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Will land acquisition issue bury Museveni’s no-nonsense term?

Monday August 29 2016

It all began as some kind of a joke in late July, when President Yoweri Museveni was addressing a gathering of the upper echelons of the ruling NRM faithful, co-opted members of opposition parties now serving in his government, and senior technocrats responsible for driving policy implementation.

He coined what at first sounded to many like yet another of the numerous catchy slogans he throws around every now and then. He declared that his current term would be a “kisanja hakuna mchezo” (no nonsense term), mixing Luganda and Swahili as he is wont to do.

His critics, being used to hearing him make grand but empty pronouncements, such as promising to fight corruption, yawned loudly.

Well, soon enough he moved to show, if controversially, that this time round he meant business. Besides summarily dismissing a group of health workers whom people in one of Kampala’s peri-urban neighbourhoods accused of misconduct, he has been going around warning teachers of dire consequences if they do not stop “sitting under trees” instead of being in class teaching.

According to stories making the rounds, Museveni, who is notorious for skipping Cabinet meetings, now requires ministers to report regularly on what they are doing and how they are implementing his election manifesto.

Indeed, there is now a new buzz among members of the ruling elite; every now and then, one hears them reminding whoever cares to listen, of how “This is kisanja hakuna mchezo.” Those with a knack for writing or tweeting are filling newspapers with articles and social media with sound bites in which they repeat the phrase again and again.

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One can deride them as much as one wants. However, there are signs that there is a serious edge to all this, a sense of purpose that Ugandans would not ordinarily associate with the functionaries who seem to do little more than joyride on the NRM’s bandwagon.

One can see this in the multiple infrastructure projects the government is rushing to complete or start implementing; young and enthusiastic ministers rushing about inspecting this or that long delayed initiative and issuing warnings to civil servants to get their act together, and others launching new, attention-catching projects.

There are integrity issues involved in some of the older projects and initiatives, and possibly the new ones too, but the new energy with which they are being pushed is palpable, at times refreshing. The question is whether it will last, to which we have no concrete answer, although history would suggest it won’t.

Perhaps the most serious indication that the president and his government are in a hurry to get things done are recent pronouncements on land acquisition by the state, currently being panel-beaten into policy proposals and possibly new legislation.

Current legislation allows for compulsory acquisition of land by the state in the public interest, but only after fair compensation of the owners. The government now finds that inconvenient and wants to change the law. It would rather seize privately owned land it wants to put to whatever use before compensating the owners.

It has its reasons. The reality is that current legislation has made it difficult for the government to quickly acquire land for urgent government projects. Infrastructure projects can be held up for years by protracted negotiations on compensation.

A major problem is that landowners and those tasked to value the land collude to inflate prices and bog down the government, as it looks around for the vast sums involved. Another is that compensation becomes a cash bonanza for actors along the decision-making chain, each of whom expects to “get something” before passing on the paperwork.

On the surface, therefore, one can see why the government wants to cut corners and make things easy for itself with a new policy and a new law. But important questions arise: Such as why, for example, the government cannot find a solution to this problem of landowners and valuers conniving to inflate land prices.

And then, of course, there is the issue of trust. Large numbers of Ugandans, judging from the chorus of protest and condemnation the new proposals have provoked, are unwilling to believe that each time the government claims to want to acquire land compulsorily in the public interest, there won’t be piggy-backers in the shadows pursuing purely personal interests.

Already, some members of the public are promising “war” over the issue, if the government goes ahead with its proposals. It seems like a case of Museveni seeking to bite off more than he can chew.

Frederick Golooba-Mutebi is a Kampala- and Kigali-based researcher and writer on politics and public affairs. E-mail: [email protected]

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