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By Oweyegha-Afunaduula
In Uganda of the 21st Century, everything has been reduced to politics: politics of education, politics of health, politics of seeds or food, politics of exclusion, politics of conquest and politics of occupation. Politics of conquest and occupation are frequently association with cross border refugees or former cross border refugees in power in Uganda.
Politics involve exercise of power and different hegemonic political projects of belonging represent different symbolic power orders. Traditionally, power was understood and measured by the effects those with power had on others (Yuval-Davis, 2016). Today in Uganda power over others by those in power is most exhibited in relation to landownership. Those in power have grabbed large tracts of land and individualised the ownership at the expense of traditional communities who land ownership and belonging have historically been customary.
Uganda is one of the African countries, guided by the Land Act 1998, which strengthens individual land ownership and belonging rights and permits privatisation of rural community and/or public land.
It is said that the government introduced individual land ownership for poverty reduction, wealth creation, and socioeconomic development ostensibly to protect rural residents. However, in Uganda’s Parliament and in governmental practice, the political elites in power dismiss or circumvent traditional cultural claims to land and property rights.
Accordingly, they are collectively all out to destroy customary Land tenure. which they are selling as land reform. Currently, reportedly under World Bank support, the Government of Uganda, in the true spirit of using power to destroy customary land tenure system of settled communities, is under The Land Act CAP 227 compelling peoples who enjoyed land tenure security to convert from Customary Tenure to Freehold Tenure /Grant of Freehold.
Freehold land tenure is not culturally sensitive and is not as efficient as customary land tenure system in safeguarding the ownership ans senses of belonging, which I wrote about in a previous article (i.e sense of community belonging, sense of biocultural belonging, sense of ecological belonging, sense of environmental belonging and, for that matter, human natural belonging, which has survived and persisted in the landscapes of belonging for centuries because it did not emphasise individual land ownership or belonging at the expense of the whole community.
In my view what is happening is a plot against customary land tenure system and its holistic survival value, and by extension, against cultural claims to land ownership and belonging.
While the Uganda Constitution 1995 recognises cultural institutions, whose survival is linked to land, the current plot against customary land tenure system undermines the cultural institutions and their constitutionality. In the long term, the governors have no interest in the long-erm survival and sustainability of these institutions.
Because the cultural institutions have been constitutionally de-politicized, they have no political rights or political power to resist what is going on regarding the conversion of customary land tenure system to freehold land tenure system. This explains why a Minister of State for Land in the NRM government can afford to belittle the Kabaka of Buganda and even suggest that if the Kabaka wants land he must buy it.
Consequently, squatters on Buganda land (or Kabaka’s land) have far more ownership and belonging rights that the Baganda who owned land. Indeed, many heavy weights in the Central government who grabbed land in Buganda and who were refugees in Uganda but now enjoy citizenship and dual citizenship rights, can now individualise, own and belong to the land.
This way, they are delinking the Clans of Buganda from the land. This is also happening to other Clans of traditionally settled communities in Uganda. Ownership and belonging dynamics in Uganda are changing using the law and power.
Privatisation of land is a pathway to stealing land from the poor and needy and public land. It is anti-people and anti-culture. It ultimately converts whole communities into labour reserves and community members into slaves.
In away, land individualization or privatization is creating individualized belonging accompanied ruling or governing by exclusion (e.g., Jesper Bjarnesen, et.al., 2023).
Yuval-Davis (2006) outlines an analytical framework for the study of belonging and the politics of belonging. Her article is divided into three interconnected parts. The first explores the notion of ‘belonging’ and the different analytical levels on which it needs to be studied: social locations; identifications and emotional attachments; and ethical and political values.
The second part focuses on the politics of belonging and how it relates to the participatory politics of citizenship as well as to that of entitlement and status. The third part illustrates, using British examples, some of the ways particular political projects of belonging select specific levels of belonging in order to construct their projects.
The politics of belonging has come to occupy the heart of the political agenda almost everywhere on the globe, even when reified assumptions about ‘the clash of civilizations’ are not necessarily applied (Yuval-Davis, 2006). Yuval-Davis suggested that a lot of both political and analytical work was still required for fully permeable politics of belonging to gain hegemony.
In the E-book “Land and the Politics of Belonging in West Africa”, published in 2006, and edited by Richard Kuba and Carola Lentz (2006), it is stated that recognizing that land rights is ambiguous, negotiable and politically embedded.
Case studies are presented to explore the long-term processes and recent changes in contemporary rural West Africa affecting the conversion of control over land into social and political capital and vice versa. They point to the colonial origins of what came to be viewed as ‘customary’ tenure and to the legal pluralism characterizing pre-colonial tenure arrangements.
Furthermore, they show the spiritual and ritual importance of land that can be converted into political power and economic prerogatives, a dimension neglected by much of the recent literature. Analyses cover forest and savannah, state and segmentary societies, facilitating comparison and insights across the Anglo-Francophone divide.
Hidden behind the current land reforms in Uganda involving conversion of customary land to freehold land is ethnicity. Those compelled to convert to freehold are Bantu or Luo who enjoyed cultural land security.
Those benefitting are mostly people who belong to the nomadic pastoral human energy system that have grabbed land everywhere in Uganda and are now modern-day settlers and land owners where they have no biological, historical, cultural, ethical and moral ties.
They have no sense of community belonging, sense of biocultural belonging, sense of ecological belonging, sense of environmental belonging and, hence, human natural belonging in their new environments of abode.
There is no doubt that the politics of belonging in Uganda is, and will ethnically be dominated by the nomadic pastoralists in and out side power but linked in the new designs of land ownership, belonging and power over the settled communities of Bantu and Luo.
These new land owners where they did not belong have ushered in ne community, biocultural, ecological and environmental he ones making policies and other decisions at the centre have strategically imposed other peoples in the rural areas, mainly Indians and Chinese in rural settings, ostensibly to develop them.
Meanwhile they have allowed refugees from amongst the Cushites of Africa, of whom they are a part, to flock in almost unrestricted. While they have cast Uganda as the most welcoming to refugees, they have planned to give the refugees the best education at the best educational institutions in Uganda and abroad using public funds.
Besides they allow them to compete for all opportunities with the Uganda Citizens on equal terns. Since they are already and will be better educated and skilled than the nationals, the latter will not be able to compete.
They will qualify to be shipped out of the country to slave markets in the Middle East. The land they leave behind will be occupied by the refugees, who will easily access Gundam citizenship, nationality and sovereignty and all resources. Many are already engaged in fishing and mining Uganda’s minerals, while Ugandans are being excluded.
Besides many refugees or former refugees are active and almost preferred in the business world.
For God and My Country.
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