When the army raided the Rwenzururu king’s palace last November, leaving dozens of people dead, it resurrected the question: what’s Kasese’s problem? One answer has often revolved around the unfair distribution of land.
JEROME KULE BITSWANDE meets a family caught up in a tragedy with roots in land.
From his childhood, Twalibu Muhindo had always admired people who drove big vehicles, and wanted to be like them. But whenever he told his father of his dream, he was told it was hardly possible because such vehicles could only be driven by engineers.
“Well,” he thought one day, “then I have to become an engineer.”
To become an engineer, Muhindo’s parents and teachers told him, he had to concentrate on mathematics and science at school. His elder siblings said mathematics was very hard, but Muhindo was stubbornly undeterred. He embarked on extra practice and by primary five, Maths was his best subject.
Impressed by this resolved and performance, Amiri Kisembo transferred his son from Ibuga pimary school to Rwimi Junior School in the boarding section to enable him concentrate on his studies.
Kisembo would regularly visit the school to check on his son’s performance. He would also buy little perks and presents to encourage the youngster on his path to becoming an engineer.
Then, on July 5, 2014, something happened that would turn Muhindo’s world upside down and leave him clinging onto a cliff. A house belonging to UPDF soldier Grace Amanya was torched by unknown assailants in Bigando village in Kitswamba sub-county. Amanya and his three children perished in the inferno.
This happened at a time when contestation over land between cultivators (predominantly Bakonzo) and pastoralists (predominantly Basongora) was at its peak in Bigando, Muhindo’s home village. This eventually gave a tribal face to the land wrangles, pitting the Basongora against the Bakonzo.
As investigations into the arson continued, the LC-1 chairman and his executive committee members were arrested by police. Muhindo’s father, who was general secretary to the committee, was not spared either, even though he was on drip at the height of the chaos.
Muhindo’s mother, Mary Biira, says her husband had been very sick for close to three weeks, and was just recuperating at the time the incident happened.
“Doctors had recommended that he gets admitted, but since it would still be me taking care of him and looking for what to eat, he bought the medicine and we got a nearby nurse to always come and administer the medication at home,” she says.
Biira operates a stall at Bigando market, selling matooke, tomatoes, onions and other items. She recalls that the incident, which happened at around 3pm, was followed by gunshots. She narrates how she packed her wares and took them to her home, which is a stone’s throw away.
“When I got home, my husband was in bed. His last drip had been removed at around 12pm. He asked about what was happening, and I explained to him. He was disheartened for he was a peace lover,” Biira told this reporter. “When they came to arrest him the following day, I told the officers about his health condition, but they were not willing to listen.”
Biira adds she would not have been shocked by the arrest if her husband had not been sick because the land conflicts had been given a tribal face.
“When I retreated home, we discussed what was bound to happen after the incident. We saw through it that many people might be arrested. I asked him to go to his other home in Kasunganyanja, but he refused,” Biira narrates.
Kisembo said that should he improve by the following morning, he would help calm the storm since it was his obligation as a leader. Little did he know that his new home would be Katojo government prison in Kabarole district.
Biira would then have to make constant visits to her detained husband. With her meager income, she was also obliged to visit and pay fees for their child who wants to become an engineer, besides watching over five other children, two of whom were already in secondary school.
Soon, Kisembo ordered his wife to stop “wasting” money visiting him, and rather use it to cater for their children. Even then, her market stall that she estimates at Shs 150,000 could not support her in an area where the cost of living is so high with a jerrycan of water going for as much as Shs 1,000.
She resorted to one meal a day for her family. Her children nearly dropped out of school, but the teachers supported them.
“Teachers, especially for my boy in Rwimi, understood my predicament. They allowed him to continue studying even when I didn’t pay fees for two terms,” Biira says.
Despite all this, the worst was yet to happen; her husband’s health had deteriorated in prison. Five months later on January 25, 2015, he died. This not only meant that Biira would live the rest of her life as a widow shouldering the burden of taking care of six children alone, but also dampened Muhindo’s hopes of ever becoming an engineer. He had scored aggregate nine in the Primary Leaving Examinations, but there was no money to take him further.
Biira was lucky. Her brothers took four of her children. Muhindo’s dreams were also rebuilt after Rwenzururu kingdom and St Mary’s Secondary School Kasese offered him a joint scholarship to further his studies.
Even then, the 14-year-old who is now in senior two has to work on people’s farms during holidays to raise money to support his mother and buy scholastic materials.
TRAGIC CONFLICT
Muhindo’s family is not alone. Several other families in Kasese are struggling after the breadwinner died in land conflicts or is under custody on suspicion of having been involved in deaths related to such conflicts.
The arson incident saw fifteen people arrested, meaning that their families are equally facing financial challenges. A report released in 2010 by the Uganda Human Rights Commission (UHRC) shows that at least 10 people died in land-related conflicts between Bakonzo cultivators and Basongora pastoralists that year. Six were residents of Bigando.
The report also shows that several people were being arrested, only that most of them were released due to lack of evidence.
BUT WHY LAND CONFLICTS IN KASESE?
Kasese district seats on 3,389.6 square kilometres of land, 409.7 square kilometres (12.1 per cent) of which is permanent water bodies. The district is home to fresh-water and salt lakes such as Edward, George and Katwe, plus a multiplicity of rivers and other small lakes. Approximately 68.7 square miles of this land is covered by seasonal wetlands.
This leaves only 2,911.2 square kilometres as dry land, yet 65 per cent is government land housing national parks and game reserves. Uganda’s second-largest national park – Queen Elizabeth – is located in lowland areas of the district; while Mt Rwenzori national park is located in the uplands. The land also houses several government farms like Mubuku and Ibuga prison farms, among others.
The district’s population growth rate has been skyrocketing, yet land remains static. Although the 2014 national population census put the growth rate at 2.45 per cent (slightly below the national annual growth rate which is at three per cent), the 2002 census had put the growth rate in the district at 3.6 per cent – slightly above the country’s, which was then at 3.3 per cent.
This increase in population has exerted a lot of pressure on land, with many people encroaching on government land. According to the 2010 report by UHRC, the problem was exacerbated by the influx of pastoralists mainly of the Basongora ethnicity from the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2007.
The inter-ministerial committee that was charged with settling the pastoralists found out that over 8,000 people with 50,000 herds of cattle had illegally settled in Queen Elizabeth national park. This encroachment encouraged the landless cultivators, some of whom had been displaced when Mt Rwenzori national park was gazetted, to also settle on the same land.
Tensions brewed between these two groups as cultivators accused pastoralists of grazing animals in their crops, while the pastoralists accused cultivators of killing their animals.
Attempts to evict these two communities were futile, as they demanded that part of the land be de-gazetted to provide them with enough space to graze their animals and plant crops.
In 2008, the inter-ministerial committee on these land tensions , led by the then agriculture minister Hilary Onek, resolved that some parts of Ibuga prison farm be de-gazetted and distributed to the communities in the ratio of 3:1 for pastoralists and cultivators respectively.
However, according to Chance Magonya, the chairperson of Kitswamba sub-county, the distribution only worsened the situation. The cultivators, who are mostly Bakonzo, thought government only favoured the pastoralists who had just come into the country. This charge was regularly juxtaposed with the assertion that the Basongora pastoralists are ethnically linked to the Bahima, President Museveni’s tribe.
The Basongora, on the other hand, contend that they were forced into DRC when Queen Elizabeth national park was gazetted in 1952, and that all the land should to be given to them.
The land distribution was eventually made amidst discontent from the cultivators who argued that they even never got the unfairly small portion that government had allocated them.
LAND TITLES
Biira’s husband was one of those that benefited from the distribution process. He was given half an acre of land on which Biira now plants maize to supplement her income from the market stall. But Biira and her friends alike are ready to settle for any portion of land given to them. All they now crave is for government to give them titles for security of tenure.
The 40-year-old widow believes land titles would assure them of ownership and enable them to properly plan for their livelihood. Biira adds that when she gets a land title, she will secure a loan from the bank, use it to pay school fees for Muhindo and service it with proceeds from her market stall.
“I got married to Kisembo at 14. We started living and planning for our lives together, but now I have to do everything on my own. Surely, a land title would be a big boost,” she says.
As for Muhindo, the raid on the king’s palace late last year was another blow to his dreams. The Rwenzururu kingdom, which was paying part of his school fees, is now struggling for its own ‘life’ following the arrest of king Charles Wesley Mumbere. Mumbere is battling a plethora of capital offences at the High court in Jinja, including murder and treason.
For his part, Magonya says the land titles ought to be supplemented by public education of the communities to peacefully coexist.
“I think it is very important to sensitise the people about the need to appreciate their humanity and diversity because at the end of the day, losing a life from whichever side is not a good thing,” he says.
Muhindo looks forward to that day, when his family will not be worried about evictions from their half acre of land. Muhindo’s father had two wives before he was arrested. The family’s hopes are now tied in with the piece of land they have.
Muhindo still hopes that piece of land can help him achieve his dream of becoming an engineer. He hopes to be able to support his siblings from her stepmother, most of whom dropped out of school following their father’s demise.
kulejerome@yahoo.com
The author is a freelance journalist hailing from Kasese.
