The Weekly Observer (Kampala)
Robert N. Kizito
8 October 2008
A lot has been said and written about the Land Bill. Save for the vulnerable groups, the evictees and potential evictees fall in four broad groups, three of which may be called innocent.
Years prior to the 1900 Buganda Agreement, my ancestors opened up a chunk of land on which they settled at Ssunga, Masaka District. This I proudly call my ancestral home.
For parties to the negotiations, my ancestors did not exist and by the stroke of a pen the agreement made them, like many others, squatters on their own land.
Descendants of such squatters are vulnerable to eviction anytime. We are the majority Baganda and constitute the first category of evictees and potential evictees.
The injustices of the agreement aside, at Ssunga my people, just like other squatters elsewhere, lived happily, enjoying uninterrupted occupancy of their bibanja. But times have since changed and that enjoyment and happiness is now under serious threat.
Previously, Ugandans stayed more or less in their communal confines. Now they are more cosmopolitan and have moved on to live where they choose, throughout the country. The population has itself multiplied more than fivefold in my own life time.
Rapid social economic transformation, especially in the more recent past, has since translated into unprecedented demands for land for commercial agriculture, industrial, domestic, wildlife and other purposes, including roads and other infrastructure.
Recent demands for land have inevitably seen its price skyrocket, giving it new significance as a valuable possession. For the landless and aspiring investors with the means, it is a most important acquisition, whether free of squatters or not.
Indeed squatter settlements or Bibanja have since shrunk in relation to population growth. Naturally descendants of squatters and other people moved on to settle, with permission, on land belonging to the first land owners and/or "the new landed" that bought it from the original beneficiaries.
This created another category of Bibanja holders or "innocent squatters", just like any other squatter, regularly taking presents to the landlord or his agent in form of the best goats, fowls, food, beer and other items.
Some of the land bought from beneficiaries of the 1900 Agreement was presumably to be held in trust for different categories of Baganda.
Selling land to "innocent purchasers", including "foreigners" is, therefore, not a new phenomenon as Buganda adopted a more open policy. Evictions with impunity are probably not new either. In both cases only the scale and nature may be different.
The other category of squatters includes "foreign" labourers who came to work on our land and look after our cattle at the time when Buganda's political economy was the strongest and freest in the entire sub-region. Even the poor had some labourers who, if need arose, would be paid by way of food rations from the garden they worked - okusaka.
Nevertheless, their contribution to Buganda's economy can not be underestimated. It probably compares to that made to South Africa's economy by immigrant miners from the neighbouring countries that were recently the victims of xenophobic rejection.
But midway during Idi Amin's regime, the labourers stopped coming in droves to Buganda. The shilling had dipped in value and it stopped to make sense for them to come or stay on and work in Buganda.
Buganda's rural economy is yet to fully recover from this labour shortage/exodus as the youth have failed to fill the vacuum.
Indeed, some elderly Baganda today are reluctantly resigned to selling their land because "after all, children have failed to till it and will in any case sell it soon after we die".
The labourers were allowed or settled themselves with tacit consent on the fringes of villages and commercial farms they worked. The descendants of those who chose to stay are today some of the evictees and potential evictees.
There is yet a fourth category but which is not very innocent. Some people simply settled on any vacant land they found since the turmoil of 1966 and beyond. The turmoil occasioned the first major breakdown of the land system and the socio-political and socio-cultural order and organization in Buganda since the European and Arab interference.
Meantime, despite many odds, my father, thanks to good education and hard and smart work, was able to make some phenomenal social progress, among other things, buying land some of which has since passed on to me.
I have also bought land and bibanja in different parts of Buganda. I am, therefore, both a "legitimate and innocent" land owner and a "legitimate and innocent" squatter, including on my ancestral land where we bury our dead.
Given this background, it is cheeky and scornful both of landlords and especially evictees, to assume that past customary practices and legislation is still enough to regulate relations between landlords and squatters.
What we need is not dismissal of the land bill but proposals on how it can be improved or amended to make it more equitable for all parties concerned taking full cognisance of the historical and present circumstances.
What I need today is protection as a landlord from my squatters and as a squatter from my landlords.
Robert N. Kizito, The writer is a retired journalist and business executive.
Copyright © 2008 The Weekly Observer. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
Read comments. Write your own.
