The state minister for Lands Sam Mayanja has decried the rampant incompetence and corruption at the ministry of Lands, citing it as Uganda’s biggest cause of land wrangles and evictions.
The minister made the remarks at his office recently after discovering shocking scenarios where officials from the ministry that he leads, were conniving with influential people to do double titling.
“The ministry, our own ministry, which is supposed to keep our records, in connivance, they issued out freehold titles on top of leasehold,” a surprised Mayanja said while meeting various families which had complained to him about unscrupulous individuals who got freehold titles on other people’s leases and were now using police and the military to evict them.
A distraught Mayanja further condemned the judiciary where people run and obtain frivolous court orders which they use to evict others.
“How can we claim to be a democracy when courts are still issuing such [eviction] orders! Something is wrong! We must renew ourselves!” he said.
Mayanja’s comments came at the heels of a recent interview by Buganda Katikkiro Mayiga on Salt TV in which he stressed double titling and corrupt police and court systems as top among the seven major causes of land wrangles in Uganda.
“If you go to the land office with money, you can easily get a title in one day on someone else’s land. This is what must be solved instead of attacking the Mailo tenure system,” Mayiga said.
The Katikkiro equally faulted the court and police system where land cases that take more than 10 years without being decided.
“If we can expedite political cases, why can’t we do the same on land case? Why is the police land unit underfunded?” wondered Mayiga.
FINALLY SEEING THE LIGHT
Mayiga and Mayanja agree that even before we think of land reforms, the government must put its house in order. The Buganda land question has dominated public debate over the past years, with some people, including Mayanja and President Museveni, proposing the removal of the mailo tenure system.
While Mayanja is widely seen as an agent of the anti-Mailo brigade, his recent comments show that more can be done using the existing laws and land tenures to solve Uganda’s land problem.
Buganda has consistently advised that on top of combating corruption and incompetence in land offices, police and courts of law, the country just needs to improve soil fertility, fight land speculators and distance politics from land management.
“I hear people obsessed about mailo land as being the problem. This is not true, we just need to address the issues mentioned above,” Mayiga said.
“For example, people evicting others are using guns owned by government. Why don’t we start by identifying and prosecuting those people that wrongly use government firearms,” he wondered.
The Buganda government has also been vocal against district land boards and Uganda Land Commission for illegally issuing freehold titles on Kabaka’s land, with many titles being counselled in the process.
On his part, Mayanja rallied people to use the traditional ‘Gwangamujje’ method of community mobilisation to attack parliament and police.
