magistrates Court, alleging that they fraudulently acquired letters of administration. 
In November, they applied to the same court to include Ms Nakato as a respondent in the same suit.

In all, there are 1,000 people who are bibanja holders. Those interviewed say they have been subjected to intimidation amid threats of eviction.  
Their troubles have attracted the attention of the village leadership, the President’s representative at the district, police and State House Anti-Corruption Unit (SHACU). 
Several residents interviewed say the officials have not been helpful. Others suggested that they may have taken sides given the seeming impunity with which Ms Nakato is acting.  

In October, the Assistant Resident District Commissioner in charge of Nansana Municipality, Mr Shafic Nsubuga, convened a meeting attended by locals where he read a report compiled by SHACU about the wrangle.
The SHACU report said Ms Nakato had a genuine claim to the 200 acres; purported to cancel the mother land title, while at the same time calling for protection of the tenants. 

Two weeks later, Ms Nakato arrived and began carving up the land to the dismay of tenants like Mr Cosmas Kizito.
“The biased SHACU report legalised Nakato’s stay on our land and she has now wreaked havoc on us. She is destroying our gardens by forcefully carving roads through,” Mr Kizito told Sunday Monitor. 
Mr Ssalongo Ssebulime, another affected resident, appealed to the President for help. 
By press time, roads had been cut through an estimated 10 acres in Ngondwe alone. 
 
Nakato speaks
In an interview, Ms Nakato defended her actions, saying she had reached an agreement with the affected locals and fully compensated them.
“I am the owner of that land. What I am doing now is to negotiate with the bibanja holders a win-win solution and we are sharing 50 percent equally and I process the titles for them but at the Ministry of Lands you cannot process a title without having clear roads and it is what I am doing,” she said. 

She also showed this reporter what she said were consent agreements allegedly signed by affected persons. Residents whose crops have been cut down to make way for the roads have been paid between Shs150,000 and Shs8 million, she said. 
“And we first consent in front of the village leadership [before paying for the crops],” she said.
Sunday Monitor spoke to locals Geoffrey Kato, Rose Zawedde, Wilber Nakabaale and others, who confirmed being paid for the lost crops. What is not clear is where this leaves their claim as bibanja holders considering that what seems to have been compensated for is the crops.
 
How it began
In 2010, Mr Semitala, Mr Ssegantebuka and late Regina Nambolanyi reportedly quietly processed letters of administration of the estate without consulting other family members. 
 
Mulumba said matters got out of hand in 2020 when Nambolanyi, who had for long blocked her co-administrators from selling, died. 
“Upon her death, the two remaining administrators applied to amend the letters and cancelled her leaving only them on the said land. They started selling it but remember we had secured caveats on it which made it difficult for them to process titles for the new purchasers,” he said. 

The two administrators, he said, then started looking around for someone who could help them remove the caveats and that is how Ms Nakato came in.
“Nakato expeditiously removed the caveats… then carved out different pieces of land to some beneficiaries and so many other people who the family doesn’t have any idea about. Nakato and her workmates carved out land measuring approximately 300 acres for her services,” he said. 

It was as Ms Nakato was taking over what she now considered to be her land that the Lands minister, Ms Judith Nabakooba, took an interest in the matter given the thousands of people who risked being evicted. 
On December 20, 2022, the minister sent a team from her ministry led by Mr Moses Ssekitto, the acting principal registrar of land titles, to meet the affected people. 
At the meeting, which was attended by all sides and the district security leadership, Mr Ssekitto informed the locals that he had placed 34 caveats on the contested piece of land and stopped any further activity on it. 
But in what looks like open disregard for the authorities, Ms Nakato has continued forcing people to surrender part of their land, leading to a security crisis. As tensions mounted, Ms Nabakooba called another meeting on May 21 where she also ordered that all activities on the land be stopped, directed SHACU to investigate and promised to mediate. 
 
SHACU report
The SHACU report which cleared Ms Nakato’s stay on the land was presented to locals on October 26. Not everyone was convinced with the findings though, with some saying SHACU’s investigation was not done objectively because they considered only one side. 
The spokesperson of SHACU, Ms Mariam Natasha Oduka, admitted that they used one title that was produced by the Semitala-led faction because the Mpamulungi’s failed to produce theirs. 

“It is a lie for Mr Mulumba to say that we did not ask for his title. Actually, we did so and he did not give it to us. He is free to bring it to us because he was supposed to submit it to the investigators, which he didn’t and we were forced to act on only one title that was brought by the other faction,” Ms Oduka told Sunday Monitor.

The mother title, which this publication saw, was registered on August 29, 1988, in the names of the late administrator Edward Kinagomba Ssentamu Majwega. It was after his death that Semitala, Ssegantebuka and Nambolanyi processed a special title upon reportedly claiming that the original one got lost. 

Semitala told this newspaper in September that whatever was done was agreed upon by family members. 
“That boy’s [Mulumba] aim was to see that we don’t also benefit but I want to assure you that whatever he is saying are lies. The family members unanimously agreed and we shared the land, people are happy,” he said. 
“What crime did we do by paying Nakato with part of our land? We agreed as a family because we did not have the money and yet she had done the job well,” he observed further.  

This is, however, contrary to Section 333A(1) of the Succession Act, which states that, “A person who acts on behalf of a beneficiary of an estate in any matter shall not acquire any part of the interest of the beneficiary in the estate as payment for the services rendered”. 

Mr Semitala also did not explain why the family did not give the bibanja holders a chance to buy themselves out. 
Numerous attempts to reach minister Nabakooba for comment were futile.