Reimagining being, belonging in Uganda

Last week on Thursday, October 27, the Uganda National Academy of Sciences (UNAS) launched its Consensus Study report, re-imagining being and belonging in Uganda: An  enabling framework to foster our sustained development. Participating in this study as a member of the Committee on Equity and Inclusion, as I said that day, was among the best things I had done lately.

As the report was discussed, I hoped that maybe some institutions, be they public or private, will use these recommendations to integrate equity and inclusion in planning, programmes and projects.

The national agenda already provides for equality and equity measures, yet the best available evidence indicates that exclusion and inequality are serious areas of concern.

The report is for another day, today I want to focus on why I felt this study was extremely important, basing on three anecdotes.

Two weeks ago, I received a call from the caretaker at my property in Mukono, an incomplete house really, which I have been building since 2015. He said my neighbours had created an access road and left my house hanging. 

I did not imagine the expression, ‘my house hanging’, until I got to the site. I could have fainted seeing my house indeed ‘hanging’. The road was excavated so deep that my house now stands like a troubled hill far away from below.

The guys said they had followed their boundary on the title, and saw nothing wrong. Long story short, the surveyors came and confirmed that indeed an additional piece of land I bought later had been resold to these people, transferred to them by the same vendor and without ever involving me, created another access road sitting on my then piece of land, now theirs. 

I didn’t know whether to cry or shout.

The surveyor advised that I secure what is remaining of my land, the original piece with a title. My builder added that it was urgent to save my house too with a retainer wall that will cost many millions. 

They told me, from experience, a court case to reclaim my land would bring many years of frustration and cost enough to buy me a plot elsewhere.

This brings me to the second anecdote. I believed them and knew I had to give up because my mother and her sisters have been defending their right to occupy their home of more than 50 years from a family who claim their grandfather had given a portion of it to my grandmother. The court case in Pakwach has dragged for years. My mum and her siblings say this is what has come to kill them. We don’t know how to make this thing go away.

So my next dilemma becomes where to find those millions, urgently. Which brings me to the third anecdote. I call a person I lent money, requesting payback. Suddenly, I was being abused, and called names. I was so confused, shouted back a few incomprehensive things and switched off. I reflected on the circumstance under which the money had been borrowed and felt sad. I never imagined this scenario, refusal to pay and literally telling me to ‘get lost’ with such arrogance, it still makes me cringe.

The person who owes me money, the guys who left my house hanging, and my mother’s neighbours, all have one thing in common, they know that there is nothing I or my mother and her sisters can do. In fact, my aunt was put in jail once for using their land. I still can’t believe that incident either.

It is easy to say it is bad fortune, this is a single case etc. But sitting in the court one day to give my aunt moral support in Pakwach, and the many cases I have heard of people in need of justice, got me thinking if justice is attainable in this country. 

From land dealers who manipulate the system at will, to dishonest individuals who know they will get away with anything because the judicial system is for the most part, dysfunctional in rendering justice, one is left with one choice, to give up, as I was advised.

Whenever the Chief Justice promises to improve things to enable access to justice, I wonder, does he know how bad things are? Does he know, the average Ugandan never tries to get justice because of the experiences of those who try and give up? We are disempowered before the law.

There are multiple stories in each of these anecdotes that people have told me which, makes our situation pitiful. Participating in the consensus study, looking at the data and reading Kwameh Appiah’s ‘the lies that bind’ opened my eyes to many systems of oppression, the lost voices and the politics of belonging.

This work on being and belonging means that we can reclaim some values while recognising the intersection of drivers of exclusion. Social justice and social protection are becoming the most critical issues of our time, if nothing changes. We must indeed cultivate some humane values that allow us to live with and respect one another.

Ms Maractho (PhD) is the director of Africa Policy Centre and senior lecturer at Uganda Christian University.                       

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