Justice Bamugemereire Exposed

Justice Bamugemereire Exposed

The government-owned newspaper, the New Vision is at it again as it publicizes warnings to
owners of idle land to quickly develop it into something or else risk forfeiting it to the State to
use it in the public interest.

Yet I see a large piece of prime land right here along Nile Avenue just opposite Dr Sudhir
Ruparelia’s owned Kingdom Building which has been lying there idle for years as the ruling
NRM party struggles to find money to develop the same into its headquarters. If I may ask, “Why doesn’t the government make use of its own land lying idle throughout the country to purportedly develop into things in the public interest?  Is it because such land isn’t prime land and therefore can’t attract good money should one choose to exchange it for money as that one located, for example, in Buganda? Or what?

Public eye and the hidden meaning

Experience has taught me that when leaders want something and want it badly, they will devise a
project and deftly make it appear like it is intended for the benefit and for the and in the interest of
the people as a whole whereas not. Take the recent and vivid example of Lady Justice Catherine Bamugemerire.  When President Yoweri Museveni appointed her to lead the Commission of Inquiry into the sticky issue of land, everyone else jubilated, thinking she was going to fix the problem of land
grabbing as she had been appointed to do so. Yet as it turns out, that was absolutely another political gimmick whose real intentions are fortunately currently unfolding before our own eyes.

Instead of fixing the problem of land grabbing, Justice Catherine Bamugemerire used her position either intentionally or not, to instead legalize another form of land grabbing but without of course, expressly stating it directly for all to see and oppose. But supposing she doesn’t know already, Justice Catherine Bamugemerire used her commission or was used, whatever the case, to create a pass for the government to score its hitherto much desired but elusive offside goal of taking people’s private land with much ease. It doesn’t matter that what Bamugemerire made easy to be grabbed by the government was idle land since even idle land is someone’s land. 

“Is This Signaling A Tale” Of Kyerondera Taba Mubbi

Come to think of it. The fact that Mr. Yoweri Kaguta Museveni Tibuhaburwa’s land is idle because he chose to go to the bush to liberate his people from bad people like Idi Amin Oume, doesn’t by itself or in itself automatically grant Mr. George Bamugemereire the right to take up Mr. Yoweri Museveni Kaguta Tibuhaburwa’s land just because that land is idle. Justice Bamugemerire can teach me if I am wrong, but I want to believe that merely because a particular piece of land in Kayunga is idle it doesn’t by itself and in itself change such land’s ownership from owner A to owner B. I cannot be said to be entitled to Mr. George Bamugemerire’s cars merely because they are lying idle in the garage and yet I want to use one of them to deliver materials for the construction of a public health center and hence to provide a public good. 

On a serious note, Buganda’s learned Attorney General, Owek Chris Bwanika is on record teaching us about how one doesn’t discover land like Speke discovered the River Nile in Jinja and then one proceeds automatically to claim it because kyerondera taba mubbi. The best way Justice Catherine Bamugemerire should have assisted her friends in government to acquire private land whether for themselves or for the public good as they claim, should have been to remind her friends in government to follow what the Constitution commands to be followed in such kind of situations and scenarios rather than resorting to the use of guerrilla tactics in a situation and in an environment where there is none going on at all. 

The Genesis of Land Grabbing

You see during guerrilla war situations; fighters are entitled to spoils of war[omunyago] but those things stop applying immediately after one gets to power in which case the legal regime as stipulated by the law and Constitution of the land themselves must start automatically to apply. Schemes by the current National Resistance Movement [NRM] government to take people’s private land are as old as President Yoweri Museveni’s initiated 1995 Constitution of Uganda. Then, an effort was made to make it easy for the government to take up private land by merely identifying a piece of private land and then declaring it wanted by the government for public works. The government Chief Valuer was then to be used to value and attach a price to that particular piece of land. In case the owner wasn’t comfortable with the price set by the government valuer, then his or her money would be placed in an escrow account and then the government proceeds to use the land as the owner fights it out in Uganda’s government’s unreliable courts.

Thank God who created the Constituent delegates with a spine, integrity, principles, and a sense of
shame and nationalism, such kind of nonsense failed to see the light of the day during the debate and promulgation of the 1995 Uganda Constitution. Yet those who made that Constitution earned merely allowances per sitting and transport refund from home to Kampala during the time they would turn up in town for debates leading into the promulgation of the final Supreme law of the land as we know it today.

Question of eviction?

Had the MPs of today been the ones in charge of the Constitution-making process, they would have, no doubt, absolutely disregarded and ignored the interests of their constituents and the country at large, inserting such a bad clause in the Uganda Constitution for the sake of their stomachs. As he launched the 1995 Uganda Constitution, true to form, the president made it clear that while it was generally a good piece of the Constitution, he was not comfortable and pleased with its makers for having made it difficult for the government to access public land. The president stated publicly then that should a chance present itself in the future he was going to revisit the position set by the Constitution-making body on the question of land.

True to form, the president has since sponsored many schemes including an attempt at amending
the Constitution itself especially with the view of targeting the mailo land tenure system which is excusably and admittedly very cumbersome to unlock for the government’s confiscation. Another of such scheme was an attempt to turn bibanja holders against the landlords with the view of weakening them and with the view of finally forcing them into giving up their land after failing to secure it against bibanja holders who outnumber their landlords by very large numbers.

The appointment of Dr Sam Mayanja, a sworn opponent of the Mailo land tenure system and a well-known lawyer of the president was itself evidently intended to boost the government’s campaign of making it possible for it to take up people’s private land with ease. As can be expected, Dr Mayanja has since his appointment made it his business to attack Mengo, the original church faiths, and other big landlords in Buganda, depicting them as banyunyusi[exploiters] who have no business owning land since they allegedly got it for free from the White oppressors. As if the government he himself represents never got its own share of land from the so-called White oppressors during the much-maligned 1900 Buganda Agreement.

If you have just landed from planet Mars and then listen to Dr Sam Mayanja speaking in the name of and on behalf of bibanja holders, you can easily be fooled into thinking that he is actually a fair and just man not to mention a true Born-Again practitioner as he passionately claims he is. Let me unmask Dr Mayanja for you in order for you to understand who really, he is This is a man who can evict landlord A in Mpigi with the vigor of Samson. and simply shamelessly look on with the I-don’t-care attitude of a sheep being led to the slaughterhouse as landlord B is evicting people making up five villages in Kyankwanzi. Yet this is a true story. Dr Sam Mayanja failed to do anything in the case of landlord B merely because she was the widow of a former military General. That military General was of course a friend of the boss of Dr Sam Mayanja referred to as President Yoweri Museveni Kaguta Tibuhaburwa. 

President Yoweri Museveni himself claims to be a champion of the bibanja holders. He abhors the evil group at Mengo for evicting his beloved people known as the bibanja holders. He even threatens to go back to the bush at such an advanced age to liberate his people from the evil group at Mengo. Yet the same man failed to do anything just like Dr Mayanja did, towards restoring the people evicted from the five villages in Kyankwanzi by landlord B.  But he did everything including sending Dr Mayanja in full force to Mpigi to restore squatters on the land owned by landlord A yet that man had duly compensated squatters, unlike landlord B of Kyankwanzi.

Museveni’s government itself doesn’t entertain squatters settling on its own land yet he won’t hesitate to secure them in case they are found settling on private land in the interest of milking them for political capital. In the final analysis, while it’s not entirely a bad idea for the government to take up private land, that should only happen after the government has paid the landlord fully what is commensurate to the land to the land targeted for seizure. That is what the Constitution of Uganda envisages when it states that the right to property must be protected at all times except in situations where the government is desirous of acquiring such land in public interest in which case the proper principles as laid down in the Constitution must be followed from A to Z before such land can change hands from the private owner to the government.