{UAH} Allan/Pojim/WBK: Museveni encounters land ‘mines’ in Buganda

http://www.observer.ug/news-headlines/42437-museveni-encounters-land-mines-in-buganda

Museveni encounters land 'mines' in Buganda

Written by Edris Kiggundu

Created: 05 February 2016

Says Nantaba was dealing with liars
President Museveni got his campaigns in Buganda off to a good start, but his major hurdle was how to deal with the rampant land evictions that have mainly affected the poor, his biggest voting bloc.

Reports of land evictions were common in Mubende, Mityana, Masaka, Lwengo and Kiboga districts. In a region where the dominant land tenure system is mailo, the president's response was two-pronged.

Museveni campaigns in Masaka

First he blamed resident district commissioners (RDCs) and district internal security officers (DISOs) for looking on as the poor were evicted. Secondly, he accused judicial officers of colluding with the rich to throw people off their land.
"I am going to talk to the chief justice about this. It is wrong for these officers who know the law to behave in this manner," he told journalists at Kisozi state lodge on Sunday.
Museveni said that some landlords had deliberately refused to take busuulu (nominal fees) from the tenants. After that, they rush to court saying the tenants have not paid them; therefore, they should be evicted.
Under the current land law, failure to pay busuulu is one of the grounds a landlord can use to evict a tenant. To get around this trickery, Museveni revealed that there is going to be an amendment to the Land Act which will enable tenants to pay the nominal fees at the sub-county.
He said the land problem in Buganda emanated from the 1900 Buganda Agreement where some influential Buganda chiefs, whom he called traitors, were given large swathes of land as a reward for being colonial collaborators.
"In the beginning, 1,000 chiefs were given free land because they betrayed Uganda. They collaborated with the colonialists to fight Kabaka Mwanga and Omukama Kabalega. They were each given eight square miles of land. These people did not have moral right to own this land. They were traitors. 
The problem was that these chiefs tried to exploit the tenants who had settled on their land. When someone harvested three bags of cotton, they would take one. The tenants almost revolted and the colonialists came up with Busuulu and Envujjo law in 1928.

This law made it clear that landlords could not evict people from their land without express orders of the governor. The law also put a limit to how much tenants could pay as busuulu. After this law came into effect, the traitors then realized that their land was no longer as valuable and some started selling it.

Those who bought this land have no problem. Personally, I cannot buy land which has squatters because I do not want to rear people, but cattle. When we made the Land Act, we were entrenching this law with some modifications. We wanted a win-win situation where landlords do not evict tenants but also they retain complete ownership of the land," Museveni told journalists on January 31.

At the same briefing, Museveni also warned some people against encroaching on other people's land, only to turn out and claim it as theirs. He said this is where he got a problem with Idah Nantaba, the minister of state for Lands, after discovering that she was being used by "liars."
"That is what I warned Nantaba about. I found out that some of the people whom she was defending actually were liars," Museveni said, warning that if there is no security of tenure in the country, investors will run away.
Nantaba, once considered one of Museveni's favourite ministers, became famous for controversially reinstating people back on the land they had been evicted from. She has since cooled down.
LEADERSHIP
NRM's other challenge in Buganda is that the region lacks an influential NRM leader who can rally people behind the party the way Rebecca Kadaga does in Busoga or Capt Mike Mukula in Teso. Senior party officials like Moses Kigongo, the first NRM national vice chairman, and Edward Kiwanuka Ssekandi, the vice president, hold little sway in Buganda.
For instance, at the rally in Kiboga town on January 28, Kigongo said he did not need to introduce himself to the people because "mummanyi (you know me)".
But the crowd shouted back: "Who are you?" forcing the hajj to identify himself. Ssekandi, too, is yet to gain superlative in- fluence, even in his home district of Masaka.
The party's mobilization efforts in districts like Mityana, Bukomansimbi, Mubende and parts of Masaka were lukewarm. The rallies were not as vibrant and well attended as those in Bunyoro, Ankole or Tooro.
Buganda has always voted overwhelmingly for Museveni and there are still signs that the presi- dent is popular. Yet the bigger evidence is that the opposition has made some inroads and could eat into the president's support.
In Sembabule, the long-standing dispute between Theodore Ssekikubo, the Lwemiyaga MP, and Sam Kutesa, the minister for Foreign Affairs, reared its ugly head. On February 1, Ssekikubo's supporters clashed with those of Patrick Nkalubo, an independent candidate for Lwemiyaga who is reportedly backed by Kutesa, leading police to fire tear gas.
At Museveni's rally, Ssekikubo later accused Kutesa of fanning divisions in the district and dared the president to rein him in. In Bukomansimbi, where the Democratic Party dominates virtually all elective positions, Museveni nearly "regretted" granting them a district status.
"The leaders in Masaka did not want me to give you a district but when I did, you, instead, strangled yourselves by voting for DP leaders. In most African cultures, we don't cry for someone who has committed suicide," he said.
Buganda region has the highest number of registered voters (4.7 million). Godfrey Kiwanda, the MP for Mityana North and chairperson of the Buganda caucus, told us last week that the NRM is targeting at least three million of those.
ekiggundu@observer.ug

Museveni encounters land 'mines' in Buganda

http://www.observer.ug/news-headlines/42437-museveni-encounters-land-mines-in-buganda

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