According to the Police 2024 annual crime report, a total of 397 cases of land-related crimes were reported compared to 271 cases in 2023, giving a 46.5 percent increase in the crimes reported in this category. Of these, 64 cases were taken to court, 103 were not proceeded with, while 230 were still under inquiry. Historical injustices instigated by the colonialists are being blamed for the ongoing land turmoil in Uganda. Before British colonisation, land was under a customary tenure system, meaning in places like Buganda, it was under the control of the Kabaka (King), who managed it through the Bataka (clan heads).
It was through this system that land was distributed to families and communities; however, following the signing of the 1900 agreement between Britain and the Buganda Kingdom, the land tenure system eroded the Kabaka and chiefs’ rights over the land and transferred such powers under the British monarchy.
Former Prime Minister Kintu Musoke, argued: ‘Countries where land is public are better off; this privately-owned land is a British introduction. Baganda and the rest didn’t know about private land.’
The 1900 Buganda Agreement later created two land systems – Mailo and Crown land; and, although the country was affected by the change, Buganda was particularly impacted by the former system. Mailo land is named for its measurement and distribution in square miles.
The Kabaka, who was previously responsible for the 19,600 square miles that make up Buganda, was now subject to the British land allocation system. Mailo, one of the land systems created by the British, was further subdivided into Official Mailo and Private Mailo. Under the Official Mailo, the British allocated 350 square miles for institutional use under the 1919 Official Estates Act.
The Katikkiro and sub-county chiefs under the Kabaka also held Official Mailo for the purposes of their offices and couldn’t transfer them as personal property. The Official Mailo cannot be sold as it is meant to finance the reigning and future generation of kings; however, it can be leased, meaning an occupant can only use it for 49 years, subject to renewal by the Buganda Land Board (BLB).
The British also allocated land to individuals and institutions like the Catholic Church and Church of Uganda, with 92 square miles under the 1908 Land Law and Registration of Titles Act. The young Kabaka, Daudi Chwa, was also allocated land in his capacity. In this regard, his regents and sub-county chiefs could now own freehold land, meaning they could determine the usage of land in perpetuity and had the right to sell it.
Another category of the land system was Crown Land, which was administered on behalf of the public by the British monarch. This was composed of 9,000 square miles traversing wetlands, forests, hills, and rivers, where no certificates were ever issued.
Chief Justice Alfonse Owiny-Dollo, who was a delegate of the Constituent Assembly (CA), says his grandfather died believing he had land, but in actuality, he didn’t, as the bulk of it had been designated Crown Land during the colonial era. ‘When we got independence, the entirety of that Crown Land became public land vested in the Uganda Land Commission (ULC).’
Private Mailo has been a notable source of land disputes due to its characteristics. Most of the Private Mailo land was inhabited since the landlords preferred areas with large populations because it guaranteed revenue collected from the ground rent paid by the tenants.
The chunk of land was located in different places, making the collection of ground rent difficult and unprofitable. Additionally, there was the issue of absentee landlords giving leverage to tenants to claim ownership. These factors combined have fueled land conflicts as unscrupulous individuals have resorted to grabbing land from the vulnerable at the barrel of a gun. Genuine landlords have also suffered at the hands of fraudsters and their would-be tenants.
Dan Wandera Ogalo, a former CA delegate, says Mailo owners had very large land, but people had already settled on it. ‘The landowner is saying, ‘this is my land and I have a title’, but the person on the land is saying, ‘who are you? That is the grave of my great-grandfather, who was buried in 1924; the one next to him is of my grandfather and then my father. He can show the graves of four grandfathers.’
In 1961, as the British prepared to hand over power and self-rule to Uganda, they returned Crown Land to Buganda for management by the BLB. The status quo prevailed until the 1966 Mengo Crisis, when kingdoms were abolished and what was Crown Land was taken over as public land by the government, ULC, and district boards.
A decree issued by then-President Idi Amin summarily abolished private land. After President Museveni captured State power in 1986 following a protracted five-year guerrilla war, the kingdoms and cultural institutions were restored in 1993; however, Buganda has since demanded the return of its properties.
Dr Rose Nakayi, a senior lecturer at the Makerere University School of Law, says with hindsight, what the Constitution embeds on land seems more like a compromise generated through the constitution-making processes than a consensus.
She says the resulting situation is, therefore, fraught with disputes for a number of reasons, including intrinsic tenurial deficiencies underlying our multiple tenure system, making it difficult to prove disputes over them. ‘What works for one tenure may not work for another, yet the multiple approaches or efforts come at a cost.’ Secondly, she says the registration processes began in the 1900s, but very little of Uganda’s land is registered. ‘Fraud perpetrated in processes of registering land at times breeds land disputes.’
Thirdly, she notes that in some areas where mailo is predominant, the simultaneous claims to the same land by landlords and tenants with occupancy rights is a significant factor, especially in the face of limited implementation of the laws. Nakayi further explains the dwindling available land within the context of an increasing population, a declining moral economy where self-interest overrides others’ land rights; an individual can evict entire villages with impunity.
Responding to the narrative that the private mailo land system has been a notable source of land disputes based on its characteristics, Dr Nakayi says the mailo land is in only a very small proportion of the entire land mass in Uganda and it is ‘ridiculous’ to blame for the disputes in the country where tenures are multiple. ‘Land disputes are a feature of all tenures in Uganda; it is the nature, kind, and extent that differs across tenures. Indeed, for mailo land, the overlapping rights of landlord and tenant is a peculiar characteristic that can lead to land disputes. ‘That, however, does not explain other extraneous factors causing land disputes on mailo land; for example, planting freehold titles over mailo land, issuance of special titles without legal basis, and other factors such as the continuing evictions despite the relatively good legal and administrative efforts on paper to prevent/curb evictions resulting from and leading to land disputes.’
When the NRM captured power and started preparing for a new people-centered constitution, settling the land question was critical. Two issues surrounded the land debate, including whether to make land public or privately-owned, and how to address the historical mess left behind and rampant and unresolved land evictions, especially in Buganda. One of the key issues awaiting the CA delegates was resolving the land question. Justice Owiny-Dollo said: ‘The majority of the land being public continued until the promulgation of the 1995 Constitution that reversed the status quo. When I was coming to the CA, I knew that I had two roles to play – to fight for land and return it to the people and a return to a multiparty system.’
The former CA delegates say they all agreed about changing the public land into private land, with Jack Sabiiti, one of them, saying he doesn’t remember land being a sticky issue of debate. Ogalo, however, says the land issue was contentious with the consensus being not to put land in government much as the President reportedly ‘appeared to prefer land going to the government for purposes of development’.
‘The contentious issue was with those who were saying that land should belong to the government and those asking, ‘where did the government get land in, say, a village deep in Namayingo District’?’
At the end of it all, the reform sailed through.
Justice Owiny-Dollo says: ‘We succeeded with that and by the stroke of a pen, on October 8, 1995, the rural land in Tororo and anywhere ceased to be public land, and now remains what in the minds of the people it has always been. ‘I thought we needed to resolve the land issue; it was actually the main issue that tilted my mind.
I saw it as a great opportunity to resolve the inequities brought by colonialism with regard to land.’ Miria Matembe, also a former CA delegate, says if land belonged to the people, it meant the government had no land and yet the government needed land for investment, among other development projects.
Kintu-Musoke says we are dealing with a very serious problem of private ownership of land. ‘Rwanda where this doesn’t exist is doing very well because the government implements projects wherever it wants and builds roads anytime; but here, building a road in Buganda, particularly, is impossible.’ The 1995 Constitution created four forms of land ownership, including customary, mailo, leasehold, and freehold.
Customary land is owned by communities and is managed according to their norms and usually passed down through generations, Freehold is land owned in perpetuity allowing the owner to use it in any form or sell it, Leasehold is a system guaranteeing ownership of land from 49 to 99 years in exchange for a rental payment, and mailo accords individuals perpetual ownership of land as landlords and allows tenancy in the form of freehold.
But the Constitution had only settled one problem and was yet to address the root cause of the rampant land evictions, mainly a characteristic of mailo land. Justice Owiny-Dollo says he was going further on the issue of mailo land (bibanja holders). ‘You have a mailo title of three square miles (but) you cannot even till one square inch of that land because it is occupied by bibanja holders.
You will die without tilling it, your grandchildren will never till it because of bibanja holders; and if they have to pay you, they pay a token. So, for me I said, ‘let us use the 1995 Constitution to put provisions and get rid of bibanja in Buganda’.’
This is because mailo land is characterised by absentee landlords, an unknown expanse of the private mailo, illegal conversion of the private mailo from being clan-based into family land, and the change of tenure by the tenants on mailo land that turned around to claim permanent ownership. This is partly the reason for multiple claims of ownership over the same piece of land, a situation which was exploited by fraudsters.
Lawyer Peter Mulira, in an earlier interview that: ‘What the people in the Land Office do is to look for this land and when it is valuable, they find a buyer and sell it to him; that buyer spends as much as Shs1 billion corrupting the system.
This kind of person wants to get his money back,’ Mr Mulira said in an interview on October 11, 2021. Christopher Bwanika, the Buganda Kingdom Attorney General, says corruption in the Lands Office and inefficiencies is another factor.
‘The position of Buganda is that instead of focusing on mailo land, its history, and because it is a Buganda issue as the source of the problem is the wrong approach.’
The former delegates to the CA say the solution they sought to address the challenge of the rampant land conflicts was to provide for the creation of the Land Fund under Section 41 of the Land Act, 1998.