Former Constitutional Review Commission (CRC) chairperson of Prof. Fredrick Edward Ssempebwa, says parliament should not pass a law to deny individual land owners the right to prompt and adequate compensation.
He suggested the revival of land tribunals provided they are headed by a person qualified to hold the position of a magistrates. The tribunals according to Professor Sempebwa should be guided by simple procedures that are not adversarial in nature.
The land tribunals have been in limbo because government could not fund their operations.
Professor Sempebwa says he does not see any sane assembly endorsing the proposals as suggested by government.
The government is considering a change in the Land Acquisition Act so that it can compensate the registered land owners prior and also while the infrastructure development process is on-going.
Under the proposal, if the land owner declines the compensation, the money would be deposited at court as the work goes on.
Sempebwa was invited to the Justice Bamugemeriere lands Inquiry to share some of the findings of his commission whose reference also related to the land question.
He says the Constitution as it is now cannot allow protects individuals from surrendering to government without prompt and adequate compensation.
The government during the Constitutional Review Commission in 2001 had made suggestions about the need for it to acquire land for investors from individuals holding large chunks of land.
It then wanted the land for commercial farming and investors. Sempebwa says his commission in a report submitted in 2003 advised against the government’s suggestion.
He says he does not see what the government would put in place in case parliament removed the compensation and prompt payment article in the constitution.
He wondered what the constitution stand would be like in the event that the article was removed from the constitution.
Professor Sempebwa, was one of the Odoki Commission that gathered views for the 1995 constitution.
He says while the debate on land may have changed now, the issues of adequate and prompt compensation may still remain strong or even stronger given the changing value of land as a commercial commodity.
Professor Sempebwa says the situation is not always that the one acquiring land offers fair compensation. He says the land acquisition process will always have some disputes.
The Land Inquiry commission is also probing into how to address the historical injustice over land in Buganda and Bunyoro.
Sempewa says the government’s main pursuit in resolving the land question has been to address historical injustices. But he says there should be other matters that should be taken care off. He believes the debate over historical injustices is decreasing in relevance.
He says land should be addressed in the context of a highly marketable commodity policy whose tenure system should be informed by the national policy for optimal use of land.
Sempewa says it is high time for the county to look at equity to both the landlord and the occupant in case of the mailo land tenure system rather than simply dealing with historical injustices.
He said what should pursued is to have the occupant to pursue the mail interest through consensual means or adjudicated means in case the consensual means failed.
Sempebwa suggests the situation would be different in the case of land held in trust of the people of Buganda by the Kabaka.
The commission has in the past two week heard from several witnesses that the cause of the current land strife is a result of the fact that landlords are forced to take uneconomic rent.
Sempebwa told the commission that the uneconomic rent was also the cause of grievance during the Constitution Review Commission in 2001.
He suggests the need to review the issue of uneconomic nominal ground rent in Buganda if in order to resolve the current strife.
The Constitutional Review Commission report in 2003 had suggested that the rate should be commensurate with value and user but that was not taken into account when the law was amended in 2010.
The other issue that has come up relates to whether Uganda can do away with the several land tenure systems and adopt one across the entire country. One of the witnesses suggested that it could take over three hundred years for Uganda to revert to a single and tenure system.
Sempebwa is of the view that if the country adopts a land plan with in the land policy, it could be speeded up. He says the land planning currently has not taken into consideration how land is to be utilized.
He says the land plan in Uganda like in Vietnam could set the minimum holding for that land.
