While the rest of the country is counting down to the Christmas and New Year holidays, residents of Bukasa, Namataba and Kito in Kira municipality are counting down to their massive displacement by government.
Mr Museveni has directed the inspector general of police (IGP), Gen Kale Kayihura, to remove over 25,000 people who occupy land that belonged to the National Forestry Authority (NFA) in these three villages. I have used the word belonged, because every inch of this land has been settled on, mainly by poor people, in the last couple of years.
And to implement Mr Museveni’s ruthless directive, a convenient clause has been found in the National Environment Management Authority (Nema) Act. That is why it is Nema that issued a notice of 21 days for everyone on this land to have removed their property and left to God knows where!
Although I consider Museveni an illegitimate leader after rigging his way back to State House, I have pleaded with him through a letter for mercy on these people, something I have not done before.
Yes, it is his fingers on the trigger and people in Kasese can bear me witness. I have also written to all his surrogates, including Gen Kayihura, again pleading for mercy.
The truth is that this land rightly belonged to NFA. Through all forms of degradation, the trees that were there were completely cut down. It is the reason NFA parceled the land and gave it out to private tree planters. This policy of sub-diving forest land and giving it out to private tree planters has been a disaster.
In many cases, the licensee has resorted to cutting and selling the remaining trees before planting beans and maize. That is partly how we have reduced the country’s forest cover. We lose 90,000 hectares of forest cover annually and replant only 30,000 hectares, according to official figures.
I love nature and will support any effort to preserve it. But in the case of Bukasa and the so-called Namanve forest reserve, the incompetent officials in Nema are not chasing people to restore forests. They are actually doing so to widen the scale of degradation.
Already, the biggest part of Namanve has been turned into an industrial park and you all know what factories do to the environment. And the reminder of the Namanve forest is what they want to use for an inland port, the standard gauge railway, southern bypass and Jinja Expressway.
But most important to note is the fact that this government committed itself to compensating people on the land before they are ordered to leave. On March 23, 2016, the then minister for works, Eng John Byabagambi, told parliament that the two categories of occupants (tree planters and encroachers) will be duly compensated before they are asked to leave.
A convincing resettlement plan was a precondition for parliament to approve a loan request meant for Bukasa port preparatory work. It appears now we, MPs, were blatantly deceived by this government.
Imagine that the numbers to be displaced are bigger than the total population of Ntungamo municipality, which is 18,000, or Moroto municipality, which is 12,000!
And there was an opportunity to stop this. These people settled on this land in broad daylight and this government allowed it to happen. Now they are behaving like they were on holiday when this massive settlement happened.
In my letter to Museveni and Kayihura, I have proposed compensation for the developments on the land. Government doesn’t have to compensate for the loss of land because this is public (NFA) land.
And that will calm the situation. Short of that, we are headed for a bloody confrontation. Finally, I think people we entrust with our property including land and they fail to protect it must also be held accountable. I am told Mr Museveni was very angry with those who grabbed the NFA land and, I think, rightly so.
I invite him to also be angry with those who failed to protect this land. Forestry used to be a department in the ministry of water and environment. It was upgraded to an authority for better management. How come that even with this elevation, things are getting worse? This is what Mr Museveni must address.
In fact, the conduct of his government is what has encouraged this wanton land and property grabbing. School, recreation, police, railway and all sorts of public land have been donated to fake investors by Mr Museveni himself. If you need evidence, you don’t have to go far: start with Nsambya police barracks, Shimoni Demonstration School, Nsambya railway land, KCCA Nakawa-Naguru property, CMI land near Mulago roundabout, etc.
These land giveaways can only encourage grabbing and Museveni should be the last person to get angry with land grabbers. Part of his own ranch in Kisozi, Gomba, is seated on what used to be UPDF’s National Enterprises Corporation (NEC) land. Col Kizza Besigye has addressed this matter before. The UPDF bought this Kisozi land with 900 heads of cattle on it.
The army now, I think, has zero cattle and Museveni, a late settler and neighbor of the UPDF farm, has over 3,000 heads of cattle. My argument is that people should be compensated before they are asked to leave, like Eng Byabagambi promised parliament in March. And to curb land grabbing, the powerful ones should act as examples.
semugs@yahoo.com
The author is Kira Municipality MP.