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Uganda: High Court Clears Balaalo Eviction
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The Monitor (Kampala)
26 March 2008
Posted to the web 25 March 2008
Lominda Afedraru & Mercy Nalugo
Kampala
PASTORALISTS who roam around Uganda yesterday lost a crucial bid in the High Court to block their planned eviction from parcels of land in the western district of Bulliisa.
Justice Akiiki Kiiza dismissed the case filed against six government officials on grounds that the pastoralists commonly known as Balaalo used a wrong law and procedure to go to court.
This means the government is now free to either evict or relocate the pastoralists from the land they have been occupying in Buliisa District.
Justice Vincent Kagaba last year allowed the pastoralists to file their case and granted an injunction against the government officials, blocking them from evicting the Balaalo from the disputed land.
But yesterday's ruling invalidates the injunction, and paves the way for possible eviction. Interestingly the ruling comes at the height of debate on the controversial Land Amendment Bill (2007), which the government insists was drafted to halt rampant evictions in the country, while its critics argue it was crafted to aid land grabbing.
Speaking after the ruling, Buliisa MP Steven Mukitale Birahwa said the pastoralists should relocate immediately.
"We gave them our deadline long ago but they did not respect it. They should now start on the process of leaving Buliisa and the earlier the better," he told journalists at Parliament yesterday.
Mr Birahwa said justice had prevailed for the indigenous people of Buliisa "whose land has been fenced off by the pastoralists for the last three years."
"Let the pastoralists go back where they came from. For us as a community we have been very patient with those Balaalo who have been using guns to individualise what does not belong to them," Mr Birahwa said.
Asked whether there wont be chaos when the indigenous people push the pastoralists into relocation, Mr Birahwa said the Bagungu people would fight back if provoked.
Land is owned communally in Buliisa.
The chairperson of the pastoralist community in Buliisa, Ms Grace Bamurangye Bwororoza, and 53 others filed a case against the State Minister for Land, Mr Atwooki Kasirivu; the Coordinator of Intelligence Services, Gen. David Tinyefuza; the Inspector General of Police, Maj. Gen. Kale Kayihura; Mr Birahwa; the Buliisa RDC, Mr Hussein Kato Matanda; and the area LC3 chairman, Mr Kubalirwa Nkuba.
They asked court to review and quash the decision of the officials to evict them from the disputed land.
They claimed that they bought land from the indigenous Bagungu in 2003 and have since been depending on it for survival.
They alleged that on June 1, 2007, Mr Birahwa led a number of Bagungu who stormed their homes, beat them and used sectarian language.
But the defendants denied the claims, saying the case was misconceived because it ought to quash an administrative decision. They asked court to dismiss the case with costs.
However when the parties appeared before Justice Kiiza last week, Mr Fred Mukasa who represented the pastoralists, asked court to include the Attorney General on the list of defendants.
But Mr Ebert Byenkya, representing the six men, objected to Mr Mukasa's plea. He asked court to dismiss the entire case because it was filed using a wrong procedure, wrong law and that the application for amendment was brought out of time. And he had his way.
Chaos broke out in Buliisa District in June last year between the indigenous Bagungu and the Balaalo, leaving several people seriously injured.
The mayhem came moments after a meeting by the Bagungu, called to discuss the eviction of the Buliisa pastoralists, was disrupted by a herd of cattle. The Balaalo and the Bagungu clashed for days prompting the intervention of Gen. Kayihura.
Later at the urging of Gen. Kayihura, the indigenous Bagungu agreed to offer Waisoke grazing area in Buliisa to the Balaalo on condition that the pastoralists leave Bugana and Rwangala to the cultivators. The Balaalo flatly rejected the offer.
"We have been persuaded to leave our villages and settle in Waisoke but we have flatly rejected that. Why should we leave where we bought land and go to where we didn't?" said Ms Bwororoza at the time.
The decision to give alternative land to the Balaalo was reached after closed marathon meetings between Gen. Kayihura and Bagungu leaders.
The Balaalo maintained that they own over 30 square miles of land in Buliisa, which they have been buying since they arrived in 2003 and the investment has cost them about Shs800 million.
Later, an announcement by Gen. Tinyefuza that the government would settle the pastoralists in Kyankwanzi in Kiboga in Buganda attracted vehement protests from Mengo, the seat of Buganda Kingdom.
The pastoralists lost hope of government intervention to help them fight the situation and resorted to petitioning human rights organizations and diplomatic missions for help.
Accompanied by their lawyer, the pastoralists stormed the Foundation for Human Rights Initiative (FHRI) offices in Nsambya and urged its Executive Director Livingstone Sewanyana to intervene in what they claimed had turned out to be an ethnic conflict.
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The group later took the matter to court.
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