31 October 2009
Kampala — ELIS Rubafunya responds to his critics and argues that if the '9,000sq. miles' of land belonged to the Kabaka, then it was sold by regents. If it did not belong to him, as some have argued, why is he demanding for them now and never did so in the early 1990s?
I have read two responses to my article "What does Buganda Want?" in the Sunday Vision of October 18.
The first response was by Peter Mulira titled 'Kabaka did not sell 9,000 square miles'.
The other response was by Kavuma Kaggwa titled "Queen did not buy Buganda land". Both articles appeared in the Sunday Vision of October 25.
Let me thank both writers for not only taking the time to read the article, but also to respond. Mulira has pointed out some interesting points of fact that I thank him for bringing out clearly. He also found my article to be "accurate and informative".
Both Mulira and Kaggwa disagreed with the notion that the Kabaka had been paid for the land. They relied on Clause 18 of the Buganda Agreement, which stated: "In return for the cession to Her Majesty's Government of the right of control over 10,550 square miles of waste, cultivated, uncultivated, or forest lands, there shall be paid by Her Majesty's Government in trust for the Kabaka (upon his attaining his majority) a sum of £500, and to the three Regents collectively, £600, namely, to the Katikkiro £300, and the other two Regents £150 each."
According to Kaggwa: "The Kabaka and the regents did not sell the 9,000 square miles. Mr. Rubafunya misinterprets the word cession to mean outright selling of the 9,000 square miles. The word cession in this case meant leasing the land to Her Majesty's Government, who kept it in trust for Buganda until the end of the British protection on Independence Day, October 9, 1962."
He went on to state: "There was no way the Buganda Regents could have accepted outright selling of Buganda land to the queen or any other person. Remember they had already used their natural intelligence, great wisdom and political smartness to reject Uganda being made a colony of Britain. They stood firm and demanded a protectorate and they saved Uganda from being a colony and not much later like Kenya."
I respectfully disagree with Kaggwa. Not only did the regents accept "outright selling of Buganda land" they actually sold and received cash in return for the sale. Not only did they give up the land, they also did something many people do not know about the kabakaship.
Under Clause 6 of the agreement, the Regents agreed that the Kabaka must be elected by the Lukiiko from any of the descendants of Muteesa I and would only take office after he had been approved by "Her Majesty's Government".
A recent review by the BBC Focus on Africa of the Buganda and central government relationship stated that the only concession the British gave to the Kabaka in the 1900 Agreement was the title "His Highness".
Regarding the meaning of the word cession, Kaggwa argues that the word meant "leasing the land to Her Majesty's Government."
Again, I must respectfully disagree. Blacks Law Dictionary, the leading and authoritative dictionary defining legal terms all over the Commonwealth, defines the word cession as "the act of ceding, a yielding or giving up; surrender; relinquishment of property or rights. The assignment, transfer or yielding up of territory by one nation to another the act by which a party transfers property to another"
Mulira bases his argument on two premises. Firstly, clause 18 quoted above spoke of "the right of control," which Mulira distinguishes from the "right of ownership." He argues that clause 18 gave the British "control" and not "ownership".
Again, with the greatest of respect, I must disagree. To understand what interest the British had in the land, one must read the entire 1900 Agreement (See page 17).
Clause 15 of the agreement provided " ..The land .. shall be dealt with in the following manner: Assuming the area to amount to 19,600 square miles, it shall be divided into the following proportions ..Waste and uncultivated land to be vested in Her Majesty's Government, and to be controlled by the Uganda administration - 9,000 square miles"
Therefore, the land would be "vested" in Her Majesty and be "controlled" by the Uganda Administration. The word "vested" has also been defined by Blacks Law Dictionary to mean "fixed, accrued, settled, absolute, complete. Having the character...of absolute ownership. Not contingent "
Therefore, for the sum of £500 "Her Majesty the Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, the Empress of India and the Protectress of Uganda" obtained an interest in the 5,282 square miles (as at December 31, 1964) which had the character of "absolute ownership".
Kabaka "ceded, surrendered, relinquished" his "property rights by assigning and transferring property" to Her Majesty's government. When he visited Uganda, the Duke of Kent had simply come to hand over Independence to Uganda. Constitutional questions had been settled and decided by the 1962 Constitution.
In his letter to President Yoweri Museveni on behalf of the Kabaka in 2007, the then acting Katikkiro Amb. Emmanuel L. Sendaula stated "The problems in Buganda's land tenure system were introduced by the British colonialists, who imposed themselves on our land with the hope of securing it for themselves and their imperialistic desires." These words do not describe people who are "leasing land".
This interpretation of the 1900 Agreement was supported by Kabaka Daudi Chwa. He reportedly said at clause 18 "wano we watundibwa Buganda..oh..kino kyasoba (This is where Buganda was sold. This was wrong)".
The recommendation of Lord Munster's commission that public land in Buganda be managed by local authorities is not different from what I have argued. The Munster Commission recommendation was not limited to Buganda in any event.
Mulira raises another important point. In arguing that the land was not sold, Mulira states: "... In any case, by the time the agreement was made, the land in question had not been vested in the Kabaka and as such, he could not have sold what was not his property."
If the land was not the property of the Kabaka, why then should it be returned to him?
In August 1991, the Ssabataka's Supreme Council and the Bataka Council submitted their views on behalf of the Ssabataka Ronald Muwenda Mutebi (he was not yet the Kabaka) to the Odoki Commission, which was going around the country collecting views in preparation for a new constitution of Uganda.
They did not expressly ask for the return of 9,000 square miles of land to Buganda. This is, therefore, a new and recent request. All through the Constituent Assembly, from May 1994 to October 1995 in all the 180 sittings of the Assembly there was no request made by Mengo for the "immediate and unconditional return of Buganda's 9,000 square miles".
Kaggwa's argument that Uganda became a protectorate by virtue of the 1900 Buganda Agreement is inaccurate. As a matter of fact, Uganda was formally declared a protectorate in 1894 during the reign of Kabaka Mwanga and Sir Gerald Herbert Portal was the first Colonial Commissioner of the Protectorate. Fort Portal is named after him. It had nothing to do with the "natural intelligence, great wisdom and political smartness" of the regents. Make no mistake.
Men like the Katikkiro Sir Apollo Kaggwa in Buganda, Nuwa Mbaguta in Ankole, Apollo Kivebulaya, Prince Semei Kakungulu, Katikkiro Martin Luther Nsibirwa and many others contributed tremendously to the development of Uganda, especially towards the development of formal education, Bulungi Bwansi roads and food security. We must thus give credit where it is due. Kaggwa is also not factually accurate to say that because we were a protectorate, we received independence much earlier. Ghana, which was a colony, received Independence in 1957.
Finally, Kaggwa stated: "There is no way Uganda will be governable with injustices being inflicted with impunity on Buganda all the time." It has never been my intention to have injustice inflicted on Buganda or any other part of Uganda. Mr. Kaggwa was making a plea for stability. I assure him that my article was written with the very stability of Uganda in mind.
The Government and Mengo have begun negotiations and exchanged papers. As a member of the civil society my interest is that this discussion is based on principled facts and not emotion. Other groups can also muster emotion and come claiming all sorts of things. A Captain Baker Kimeze can wake up and start claiming Kayunga District based on some pre-1900 history.
The Omukama of Toro can start claiming Kasese, Bundibugyo and Lake Katwe. The Banyankore can start to lay claim on Kabula and Ssembabule. The Banyoro can claim that ancestral kings were buried in Mubende and they want their land back. Worse, the Banyoro can decide to claim Toro.
There are Ugandans, to this day, who make an argument for lost counties. How can a county of Uganda be lost in Uganda? We should not remain prisoners of our history.
In his report, Lord Munster said; "No one who examined Uganda's political and social life could fail to be disturbed by one prominent characteristic: The unwillingness to compromise." For God and my country, I hope we prove him wrong.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2009 New Vision. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
