President Yoweri Museveni’s brother, Gen Caleb Akandwanaho, aka Salim Saleh, has denied owning ‘half of Kampala’ city, instead calling for a candid national debate on Uganda’s land question.
According to Saleh, Uganda’s land is a deeply distorted and contentious issue affecting the country’s economic development. Saleh, who chairs the Uganda Development Forum (UDF), said land remains the most important factor of production, yet it is the most misunderstood and mismanaged.
“When we were sent to the field under Operation Wealth Creation (OWC), we found land to be the most distorted factor of production,” Saleh said while addressing the Fourth Uganda Development Forum in Kampala.
The forum, held under the theme “Sustaining Musevenomics: Navigating Uganda’s Economic Future in a Disrupted World”, featured Saleh’s virtual presentation from his tactical base in Gulu, where he has been based for years “to avoid the confusion in Kampala.”
Saleh’s address was informed by technical input from experts, including Amanda Ngabirano, chairperson of the Physical Planning Board. He stressed the need for a proper understanding of Uganda’s land use balance sheet.
“Because land is a factor of production,” he emphasized, “Amanda is asking: do we really understand what to do with land to be able to feed our people by 2040, when we shall be 40 million people?” Saleh warned that distorted land ownership and use disrupt other sectors of the economy.
He revealed that he is currently fundraising to conduct a study on land ownership in Kampala.
“Everybody thinks I own half of Kampala,” he joked. “I think I own a maximum of two acres.” The general also referenced past scrutiny by the Internal Security Organisation (ISO), saying he was well-prepared with answers due to earlier studies conducted on Namunkekera land in Kapeeka.
Saleh owns the Namunkekera–Liao Shen Industrial Park in Kapeeka, which hosts multiple industries.
“We know the stimuli that were used to resurrect the economy, security, privatization, liberalization, return of Asian properties, and so on. But I want this conference to focus on land as a factor of production, and to examine these distortions,” he urged.
He noted that land conflicts are not limited to Buganda but are increasingly affecting northern Uganda as well specifically the ongoing tension over the eviction of balaalo (nomadic herders) from the north.
“In northern Uganda, the issue is land—the conflict between the Acholi and the balalo, or what we call migrant cattle keepers, is about land,” Saleh said.
Struggles of Operation Wealth Creation
Reflecting on his mission to uplift Uganda’s “moneyless people” through OWC over the past ten years, Saleh admitted it has been an uphill task.
“We were told to go and look for people who have never touched money,” he said, referencing the program’s early struggles distributing agricultural inputs like coffee and tea seedlings.
“Statistically, they say we were able to reduce the population outside the money economy from 68% to about 39%,” he noted.
Working Mao and DP
Saleh also addressed recent debate within the Democratic Party (DP) after reports emerged that DP chairman Norbert Mao had invited him to speak at the party’s upcoming delegates’ conference.
Some DP supporters have reportedly expressed discomfort over his involvement. In response, Saleh reminded the public that DP members formed a significant portion of President Museveni’s first cabinet in 1986.
“Sixty per cent of the ministers were from DP. I’ve been arguing with Chairman Mao about what caused the divorce,” Saleh recalled.
“It happened in 1996 when I was in Gulu. I think Mao caused the divorce, he was like fire back then.” He expressed regret over the NRM’s eventual separation from DP leaders with whom they had worked closely.
“And during those ten years of cooperation, Uganda was registering double-digit economic growth. But after the fragmentation, we encountered a lot of issues,” he said. He praised Mao for his current role in the Uganda Development Forum, describing him as his “vice-chairperson in think-tanking.”
“We are doing very good work. So I wish him well at his delegates’ conference,” Saleh added. The NRM and DP signed a cooperation agreement in 2022. Critics have argued that the arrangement primarily benefits Mao and a small circle within DP.
The Uganda Development Forum is Saleh’s brainchild and includes several experts such as former intelligence chief David Pulkol and Dr Philip Idro.
I personally think some cultural practices are obsolete/ backward. If you want to stabilize land use then first teach your people, yes your people to abandon the backward culture of nomadic pastoralism… To prove that is not sustainable, you have resorted to giving them guns…, don’t you think that other people will resort to guns as well ? ( I hate short term zero sum games- how will you sustain this 20 years from now ? ) yet they are the ones invading people in northern Uganda who despite a 20 year war are pulling themselves out of poverty through modern and sustainable practices of settled agriculture.
You are the main disruptor of proper land use, if you were not in Gulu, don’t you think the right ful owners of that land would have kicked the balaalo out ?
I believe in market corrections, nomadic pastoralism is obsolete yet you who claims to teach people how to create wealth is giving it life support.
Do you believe in your heart of hearts that this thing of nomadic pastoralism on some other people’s land is sustainable when you have to ferry people and cows then give them guns is sustainable?
The natives will always be there, don’t you think they will get solutions?
Couldn’t you have just consensually bought/ leased land and allowed those balaalo to settle there as a museum relic?
At least that would provide tourism income when people would see where we have come from as a country…
Buy or lease land and settle those balaalo as settled dairy and beef farmers, the era of nomadic pastoralism is out. Give me just one prosperous country in the world that survives on nomadic pastoralism ?
Me, just like in the 19th Century, our former colonial masters partitioned (grab) the African Continent and parceled it among themselves, the former landless Saleh of this country are also practicing “Domestic Colonialism”.
In other words, those who go to war/s their intention is to capture territory. Some of the wars include genocides so that after the the genocide, then nobody would bother them about “OUR LAND” land question!
In 1939 Hitler invaded Poland in order to grab more territory (land) for the Germans. Recently, 3 years ago through sic “Special Operation”Putin invaded Ukraine in order to grab mineral rich territory, etc.
E.g. the BIG QUESTION is, in 1981; why didn’t the NRA launch their subversive activities from Nyabushozi, but Luweero? These guy coveted the beautiful lash green and forested Luweero, that appear to have no owner.
In the 5 years of subversion how many Baganda lost their ancestral land to Balalo?
That is how and why the originally landless Saleh of this country begin to shamelessly lecture Ugandans about “land use” and/or dispense of the AK47 guns purchased from our sweat and blood money to his balalo kinsmen, in order to intimidate and keep bona-fide land owners at bay.
That was how and why for 20 years the people of Acholi Sub-region were kept in IDP Camps where on average 1,000 children died per week for the same period. And those who survived never saw the the 4-wall classroom or black board.
In other words, like Hitler did in the Jews, by design the IDP camps was to depopulate/decimate the population of the people of Acholi, so that the Balalo can simply walk into that vast grassland and occupy it with a jiffy.
And that is why Salim Saleh is the Governor of Acholi sic Northern Uganda, to oversee the settlement of the Balalo.
Wachireba Bashuma?
Me you have a point indeed. The colonialists visited the Buganda Kingdom state some 100 years ago and introduced the common sense aspects of modern land survey systems of land tenure (a report of information about an area of land). Where these young leadership are coming from to think that they have a very different land tenure system of owning African lands beats any ones understanding! One believes these ambitious self-styled politicians went fighting in the bush in the suffering Kingdom state of Buganda to fight the political party of the UPC that was rigging national elections left, right and centre. Afterwards to start talking much more about something else is certainly not called for!
Land owners accommodated their subjects without qualms for years and had agreed flawless mechanisms for compensation, including grazing lands … until someone woke up with his divide-and-conquer scheme and he started creating a nonexistent problem through much empty talk on his made-up pulpits and then this person even sponsored sections of people to stake the false claim and, believe it or not, he managed to get a false narrative out their that in case the Baganda chase us from their land?! Can you imagine that even the formerly departed Asians came back to Uganda, decades later, and reclaimed their property & land seamlessly? So, where was the issue?
Interesting, in this era of “abanyampi” as subjects, they all started deflecting any shortcomings on one another except point the fingers back to the “mutabuzitabuzi”. It’s against that ignorance that they eventually enacted some bogus laws that inadvertently empowered “poor” land grabbers a.k.a squatters that sparked a frenzy that also gave rise to “rich” land grabbers who also wield guns. Right now, the issue is all about the false hope i.e. false expectation when the grabbers thought they had been given a law to take for free vs the landlords stuck with their papers or the new gun wielding guys that know how to push them off!! A certain Mayanja, when he was newly appointed minister in charge of lands, first run to his ancestral home of about 10 acres, negotiated with the “squatters” and paid them off the land then he setup brick wall around the entire property. Afterwards, thinking he had secured his ancestors’ interests, he came back to wreck havoc spitting fire how we were on a flawed system and he vowed to crush for example the mailo la d system … hahahahaha do you see the ignorance of the “banyampi”? So, where’s this guy now with his genius?!
God is not creating more land, that is clear. But also land is very pertinent to every family, peoples, & nation (even God demarcated off Israel), and you can’t just wake up and make it a trivial issue and use injustice to create a divide and conquer scenario in order remain relevant. You know whatever happens and however long it takes, unsettled land questions will always come up for settlement… even if it were a great grandchildren that came centuries later.
What beats my understanding is how the issue of land also somehow became more concentrated in the Buganda region, but the other regions e.g. your cattle corridors like Nakasongola, they are practicing the very customs they had copied from Buganda area and they’re not throwing feats! Am not sure whether it’s coincidental, but land productivity in Buganda area has tunked steadily since all the circuses started.
I have ever heard of one guy wanting to pass a law that all land in Uganda automatically becomes government property?! The same person has also somehow suggested once before about buying off disputed land from title holders and then sort it out with the squatters; if indeed he had the guts to try this and we see whether he can uphold justice for the “poor”!
So, it appears the Gen. is indirectly pointing a finger somewhere … meanwhile we stand to find ourselves in a situation where we can’t even feed ourselves because of the foolishness.
Trust this regime apologist to try to distort history. Very marxist. The fact is, before Museveni and his brother shot their way into power, there were no land wrangles of any sort. Everything was in order, and disputes. were amicably resolved. Enter Salim Saleh. Plundering all the assets in all forms, of this country, became the norm . However much he denies it, Salim Saleh has been a plunderer of one kind or another But Uganda definitely will outlive him.