The myth of land grabbing

Why the president and chief justice are making a mistake of trying to resolve commercial disputes using ethnic lenses

 THE LAST WORD | Andrew M. Mwenda | The Chief Justice, Owiny Dollo, was quoted in Daily Monitor raising alarm bells on the problem of “land grabbing” in Acholi region. “I told him,” Dollo is quoted to have said referring to his conversation with President Yoweri Museveni, “that we previously thought the herdsmen bothering our people [sic] in the region were the original balaalo. But we have discovered that these are the modern-day balaalo. These (modern-day balaalo) in a letter your brother [sic] wrote to you are 15 of your ministers and army generals… I challenged him (the president) as to why he allows his army generals to go and grab land belonging to Acholis [sic].”

I found these statements disturbing. If this quote is correct, it raises many questions about his (and many other Ugandans thinking) about the polity called Uganda. Under the constitution, which all of us are bound to respect (and especially the chief justice), a Ugandan is free to buy or rent land and settle in any part of Uganda. Settlement in any part of Uganda cannot therefore be based on ethnic identity but on national citizenship. But in the quote above, the chief justice was defining land in Acholi region as belonging to Acholis as an ethnic group, not as clans or individuals.

The claim of land grabbing in Uganda is often grossly misused and highly politicised. A neutral observer may think land grabbing means the forceful and illegal confiscation of land from one person (or many persons) by a powerful person, an army general or a cabinet minister, using soldiers without fully compensating the owners or occupants. This is a clear-cut criminal offense and only a part, in fact a small part, of the problem. Most of the land in Acholi has been sold or rented by clans or individual owners to commercial farmers, largely Bahima of Ankole and Batutsi from Kigezi and parts of Ankole. There is sufficient evidence that these are legal and legitimate commercial transactions between the parties.

Yet in our highly ethnicised politics, land grabbing is often loosely used to refer to rich Bahima specifically or westerners generally buying land in Buganda and now in Acholi. It doesn’t matter whether the transaction was legal and legitimate. Opportunistic elites from the local community seeking cheap popularity whip up ethnic sentiments and mobilise key leaders around the cause. They claim that these Bahima or westerners have used their positions in government to make a lot of money which they use to buy land from their ethnic kin who are poor and in desperate need of cash.

There is genuine criminal land grabbing. But if this were really the real issue it would be resolved using police and courts. But because courts in Uganda are slow to deliver justice, and also because they can be compromised by the rich and powerful to defeat the cause of justice, I understand why the President would be forced to intervene directly with an executive order. And one such order was that all balaalo should be evicted from Acholi and sent back where they came from. The order was arbitrary because it did not specify whether the people to be evicted are only those who acquired land fraudulently. The order referred to the evictees by their ethnicity, not by the process through which they acquired the land.

Museveni’s executive order admits there are pastoralists from Western Uganda who have evidence that they bought or rented land from the local community but have not fenced it. So, their cattle destroy crops of their Acholi neighbors. The president orders that these people should be evicted too. But this sounds an excuse. Why doesn’t the President give them time to fence their lands? Besides, assuming an Acholi farmer with cows has not fenced his/her land and they destroy crops of his Acholi neighbors, is he/she to be evicted too by this very logic? If Museveni’s farm in Rwakitura were not fenced and his cows destroyed the crops of his neighbors, should the solution be evicting him or asking him to fence his land?

Contrary to the popular view, most of the land in Acholi on which “modern-day balaalo” are grazing has been bought or rented from the local community in legally binding commercial transactions. The problem in Acholi is the desire by some of its elites to define land ownership in ethno-territorial terms – that land in Acholi belongs to Acholi as an ethnic group and only they have a right to settle there. This takes away the agency of clans or individuals who own land to be free to enter commercial transactions with whomsoever they choose. If this position is accepted, then the biggest complainants should be Baganda. Dollo, like millions of us, lives and works in Kampala. I suppose he owns land and a home in Buganda. Should Baganda accuse him of “grabbing their land?”

I come from Toro region where this debate started. In the 1960s, many Bakiga migrated into the region due to overpopulation in Kigezi. They were few and settled peacefully in the community, adopted Kitoro culture: they became Batoro. Today, some would be offended to be called Bakiga. Then in the 1970s and 80s, Bakiga came in floods and established their own communities – schools, churches, etc., retaining their culture. Batoro began to complain that their land was being taken by Bakiga. Local community conflicts began to erupt. It took the maturity of key political, religious and other leaders to argue against the politicisation of ethnicity and linking land ownership and settlement to ethnic identity. Today, Bakiga live in Toro peacefully. Many Ugandans and non-Ugandans have since flocked to Toro and built resorts. This happened in Bunyoro in the early 2000s leading Museveni to attempt to “ring-fence” elective positions in that region for Banyoro.

I understand that democratic politics incentivises politicians to be very sensitive to identitarian concerns. I also understand that many tend to use identity to win popularity. But this is a slippery slope. In the case of the chief justice and other Acholi leaders, their concerns about balaalo have little to do with the act of “land grabbing” but a lot to with ethnic identity. There are many non-Western Ugandans and even non-Ugandans who have taken large tracts of land in Acholi and are doing brisk farming there. These are not the subject of the hue and cry made by the chief justice. The danger is the targeting of ethnic Bahima and Batutsi pastoralists.

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amwenda@independent.co.ug