Monday 28 July 2008

THE LAND ISSUE IN UGANDA: BREWING YET A NEW CONFLICT

Once again Uganda is awash with tensions over the controversial land issue which in fact is brewing a possible bloody conflict in Uganda

For close to six months now, there have been hostile discussions concerning land in Uganda. These as a result of Government’s suggested amendment to the Land Act 2007. The main sticky point to date has been that the fact that Land Amendment Bill seeks to protect tenants from being evicted from land they have lived in by their landlords without the notice of the Minister.

The reason why this is a sticky issue is because it will mainly affect the Baganda who are in the central location and capital of Uganda where the fertile is and where majority of the land is owned under tenancy system. Secondly if this Amendment passes through in parliament, majority of the Baganda risk loosing their land which has been occupied for long time by people from other parts of the country since the land is in the central business region of the country.

The Baganda have not of course taken this lightly. They are up in arms against the current government with the Buganda Kingdom being the central mouth piece of Buganda concerns with some Members of Parliament coming from the Buganda region.

The recent incidents showing the stand off between the government and Buganda Kingdom have been arrests of three Buganda officials who were conducting civic education on the proposed land amendments. The Officials were accused in relation to allegations of acquisition of illegal guns, inciting violence and secretarianism. Since the arrested persons have been critical of the proposed land law, and vociferous in demanding for federo against the declared intentions of the state, their arrest raises eyebrows.

The youth have taken to the streets. Incidents of violence have already broken out from some parts in the central region in resistance to the arrests of the officials and what is believed by the Buganda Kindgom as an affront on the Baganda. This is exacerbating the existing ethnic tensions in Uganda and brewing a possible ethnic clash.

Ancient animosities threaten an east African country yearning to be modern

A grumpy kingdom
Jul 24th 2008 KAMPALA
From The Economist print edition

ONE feature of Uganda is the persistence of its five Bantu kingships. They have no formal political power but centuries of powerful tradition behind them. Foremost among them, or so its subjects crow, is the kingdom of Buganda, from which the modern state of Uganda takes its name and whose people, the Baganda, were once the most numerous and powerful. For many years, however, they have felt unfairly treated—and are becoming ever-more-hostile to the 22-year-old regime of President Yoweri Museveni.

Once again, land is a burning issue. The now ghostly realm of the Baganda takes in the fertile lands in and around the capital, Kampala (see map). The Baganda number only 5m of Uganda’s 31m people, but are proud and prickly about their past. They say they were never conquered by the British, but entered voluntarily into a protectorate. Certainly they were favoured with a measure of autonomy. The tensions between their kingdom and the Ugandan state have never disappeared and are now as high as they have ever been since independence.

The Baganda have long nurtured a catalogue of grievances. They cannot forget how their king, the kabaka, was burned out of his palace in 1966 and exiled. King Edward Mutesa, known abroad as “King Freddie”, a former officer in Britain’s Grenadier Guards who was then serving as Uganda’s non-executive president, later died of alcoholic poisoning in London in 1969; some Baganda think he was murdered. After a bloody interregnum during the years of Idi Amin (1971-1979) and the ensuing civil wars, the king’s son, Ronald Mutebi, was allowed to return by Mr Museveni. The idea was to use the kingships (the others being Ankole, from which Mr Museveni hails, Bunyoro, Busoga and Toro) to build national reconciliation and attract educated and prosperous Ugandans back to a ravaged country.

But the Baganda say that Mr Museveni is breaking a promise to give back their communal lands. They claim 9,000 square miles (23,310 sq km) of central Uganda. Mr Museveni dismisses this claim out of hand. He says that the calculations are erroneous, that the claims to title are shaky, and that those who occupied the land for the past few decades should have rights to it. His government says that 420,000 Ugandans with land in the best parts of the country should not have priority over 30m Ugandans who have little or none.

The minister of lands, Daniel Atubo, argues that the Baganda cannot reasonably lay claim to more than 700 square miles. This assertion was applauded by many non-Baganda, particularly the rival Bunyoro, to the north-west. The government is resolved to push through a new land law that would strip Buganda of its communal lands and weaken the hold of all landlords over the land they still control. The Baganda are also furious at a government policy of settling pastoralists from other parts of the country, along with their cattle, in Baganda villages.
Some fear that this could lead to war. Several young men filing out of Buganda’s Parliament building in Kampala on a sunny Saturday afternoon say so. “The government has squeezed the kingdom too far,” says one, waving a tract on Baganda land rights. “It’s time to fight,” says another. The potential for outbreaks of ethnic violence of the kind seen in Kenya after last year’s disputed general election is high; in some districts, fighting has already been reported. Aggrieved Baganda may target pastoralists and other poor non-Baganda with nowhere else to go.

Even if violence is prevented, the problem of how to settle and protect the displaced poor while not angering the landed would be hard enough. Moreover, Uganda has other big worries. Its population is exploding; in the past half century it has leapt from 6m to its present 31m. Grazing land for cattle is fast running out. In the north, some 1.7m people, mostly of the Acholi tribe, are still displaced as a result of the brutal decades-long rebellion of the Lord’s Resistance Army. Mr Museveni is far from achieving his ambition of turning Uganda into a regional industrial power.
Educated Baganda, especially those in the government, accept that a compromise is necessary if Uganda is to move forward but say land reform must be fair. They complain that some of the disputed land has been dished out to army officers friendly to Mr Museveni. Independent land experts and bankers agree with the government that some of Buganda’s land claims are hard to prove but add that the land law is full of inconsistencies.

By hook or by crook
Mr Museveni may be trying to split the Baganda’s vote before the next elections, due in 2011. Though he strong-armed Parliament three years ago into changing the constitution to let him serve his current third term as president, the latest whisper is that he is bent on having a fourth. Hence the latest grumbling among Ugandans of all tribes (except his own), but especially among the once-dominant Baganda.

Creating a clearer federal structure for Uganda could help, but Mr Museveni is against the idea. Though he has warm relations with the government of Ethiopia, which has championed ethnic federalism, he says Uganda is too complex, with many ethnic groups living together in mixed areas, for such a system to be anything but divisive. Besides, it would mean loosening his grip on power at the centre. The Baganda seem loth to rebel in the near future. But if the 2011 elections are badly handled, Uganda could slide into violence again. And the land issue could all too easily be the catalyst.

Copyright © 2008 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.

Wednesday 23 July 2008

TRACING THE ROOTS OF ARMED CONFLICT IN UGANDA

Uganda is one of the countries that has had a long history of conflict. Conflict has been part and parcel of the lives of many youth in Uganda. Since my child hood, there has been conflict occurring in different parts of the country at any one time.

I want to address in this article a fundamental issue that is a root cause of conflict in Uganda but is often un addressed and not discussed. When discussing the root causes of conflict in Uganda, it is easy to trace it to the colonial legacies, ethnicity and tribalism that has affected national cohesion as well as the materialistic tendencies of leaders that have so far been in power. Domestic violence or conflict is however often not mentioned in such debates.

Every one of us comes from a family and the family plays an important role in determining what kind of human being one will grow to become. As children grow, their perspectives of their society are largely shaped by what their parents tell them and what they see happening in their environments. When male children are told by their parents and communities that they are more superior to their female counter parts; that is the beginning of violence. When such a child grows into a man that batters his wife and does not respect other persons in his communities, who is to blame for the current violence that we see occurring?

Evidence from a national wide study undertaken by Uganda Reform Commission in April 2006 indicates that 66% of Ugandans report that domestic violence frequently occurs in their homes. Records from the Police stations indicate that domestic violence ranks among the highest of the cases reported monthly to these stations. North and Eastern Uganda are the worst affected areas with the highest incidences. These areas are also the worst affected by conflict and poverty in Uganda. Where as poverty and conflict are contributing factors causing domestic violence in homes, the root cause lies in the unequal power relations between women and men built on a culture that subordinates, discriminates and subjugates women in all aspects of life. Women in the Ugandan communities are battered by their partners, denied basic needs, abused, sub ordinated and disrespected. Domestic violence or conflict is any act or threat that is likely to result into physical, psychological, economic or sexual abuse and it us usually perpetrated by men against women.

When children grow up in such an environment, it is difficult to achieve a peaceful community or country. We are all reflections of one another; the armed conflict in the country is a true reflection of the domestic conflicts occurring in the homes which ultimately impact on the larger society.

Time is now however, that the current generation rewrites the history of their families and nation, Uganda. If as a young person I come from a family with a history of domestic violence, I can choose a different destiny by denouncing this bad practice in my own life. By doing this we will all be contributing to changing the destiny of our beloved families and country, Uganda. What do you think?