Mission of the Centre for Basic Research

To generate and disseminate knowledge by conducting basic and applied research of social, economic and political significance to Uganda in particular and Africa in general, so as to influence policy, raise consciousness and improve quality of life.

Land Tenure and Peasant Adaptations: Some Reflections on Agricultural Production in Luwero District Frank Emmanuel Muhereza Working Paper No.27/1992

ISBN 978-9970-109-05-5-0

Table of Contents

1. Introduction…………………………………………………………………….1 1.1 A Note on Research Methodology .................................................................. 4

Section One

2. The Evolution of Tenure Relations .................................................................. 6 2.1 The Pre-Colonial Setting ................................................................................... 6 2.1.2 Land Relations in Pre-1900 Buganda .......................................................... 12 2.2 The Integration into Commodity Production and the

Establishment of a Colonial Economy .......................................................... 14 2.2.1 The War of Pacification ................................................................................. 15 2.2.2 The Land Settlement ...................................................................................... 17

2.2.3 The Development of Land Tenure in Buruuli under Colonial Rule…….20

Section Two

3. Conditions of Access and Contemporary Agrarian Relations .................. 32 3.1 Ttaka Rights and Landlordism ...................................................................... 33 3.2 Usufruct Rights ................................................................................................ 37 3.2.2 Renting .............................................................................................................. 46

3.2.3 Borrowing ................................................................................................. 47 Section Three 4. The Agrarian Structures ............................................................................. 49 4.1 The Peasantry ............................................................................................... 49 4.2 The Poor Peasants ........................................................................................ 50 4.3 The Labour Processes .................................................................................. 51 4.4 Middle Peasants ........................................................................................... 53 4.5 Rich Peasants ................................................................................................ 54 4.6 Capitalist/Capitalist Landlords ................................................................ 58

4.6.1 Capitalist Landlords ............................................................................... 60

Section Four 5. The Impact of Technology Change on Peasant Production ...................... 63 6. Conditions of Access and Gender Implications .......................................... 68 7. Nomadic Pastoralism and the Agrarian Question ...................................... 71 8. Tenure Relations: Land Disputes and the Position of Resistance Councils ........ 78 8.1 The Role of Resistance Councils: Participatory Democracy in Defence of Interests in Land ........................................................................... 84 9. Summary of Findings and Concluding Remarks........................................ 86 Appendices……………………………………………………………………92 Bibliography ................................................................................................... 101

Land Tenure and Peasant Adaptations: Some Reflectionson Agricultural Production in Luwero District*

1. Introduction

This paper seeks to analyse the different manifestations of the peasantry's (as well as other agricultural producers') responses to specific land tenure configurations. The study was undertaken in the light of the government policy to achieve sustainable productivity in agriculture. The boom in agricultural production which the country experienced at the beginning of the decade seemed to have made policy makers content with the government double production campaigns. These campaigns were institutionally supported by ambitious rural credit schemes, provision of agricultural chemicals and other inputs, encouraging mechanisation through the tractor loan schemes and several others.

The solution to the problem of agricultural production is therefore defined in terms of opening up more land. An increase in production output figures is a highly cherished goal, at least in the short run. The underlying social relations of production which are highly inhibitive to productivity remain oblivious. In Luwero District in 1989 from 33,638 hectares of land put under cultivation, 535,613 tonnes altogether of 14 different crops were realised. This meant an average of 16.4. With an increase in 1990 of land under agriculture to 63,046 hectares, tonnage apparently increased to 800,023. Agricultural productivity, judging from the decrease in the average to 12.68, seemed to have been lower than in 1989 when less amount of land was put under agriculture and less effort made.1 For maize particularly, 9374 tonnes were realised from 4687 hectares of land in 1989. The tonnage increased in 1990 to 12,226 from 6,113 hectares. More effort was put in to grow maize, but returns declined drastically since on average 8 (100kgs) bags were harvested both in 1989 and 1990. For cassava, the staple food for peasants in Luwero, 1702 hectares were opened in 1989 and 269,155 tonnes were realised, which on average meant 632.5 (100kgs) bags. In 1990 when the 23,592 hectares were put under cultivation 542,616 tonnes were realised, which on average was 92 (100kgs) bags, much less than in 1989.

1 See Luwero District: Agricultural Returns Form III: Crop Production Returns for 1989, and 1990. Figures are given in Appendix I. * The views expressed in this paper are those of the researcher.

The implication is that, as government support for agriculture is evidently manifest, corresponding agrarian structures have made the peasantries, whose main source of livelihood derives largely from agriculture more and more marginalised and impoverished. The increased amount of land put under agriculture is largely accounted for by the peasantry, whose conditions of gaining access to productive resources expose them to feudal exploitation and internal differentiations. The nature of land holding and land distribution have made the conditions of access to land more and more restrictive in a situation of relative scarcity. And where conditions of access under tenancy are inimical to the capacity of peasant households to reproduce their labour, the demand for land is satisfied by gaining access to hitherto agriculturally marginal areas.

Areas which could previously be accessed to easily by a community have been appropriated by individuals for private usage. In the pastoral areas of the district the nomads are either up in arms against the ranchers who deny them the access to grazing pastures and watering points, or are constantly on the move in search of them. As a result livestock production cannot be qualitatively improved in a situation where the pastoralists are transhumants. Land disputes abound highly because the peasantries have not been uninterested observers. Their responses which have both a concrete social and historical reality are largely an adaptation to the structural conditions under which the status of tenancy, and other resulting agrarian relations such as borrowing and/or renting appear the most widespread and most rational. It suffices to mention here that it is not the strategy which they have adopted in ensuring their continued survival that is the major obstacle to securing development in agriculture, but the conditions which make these peasant strategies the only viable choice of both resource access and use. The more meaningful way to proceed in coming to grips with such agrarian issues is to identify the effects of different forms of control over land, in terms of who can or cannot do what on the land and where. How do the rights in land relate to various tenure regimes and how are they distributed between individuals and groups? The purpose is to identify their influence on agricultural production.2 If it is essential to concern ourselves with the recurrence of illegal peasant tenancy relations, then more attention has to be given to the specific production relationships existing in any such circumstances where these relationships like borrowing and/or renting and others become not only the most economically viable avenues of gaining access to productive resources, but also at times the only available alternative.

2 The importance of such an approach has already been underscored by among others: Sara Berry "Access, control and use of resources in African Agriculrure: An Introduction", in Africa, Vol.59, No.1 1989.

Since it is probable that the Landlord-tenant relations, whose structural significance was enhanced by land individualisation that ensued from the Uganda Agreement of 1900, in certain contexts inhibits investment in agriculture by lowering tenants' tenure security.3 It is also probable that in others, high levels of investment are not associated with holders of individualised freehold tenure, a fact which is particularly true for Mailo land owners in Luwero District,4 but with tenant peasants without high levels of security of tenure, that is, if security of tenure is taken to be synonymous with the possession of a freehold title to land. This therefore questions the conceptualisation of landlord-tenant relations which to say the least suffers from generalisations. The implication of having a few land owners and a majority non-land-owning peasants but who survive by absolutely tilling the land, is that manifestations of production relationships can differ fundamentally, both in space and time. Such differences depend on whether one possesses use rights or Ttaka rights. There are even degrees of security associated with specific levels of userights which also depend on whether the tenant has a kibanja but seeks to supplement his subsistence requirements or because of a desire to realise returns above the family subsistence needs. To focus attention solely on one manifestation to the exclusion of the others leads to the explanations which are only pertinent to a particular context.5

The failure by policy measures to increase agricultural productivity is because such policies, it has been noted, depend on assumptions about the rural world and about the relationships between the state (in its various manifestations) and society at the local level which are systematically inaccurate for frequently encountered agricultural configurations make independent contributions to policy failures.6

By concentrating on analysing the contemporary manifestations of social relations of production which are both historically and socially specific, the paper hopes to contribute to an understanding of the nature of forces that have shaped the various tendencies in the development of land tenure, and its corresponding impact to agricultural productivity. The paper is divided into four sections: the first section is intended to inform on the impact certain policies had on the changing land tenure relations as a result of the process of

3 Chango Machyo "Communal Land Tenure and Rural Development", Proceedings of the 2nd Mawazo Workshop on "The Agrarian Question in Developing Countries", February 10-12 1984. 4 Reference is made to the MISR-Winsconsin Land Tenure Centre study on, "Land Tenure and Agricultural Development in Uganda, 1989, pp.57. 5 R.Pearce, "Sharecropping: Towards a Marxist View", in Byres T.J. (ed) Share Cropping and Share Croppers, Frank Cass, London 1983, pp.42-70 Pearce explains the fatality of doing so in relation to the share cropping contracts. 6 J. Ronald Herring, "Embedded Production relations and the rationality of tenant quiescence in tenure reform", Journal of Peasant Studies, vol.8 No.2 January 1981, pp.131-172.

integrating the economies of the local community into the capitalist economy. The field data, a result of a seven month research is presented in sections two and three. In section four, which also contains a summary of findings and a conclusion, is a discussion of the contemporaneous implications to the wider society, of tenure manifestations implied in section three.

1.1 A Note on Research Methodology

The system of land tenure predominant in Buganda before the 1975 Land Reform Decree turned all land into public land was Mailo Tenure. In areas where it existed, vestiges of its land relations were not eliminated by statutory measures. In its contemporary manifestations, it has exhibited diversities reflecting concrete socio-economic and political conditions whose specificity reflects the nature of penetration of commodity production and integration into the world capitalist system.

The diversities of the history of the development of land tenure is predicated upon the struggles by the different sections of the population to gain access to land as well as the position of the state (and it various organs). Methodologically the selection of the sample sites and units of analysis, as of necessity had to reflect these diversities since no single sample could be representative of the entire area of the country where Mailo existed. To be able to capture the diversities in the trends in land tenure, a three weeks preliminary reconnaissance visit was undertaken to the district headquarters during which visit the records in the District Executive Secretary's office were perused to identify the nature of the land question.

On the basis of a random sample, two counties: Bamunanika (Wabusana) county and Nakasongola county were selected. By way of quota sampling, using lists of RC3 first, then RC2 and lastly RC1, two villages were sampled one from each county. One of the samples selected was Lunyolya Village, which shall be referred to as our sample A. It is found in Kalagala Subcounty, Bamunanika county. Our sample B was Wabinyonyo village found in Wabinyonyi subcounty, Nakasongola county. Lunyolya is located six miles from Zirobwe Town and about nine miles from Bamunanika town. It is placed 20 miles from Bombo on the main Kampala to Gulu road. Out of 123 households, 62 were sampled as a unit of analysis in sample A. Wabinyonyi is located 2 Kilometres from Nakasongola town. Nakasongola is 5 miles East of the Kampala Gulu road at 71 miles. Out of 103 households in the village, 62 were sampled as a unit of analysis. The 62 households in each of the samples which were randomly selected were taken to be representative of the conditions in both villages. In each of the villages the tenant conditions were more or less uniform while the majority of the landlords sampled manifested characteristics

typical of all others, hence representative of the major configurations in the land tenure tendencies and the respective societies at large.

Five months of field research, two and a half in each village, was used to collect primary data. The questionnaire was mainly used to pose leading questions and in the basis of the responses from the respondents, the researcher would probe further for detail. The only problem with the questionnaire arose from the fact that written in English, it had to be administered to largely an English illiterate population. In sample A it had to administered in Luganda while in sample B it was administered largely in Luruuli, the language of the Baruuli residents of Nakasongola, and Luganda where occasion demanded.

The primary data was re-enforced by data obtained from different files in the District Executive Secretary's office, District Land Committee, the Resistance Councils, on the basis of which it was discovered the two samples did not represent those areas in the district where nomadic pastoralism was the most important economic activity. The choice of the third sample was therefore intended to target the pastoral community in the remote areas of the government ranching schemes in the district.

A list of parishes found within the Buruli Ranching Scheme was obtained from which Kyangogolo parish was randomly sampled. Kyangogolo Parish is found in Nabiswera subcouty, Nakasongola County. From a list of RC1 villages in this Parish, Kirumiko was selected by random sampling. There are five ranches in this village, 2 of them private while three are within the government ranching scheme. This village is placed 15 mile west of Migera trading centre (about 97 miles along Kampala-Gulu road). It is only two and a half miles west of River Lugogo that joins River Kafu as it flows northwards into the Victoria Nile. The way to this village is by following cattle paths for most of the distance. The only rugged murram stretch of the road is just a few hundred metres. The majority of the respondents were Banyarwanda and Banyankole and just a few Baruuli people. These interviews were conducted through an interpreter.

Respondents were asked about their family sizes and the nature of the labour processes, the land holding, how they acquired the land they tilled, from who, how, when, and for how much; what they cannot do or can do with the land and why; whether they supplemented their family land, how and why; and what obligations they were required to fulfil as either owner peasants or tenants by the owners of the Ttaka; how much of their land was in use, for growing what and how these were grown ; to mention but a few.

Section One

2. The Evolution of Tenure Relations

2.1 The Pre-Colonial Setting

The theoretical justification of tenure and tenure relations is philosophically feeble and politically unconvincing. The philosophical weakness has arisen out of inadequacy of explanations for the development of the historically specific land tenure tendencies (which in part are accounted for by historical generalisations). Its political weakness is underscored by its inability to visualise the contrast between the concrete history of the development of these tenure relations over a period of time. The history of the socio-economic and political organisation of the resulting tenure manifestations, have first a concrete historical reality that cannot be abstracted out of context, and are secondly contradictory.

The land tenure system in Buganda bears the imprint of Buganda's colonial history, but the social formations established under colonial rule varied widely in Buganda, because as a society, it was not isolated from the entire flux of social development and was not static.

2.1.1 The Chiefdom of `Buruli Bwa Nyangoma'

Wabinyonyi village is found in present-day Nakasongola county which before the colonisation of the country was part of Buruuli, a chiefdom which was governed for the Kingdom of Bunyoro-Kitara by a royal princess from the ruling dynasty in Bunyoro-Kitara Kingdom. This princess was accorded the title of " Nyangoma", one of the traditions associated with the Kingdom of Bunyoro-Kitara and the cultural fulfilments and traditions attached to this title were exercised politically by Nyangoma in Buruuli, hence the name "Buruli Bwa Nyangoma".7 Pre-colonial Buruli covered present-day Nakasongola county, Bulemezi in present-day Luwero District, Kibanda county and parts of Buruli county both in present-day Masindi District.8

7 Orukurato Orukuru Oru'Kuteraniza Enganda Za Bunyoro Kitara: Memorandum to the Uganda Constitutional Commission of September 1991, p.24. 8 Bulemezi is a Lunyoro word, which in Luganda implies difficulty. Banyoro kept it with difficulty just as it was equally difficult for Buganda to annex it. Buganda's King Mawanda even had to transfer his capital from the then heart of Buganda to a place easily accessible to Bulemezi. The place later came to be called Kawanda, named after him. Bulemezi, then comprised present day Bowa, Sempa Buzinde and Bukalasa. Also see Ebyafay', Mirembe IV', Ngabo, Thursday 31, October 1991.

Princess Nyangoma had been individually appointed by the Omukama of Bunyoro-Kitara around the time the kingdom was at the peak of its territorial expansion. Outlying territorial chiefs of whom in historical times there were about a dozen or more in the greater Kingdom of Bunyoro-Kitara, enjoyed a great deal of autonomy governing their areas rather like private estates.9

The continued assurance of loyalty was what such chiefs were required of. Tributes and gifts were regularly made to the Omukama, who during the height of the expansion had already more or less annexed all the stateless communities in its neigbourhood including Buruuli into the mainstream Bunyoro-Kitara community. The Buruuli society which was just evolving from a communal society had no chiefs. Authority was exercised by the community through elders, fortune tellers and priests. They had no army and were therefore prone to attack from other communities. The development of Buruuli in the late 18th Century and early 19th Century was as a result greatly hampered, on one hand because of its location; being sandwitched between two kingdoms both with ambitious expansionary policies, and secondly, because of the strategy they sought to cope with their disadvantaged position. The only means as it were, for their defence was to make their communities rather inaccessible to their adversaries, hence they penetrated deep into the Lake Kioga's shorelines and Islands.10 Some of the sections of the shorelines were only habitable during certain seasons only. During the rainy seasons the people migrated further upland, hence they traditionally developed no permanent attachment to the land and any place on the land which they settled. Nature dictated thus: they could only just cope with nature.

Meanwhile Bunyoro-Kitara had already risen by leaps and bounds to great eminence in history. Its greatest extent and formal organisation were reached during the reigns of Isaza Waraga Rugambanabato, the 18th King in the Abatembuzi Dynasty and Ndahura Karubimba, the First King in Abacwezi Dynasty as early as between 1300 to 1500 AD. It was during that time that the early administration of the empire was fully developed and perfected. The Omukama Isaza was the first to introduce a streamlined provincial system of administration, and divided the country into governable districts named "Amasaza" after his own name. The saza chiefs who were appointed included

9 J. Beattie, The Nyoro State. 10 The elderly people talk of having once settled in `Kadebedde' - these were submerged grounds left exposed when the lake had a low tide, and other placed called `Mundenge' - these were previously papyrus grown areas cleared for settlement. This fact was confirmed by member of NRC Nakasongola county, Muruli Mukasa in an interview at Nakasongola town on June 8, 1991.

chiefs for Buganda,, Ankole Busoga, and other places.11 Samuel Baker who in spite of his hostile attitude to the Kingdom of Bunyoro-Kitara, writing as early as 1874, is quoted by John Beattie as having described the order and organisation of Unyoro as being:

a great contrast to the want of cohesion of... every district throughout the country was governed by a chief, who was responsible to the King for the state of his province. This system was extended to sub-government and a series of lower officials in every district who were bound to obey the orders of Lord Lieutenant. Thus every province had a responsible head, that could be at once cut off should loyalty or other systems of bad government appear in a certain district. In the event of war, every government could appear, together with his contingent of armed men at short notice. These were the rulers of government that had been established for many generations throughout Unyoro.12

Buruuli had therefore become part of Bunyoro-Kitara during this period;

in which in the event of any attack from Buganda, they fell back to the protection of the Omukama. The people on their part offered tribute to the Princess, whose palace was located at a place called Nakatoma in the present-day Nabiswera subcounty.

Tradition has it that the twin sister of the Buruuli's Princess Nangoma called Nakato is said to have been the Chief in Bunyoro-Kitara's vassal chiefdom in present day Bugerere in Mukono District, the land presently occupied by the Bakenye and Banyala people , a people who speak a language akin to that of the Baruuli people. The major occupation of the Baruuli people was fishing and raising cattle. The dry climate brings with it long and prolonged drought conditions. The soils get easily exhausted. Agriculture was therefore predominantly shifting and rainfed cultivation. This ensured a natural way of replenishing the soil nutrients. The natives had no permanent claim on any piece of land since they shifted from area to area. Land belonged to anybody who put it to productive use, as long as the land in question was idle, or not under fallow. Claim was established by effective use without any particular attachment to the land. Hence as peasants they were occupiers of the soil and there was no communal ownership of the land held by an individual though one was free to access to any land that was not occupied.13 Their location had its own merits; they were later, due to their strategic position, to serve as middlemen between Bunyoro-Kitara, Lango, Teso, Bugerere, Busoga

11 The system of counties of `Amasaza' did not start in Buganda as it is erroneously believed. It started in Bunyoro-Kitara more than 500 years ago. It is an old established system of administration that has withstood many centuries. See also Bunyoro Kitara Memorandum to Uganda Constitutional Commission September 1991, op. cit., pp. 13. 12 J. Beattie, op. cit., pp.129. 13 See File A42/116, UPSMP No.581/06.

and Buganda. From Bunyoro Kitara they obtained iron implements and salt, which in Lango they exchanged for dried brew (Malwa), peas, goats smoked fish and dried potato chips (Kasede). From Busoga they obtained crafts, from Buganda, cloth, backcloth and coffee. Oral tradition has it that in Busoga and Bugerere, the Baruuli took part in slave trade, one of the main avenues through which the ruling classes in precolonial societies appropriated the labour of their subjects under the feudal mode of production. One of the folk songs sang on beer parties or cultural fetes by the people of Buruuli, while playing on the "Ndiga" (local name for xylophone) is an evidence of the existence of this trade in historical record; they sing:

"Ani alifumbirwa Kimbugwe O'Muganda ewaffee sikuno, ewaffee Budiope. Kitange yangula Kumwalo. Ewaffee sikuno ewaffee Budiope".14

Translation:

"Who will marry the Kimbugwe a Muganda. Here is not home, Home is Budiope My father bought me from the shores, here is not home, home is Budiope".

The elders interviewed in the area established the fact that chiefs

especially in Busoga sold their subjects as slaves, while others offered their subjects as tribute to their adversaries as a way of appeasing potential rivalry.

Bunyoro-Kitara had a relatively more skilled class of artisans than elsewhere in the region. Even the Baruuli who obtained iron from some of the many inselbergs in Buruli, took it to Bunyoro in semi-processed form and exchanged it with iron implements or iron ingots which had been shaped into forms relatively easy to fabricate into other implements. These were known as "Emisinga", and were usually in a spade-like shape.

Though this community was still evolving socially and politically, class division had began to appear on the basis of their participation in the commodity exchange. The other societies which interacted with the people of Buruuli talked of them as being boastful about their wealth (Okuduula in the local languages). Hence they came to be referred to as "Baduuze" (those who boast), which was later imbued into their name by outsiders, who henceforth referred to them as "Baduuli" (the boastful) and it came to pass that these people were to be called "Baruuli".15

14 This was established in an interview with an elder Joshua Tebesigwa Kiiza, Kikangula village, Nakasongola. 15 This was established in interview with the following elders at various dates in June 1991: 1. Yosua Tebesigwa Kiiza, Kikangula village, Nakason, 2. Erifazi Byarufu, Nakajooga village, Nakasongola, 3. Sekiyunga Kwoba, Isirye village, Nakasongola, 4. George William Muwanga

The class cleavages re-enforced by trade activities were evident in the evolving customs, for instance, marriage. A real traditional marriage ritual then involved the piling of the "Emisinga" around the bride's hut in order to leave only the door way. These would then be surrendered as the bride price to the parents of the bride. These Emisinga were, however, available from only those who participated in the commodity exchange or those who had earlier married in the same way. Baruuli artisans were not as skilled as their kin in Bunyoro-Kitara. A tale is told of how they had been specifically responsible for the making of spears for the Omukama's royal guards (suggesting that there existed some form of division of labour among the Banyoro artisans based on clans). It is said that at one time one of Omukama Kabalega's young relation was injured by one such spear and consequently died from the wounds and the Baruuli who made the spears, fearing the Omukama's vengeance fled from the royal courts.16

Commodity production then was that such activities were for purposes of consumption and merry making. Baruuli traders who crossed into Lango are said to have been exchanging salt and iron implements with for instance dried "malwa", most of which they prepared and drank enroute while on the lake in their canoes. Since they carried with them drums, a successful trade mission would be recognised by their merrymaking on their way back in their canoes.17

The rudimentary level of the development of forces of production meant that in a large measure the people lived at the mercy of nature. They adjusted their ways of living according to the dictates of nature. The people were highly superstitious and could only cope with the challenges of nature and social development through sorcery.18

The more the commodity exchange developed the higher was the level of surplus appropriation. It was because of their position that the Baruuli community was a focus of struggle for control of their surplus; between Buganda and Bunyoro- Kitara Kingdoms. These struggles had started way back in the centuries after reaching the height of her glory, when hostile activities of neighbouring tribes began to press upon the empire of Bunyoro-Kitara. This began particularly during the reigns of Duhaga I Chwa Rujwiga C. (1731-1782) and Kyebambe III Nyamutukura (1786-1835).19 The greatest blow to the ailing

and George Baseke who were interviewed in Kampala. The people are the Baruuli, the language Luruuli, their area Buruuli. 16 Interview with the elders mentioned above. 17 Interview with the elders above. 18 This was established by the daughter of the Late Andereya Luwandaga, Nalongo Victo Nakityo in an informal discussion on 18-6-1991 at Kansirye, Nakasongola. She said her father's act of burning alive suspected witches was one of the reasons why the Kimbugwe was resented by the natives. 19 Bunyoro Kitara,.Memorandum to the Constitutional Commission, op. cit., pp.19.

Kingdom of Bunyoro-Kitara was to come around about the eve of colonialism when the centralised system of authority in the pre-colonial Bunyoro- Kitara was being re-enforced to correspond to the challenges of the time by the Omukama Kabalega who was crowned to the throne in 1871 and had introduced a revolutionary modern army with modern fighting techniques. These were called the "Abarusura" (which literally means those who mercilessly tear-up), and were being used to re-unite and re-establish the old Bunyoro-Kitara empire, and was only halted in this mission by the British onslaught. It was with this army that Omukama Kabalega was able to resist the British for a complete decade. By the year 1900, John Beattie says,

the destruction of the ancient Kingdom of Bunyoro Kitara was almost complete" because according to him, most of the population in Bunyoro Kitara was either dead or had emigrated to other counties,

a process we shall have occasion to detail later in the text.

It was Buruli which gave Omukama Kabalega his last refuge and support in the last years of resistance against the menacing British troops which were apt at destroying any traces of resistance to the establishment of British rule. In August 1893, Colonel Colville, the then substantive Commissioner of the Uganda Protectorate was ordered to seek a reconnaissance team to Lake Albert to ascertain whether any French or Belgian agents had reached the Nile Valley from the West. The only route for this expedition was through Bunyoro-Kitara.

Encouraged by Partisan Ganda accusations, the British who had ever since the days of Sir Samuel Baker viewed Bunyoro as hostile, together with Buganda attacked Bunyoro in December 1893.20

After Colville came Captain A.B.Thornston, Colonel Evatt whose onslaught on Bunyoro was deliberate, total and unrelenting: and culminated in Kabalega's escape from Bunyoro. Elderly men talk about the battles of Lwampanga and Kisalizi,21 as having been the fiercest in the 10 years of resistance. The joint expedition which had adopted a scotched earth policy was able to defeat Kabalega's resistance. Kabalega fled across Lake Kioga into Lango, where he had been joined by Buganda's Kabaka Mwanga.22 Both were

20 See Yoga Adhola, "Forced Marriage of Religion and Politics in Uganda Part III": in Weekly Topic Week Ending December 27, 1991 pp.9 and see also, Bunyoro- Kitara - Memorandum to Constititutional Commission ....op. cit. 21 Kisalizi as a place name is derived from the Luruuli word `Kisaliire', meaning something that has gone sour while Lwampanga denotes the sight of numerous skulls called in Luruuli Mpangara. 22 At one time when the British started setting foot on Uganda soil, Omukama Kabalega sent King Mwanga a message, "Ebigenyi Ebingi biita amaka", meaning that, too many visitors spoil

later captured at a place the elderly men called "Kabalango", and subsequently exiled to Seychelles on 9-4-1899.23 The ferocity of the resistance by the two kings is evident from the numerous forts which were built along the shore of the Lake including one very spectacular one called Fort Mruli.

The end of the resistance marked the beginning of the consolidation of the British authority over Bunyoro-Kitara. Much of its territory was annexed to Buganda, Buruli inclusive. Bunyoro-Kitara and Buganda had evolved different land tenure systems. Therefore the current dynamics of the land question in Nakasongola in general and Wabinyonyi in particular directly bears its trace to this process by which it was annexed to Buganda: from a socio-political formation where the people had not evolved any special and permanent attachment to the land either socio-culturally or politically, to one where such was the case.

2.1.2 Land Relations in Pre-1900 Buganda

Lunyolya village is found in the present-day Wabusana county where land was appropriated by the 1900 agreement as private Mailo estates bequeathed to 1000 and a few other leading Baganda. Buganda at the advent of colonial rule had developed a feudal political system which had evolved definite avenues of feudal appropriation of economic surplus from the peasantries and other under-classes. The mainstay of the peasants was agriculture. The soils were fertile and the climate favourable to agriculture but the land the peasants (Bakopi) tilled did not belong to them, but to the clan heads or chiefs. The chiefs' control of land was determined by their control of the people, especially the peasants.

Traditions have it that the first Bataka (owners of ttaka) were associated with Kintu, the ancestor of all Baganda.24 The other theory is that Kintu, the

the home, (See "Weekly Topic", week ending November 9, 1991 pp.3) and it later came to pass, as the Baruli sing in a folk song, "O'Kabalega no'Mwanga bali bandagano" that their common destiny was determined by the 1900 agreement, inspite having headed traditionally rival kingdoms. 23 The fateful capture of Kabalega and Mwanga occured at an early morning hour when a terrible mist had descended on the landscape and nothing would be seen. The other theory is that the two kings were betrayed by the local tribes. See Bunyoro Kitara...Memorandum to the Constitutional Commission, op. cit., pp. 12. 24 One of the early missionaries in Buganda, Bishop Streicher says the first conquerers of Buganda, who came with Kintu and settled the country, as it came under their domination became the Bataka (owners of it). First there were no Sazas or Bitongole. Descendants of the first occupiers were distinguished as indeed they are today by the totem (Muziro) of their forefathers. A village was a property of a Butaka of a particular clan. See File A42/88 UPSMP No.470: Native Land Tenure, Bishop Streicher Report on:

first Kabaka of Buganda came to the country and found certain persons in possession of land and these were predecessors of the present Bataka; he conquered and ruled. Nevertheless these Bataka upon their death were buried on their land, which became the place where their descendents were to be buried; that is their ancestral burial grounds.25 Respective Butaka were apparently the divisions into which Buganda was then divided. The chiefs' work was carried out by the Bataka.26

At the beginning of the 18th century, the Kabaka is said to have sought to evolve more control of the peasantries, the land and the Bataka by creating a hierarchy of territorially but appointed Bakungu chiefs. The Bataka were then, the chiefs and the religious leaders. The functions of the Bataka as political leaders were thus taken over by the Bakungu chiefs. The Kabaka to counter their monopoly on religious authority invited propounders of other religions, first Islam and later Christians. Although the Bakungu successfully checked the powers of the Bataka; "the Kabaka soon found it necessary to deal with the pretensions of overpowerful Bakungu, by creating a standing army under his personal command. The army was divided into Bitongole, headed by Batongole as captains".27

The process of centralising power in the hands of the Kabaka which started with Kabaka Mawanda, the 10th from Daudi Cwa dating backwards, was completed by Mutesa I and by the end of the 19th century the Buganda state had successfully created as infrastructural basis for a national and mercantile economy.

Lord Hailey comments on the Kingdom of Buganda as having

attained a more advanced organisation of rule than any other of the African territories... (which) originated before the protectorate came into existence... it has had the merit of fostering a spirit of national consciousness ...and has succeeded in producing in persons of some of its ministers and saza officials, a number of men of character and of marked executive ability.28

During the process of evolution of these administrative structures, the

Bataka retained control of Butaka lands. The Butongole held by Kabaka's appointees, was not hereditary as the latter, but held subject to the Kabaka's

25 File A42/116 UPSMP No.581/06; Land Tenure by Natives in Uganda: Report by Sir W.M. Carter and Commission, 1906-1907. 26 For a detailed descriptions of the tenure types see A.B. Mukwaya (1953) Land Tenure in Buganda: Present day Tendencies, Eagle Press, Kampala. 27 M. Mamdani, (1976) Politics and Class Formation in Uganda, Monthly Review Press, London, pp.30. 28 Lord Hailey, Report on Native Administration and Political Development in British Tropical Africa, 1940-1942, Government Printer Entebbe, pp.188.

power. Each clan had a clan head (Mutaka). All who shared the same totem had right to access to the ancestral land controlled by the Mutaka. No other person had more than a usufruct on the land. A Mutaka himself could not bequeath through sale or otherwise to a member of another clan. The peasants or Bakopi on his land were his tenants, who had to perform various duties in return for which they were permitted to build their huts on a piece of ground and cultivate a piece of the surrounding land. The larger the population on a man's land, the more the tax he collected; hence the Bataka were not anxious to drive peasants off their land, so that on the death of a Mukopi, his son would be allowed to stay on the land. The Mutaka could, however, turn them off whenever he pleased. The Mutaka could give his sons land and when he died his successor could not drive them off the land. Those to whom land was given were called, "Abalangira abo Mutaka" (the princes of the Mutaka). The Kabaka could, however, reduce the size of a Mutaka's holding.

Individual peasants in pre-colonial Buruli, like their counterparts in Buganda did not own land, but owned the use of the land. The only difference is that among the Baganda, "the Kabaka seems to have actually owned the land and thus had the power to alienated land if he so wished".29

The Kabaka by being the Sabataka, the head of the Bataka who controlled, therefore indirectly controlled the Ttaka, the land. In Buruli the land belonged to everyone as a community, rather different from Bunyoro where, "peasants were mere occupiers of the soils. The chief could evict them at his wish. The Omukama could deprive any man of his land, and on death of the holder, except the ancestral burial ground, reverted to the Omukama. There was no communal ownership of land held by an individual. The Omukama delegated his rights to give estates in some areas to chiefs."30

2.2 The Integration into Commodity Production and the Establishment of a Colonial Economy

The overriding British colonial economic interests need not be

overemphasized.31 The major precondition for the penetration of colonial capital was to put the entire country under the British suzerainty in order to establish `law and order', as a minimum condition for which primary

29 Irving Gershenberg, "Customary Land Tenure as a constraint on Agricultural Development; A re-evaluation," Journal of Rural Development Vol.4 No.1, 1971, pp.51-62. 30 See File A42/116. UPSMP No.581/06, op.cit. 31 Mukubwa Tumwine, "The Economic and Political basis of land law and policy in Buganda.; 1900-1966", Makerere Law Journal (1), 1977, delves in detail on the importance of the eocnomic factor in the colonial interests by dismissing such factors as philathropy, using secondary archival data.

investment in especially infrastructure (economic and administrative) could be undertaken to facilitate exploitation of the colony's resources.

Hence it became necessary to seek the pacification of any local resistance and thereafter mastermind the emergence of local royal factions. The manner in which these were achieved directly bears upon subsequent development of land tenure especially as an outcome of the land settlement. 2.2.1 The War of Pacification

Between 1894 and 1900 the British forces in the company of some Sudanese soldiers and local Baganda supporters led by Andereya Luwandaga led a war of attrition against Bunyoro-Kitara.32 The total and unrelenting onslaught culminated into the defeat capture on 9-4-1899 and subsequent exile of the Omukama Kabalega, who by then had been joined by Buganda's King, Kabaka Mwanga, to Seychelles. The Kingdom of Bunyoro-Kitara was reduced in size, parts of it being arbitrarily transferred to Buganda as punishment for the 10 years resistance. The British gave to Buganda in 1894 Bugangaizi, Buhekura, Buyaga, Buruuli, Bunyara (Bugerere), Rugonjo (parts of Bulemezi and Singo).33 In order to protect this new acquisition,(emphasis put specifically on Buruuli), and to ensure law and order, Buganda whose size had now been swelled by the British from 14 counties to 20 counties,34 had with consent of the colonial government to assign the leader of the Ganda contingent the responsibility to protect this new acquisition. Andereya Luwandaga was subsequently to become the First Muganda Chief for Buganda's Saza Buruuli, and the title accorded to him to him in his official capacity was "Kimbugwe".35

32 It is not true that the British forces' invasion of Bunyoro was because they had yielded, "to blandishments of the chiefly establishment under successive Kabakas of Buganda", just as an end or simply in return, "for the opportunity afforded to them by the Kabaka to establish their presence in Buganda", that the British allied themselves with Buganda in their intermittent wars against Bunyoro-Kitara" as T.V. Sathymurthy (1986), The Political Development of Uganda 1900-1986, Grower Publishing Co-Ltd, England, pp.4, puts it. He underestimates the overriding British economic motives and presents the onslaught as a Buganda war against Bunyoro-Kitara while it was a British war against resistance to colonialism. 33 Bunyoro Kitara...Memorandum, op. cit., pp.24. 34 See also Uganda Agreement Clause 9 in The Uganda Agreement, 1900: Memorandum on the constitution of the Native Government of Buganda Kingdom, pp.14. 35 Most literature on lost counties does not consider parts of Buruli, present-day Nakasongola county in this category. The reason being that in 1959 referendum it opted to remain part of Buganda. The local elites who took part in that campaign of 1959 were the first beneficiaries of Ganda Education; to qualify for which, the local chiefs had first to make sure one had been properly assimulated in Ganda culture. There was no way the results would have been different as it was in Buyaga and Bugangazzi, as they needed no miniature `Ndaiga' scheme of

Commodity exchange in Buruuli was not contemporary with colonisation. It existed long before Buruuli became part of Buganda, except that once part of Buganda, commodity exchange as well as commodity production acquired the orientation of servicing, not merely Buganda economic and political interests, but more fundamentally that of the colonial state. For facilitating this task, Luwandaga the Kimbugwe carried out administrative duties, such as to promote and encourage the growing of cash crops in the area.

Buganda and the colonial government had for long been, as was later conceded by the Provincial Commissioner (PC) of Buganda,

more or less dependent on the chiefs in outlying parts of the Kingdom for all administrative duties including tax collection for the British crown.36

The political experience in Buganda had shown that control over land

could be used for this purpose effectively.37 Hence with an allocation of an official estate as a Kimbugwe or Saza chief, land in Buruuli was put to the disposal of Andereya Luwandaga, as long as he used it to enhance the political motives of the Kabaka in the service of the British crown by making all the peasants his tenants. He collected tribute for the Kabaka from the subjects as well as rent from those on crown land for the colonial state. Since all land was at his disposal, Luwandaga owned several square miles of land covering a number of villages including the sampled village on Wabinyonyi, in Wabinyonyi sub-county, Nakasongola county. The use by the British of Andereya Luwandaga Kimbugwe, a Muganda, to administer for the British crown the Baruuli people formerly under Bunyoro-Kitara, and whose (the Banyoro and the Baganda of those days) traditional hatred need not be over-emphasised, was not any near to an accident. It was official policy of the British to use Baganda in the new hostile acquisitions of the crown.

An Acting Chief Secretary's view then highlights the following,

it is more than doubtful whether it would not have been better to leave the people (the Baganda agents and their surbodinates) to occasionally kill each other rather than employ aliens ( the Europeans and others) who are admittedly difficult to control, and cannot, owing to shortage of District Officers be properly supervised and who often stir up strife amongst excitable people and then kill some of them who have the temerity to resent interference

settling Baganda in lost counties to take part in the referendum since the people had become Gandanised, with Ganda names. 36 See File A46/177: UPSMP No.516/08, PC Buganda's letter No.155 to the Chief of Secretary of UP dated 28-1-1916 (File Min. 1965). 37 Glenn H. McKnight, and Robert Shenton, Agrarian History in Uganda: A Literature Review.

and show fight...we want to rule the people through their own (African) chiefs. (Emphasis added).38

This was further entrenched by the 1900 Buganda Agreement which

created a local faction that owed its creation to the colonial state. Most of the beneficiaries were the early converts to Christianity, who were mostly former pages who had all the reason to protect the interests of the colonial state. 2.2.2 The Land Settlement

The main architect of the 1900 Buganda Agreement, Sir Harry Johnstone, was not short of the vision for the future of the agreement, for he said,

the land settlement (was) a practical attempt to establish on a sound basis a ruling orligarchy which, under British guidance, might do for Buganda what the landed aristocracy has done...to give stability to the government of England.39

The development of the tenancy relations over time have been of a

dialectical nature responding to forces of which the colonial state has been the most dynamic. The task of the colonial state at the inception of colonial rule was to restructure the direction of flow as well as to intensify the surplus production from the peasants, in the service of metropolitan economic interests. The question that confronted capital then was how to reorganise the conditions of exploitation of African land and labour. This necessitated the breaking of the reproduction cycle in the various systems of the traditional economies. It became easier for the British to do so in the Kingdom areas where there existed such feudal forms of exploitation of surplus and hence the establishment of a colonial economy. To do so necessitated the consolidation of power in the hands of a local royal faction because Buganda then was in a state of a civil war which had thrown the country in a state of confusion

A Special Commissioner of his Majesty, Sir Harry Johnstone, had been sent out to

restore ordered civil administration and to make the protectorate more nearly self supporting after disturbances which included the mutiny of Sudanese troops in September 1897. He realised that a land settlement was one of the more urgent necessities.40

38 Letter from PC, Eastern Province, No. 39/11 of 12th November 1991, in File A46/735 UPSMP No. 1960; Eastern Province: Bululu; Fighting by Natives at Barr. 39 M. Mamdani, Politics and Class formation in Uganda, op. cit. pp.41. 40 Henry West, (1972) Land Policy in Buganda, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp.15-16.

While curious to uphold the structural landlord-tenant relation, but cautious to do so only to entrench colonial rule, a new breed of landlords was created because of their belief that "any Muganda is as good as another as a landowner." Under the 1900 Buganda Agreement, "an area of 8000sq. miles was allotted to 1000 chiefs and private landowners in addition to areas separately allotted to the Kabaka, regents and the more important chiefs. The allocation of this 8000sq. mile was left to the Lukiiko to determine".41

While the pre-colonial societies were no paradise, the development of structural innequalities between landowners and the peasantries which was aimed at servicing the interests of capital, was the direct result of a colonial policy that gave rise to private landowners, from whom the peasants had no option of escape - like the case was in pre-colonial Buganda where the peasants could shift their allegiance from chief to chief depending on how he treated them.

No regard was made to the customary attitudes and relationships to land then prevailing. Johnstone had instead turned to a formula that would confirm Ganda leaders in their private holding rather than one which would guarantee the continuance of the traditional relationship between the chiefs and the Bakopi.

The traditional ruling classes had been alienated from the undisputed control over peasant surpluses, through this new landowning class, which owed its status to the British crown, and not the Kabaka.

Politically, as Lord Hailey put it, the agreement was the,

sole basis for the control exercised by the protectorate government over the affairs of Buganda...42

And that even at the initiative of the native government in making any

laws relating to land tenure,

"solemn advise tendered by the governor in regard to initiation of legislation...was to be considered as binding on the Kabaka".43 The disruption of the pre-colonial economy created simultaneously some

of the social conditions of commodity production. In pre-colonial Buganda, there was peasant production, purely for consumption. Post-1900 peasant

41 In File A46/1483, UPSMP NO. 4915; Land Policy; Item UP NO.222 memorandum to Mr. Allen 19-8-15. Crown Land Ordinance East African Protectorate: from Henry Lambert Under Secretary of State. Also See M. Mamdani, Politics and Class Formation in Uganda . 42 See Confidential Report by Lord Hailey: Native Administration and Political Development in British Tropical Africa: 1940-1942. 43 ibid.

production was for commodities hence from a materialist point of view, the agreement was to effect the withdrawal of labour from use value production in agriculture and related economic activities such as building houses, crafts and other artefacts. This undermined the very basis of the pre-colonial social formations and simultaneously prepared ground for commodity production.

Under conditions obtaining in Buganda then, recognising the individual's rights could not act as an immediate economic stimulus and it is pointless to complain now that it should have done so.

Henry West has noted,

the mailo allottees were not chosen for their industry or knowledge of agriculture. There was no fund or managerial skill and experience: working capital was non-existant: above all there was lacking amongst the new land owners any incentive to transcend the traditional form of subsistence cultivation, and Johnstone's settlement could not in itself create that initiative.44

Johnstone wrote to Prime Minister Salisbury to underline the political

significance of the agreement,

I sincerely trust that my recently concluded agreement may cause the interest of the Baganda people to become thoroughly identified with the support of the British protectorate.45

Governor Sir Hesketh Bell noted that,

practically the whole of the land is in hands of the chiefs and their influence over the peasantry, is at present, sufficiently strong to ensure a steady and abundant supply of unskilled labour.46

which unskilled labour would be instrumental in the colonial economic production process. Land distribution in several square miles did not generate large scale agriculture. At least it was not intended to. It encouraged Mailo land owners to look to their land as a source of unearned income which would derive through a levy on the cultivators in actual occupation of much of it.

44 H. West, op. cit., pp.29. 45 M. Mamdani, op. cit., pp.42. 46 Sir Hesketh Bell, Governor of Uganda, Despatch No.236 of 23rd December 1906 to the Right Hon. The Earl of Elgion and K.G Kincardine, in File A42/283 UPSMP No.1484/1906: Agricultural Development in Uganda.

2.2.3 The Development of Land Tenure in Buruuli under Colonial Rule

In a situation where the absence of a serious land scarcity problem47 does not preclude the existence of a land question (which arises essentially as a result of the land distribution), the history of the development of land tenure system becomes rather unique, and therefore, the attention it is given in this section deserving. The unique position is partly informed by the developments in Bunyoro-Kitara's rigged colonial politico-economic history, as well as, the consequences of Buruuli's intergation into the mainstream Buganda's socio-economic, and political formations.

The level of social development in colonial Buruuli was neither akin to Bunyoro's nor (and worst still) to Buganda's. A high degree of coercion had to be used to create conditions for the penetration of commodity production. Buruuli had by the stroke of a pen become part of Buganda geographically but not in terms of its socio-economic formations.

The agrarian crisis today is informed by this attempt to create uniformity within Buganda's land tenure. Since Buganda's feudal political system there had evolved more definite avenues of expropriating economic surplus from the peasantries, it became much easier to convert these for the service of commodity production and colonial economic interests.

In Bunyoro on the other hand, the colonial state had to use even much greater exertion to establish foundations of commodity production economy, which was to be preceded by establishment of definite state structures for the facilitation of growing of raw materials especially the badly needed cotton for metropolitan consumption demands.

The first step in this direction was the founding of the Uganda company in 1903 by a missionary of the Church Missionary Society (CMS), K. Borup, after encouragement from the British Cotton Growing Association (BCGA), an organisation which had been founded in the United Kingdom to promote cotton growing in the British colonies.48

The growing of cotton in the colonies was one of greatest gravity to the survival of the British economy. Cotton supply from America was no longer forthcoming, first because of the attack on American cotton by the ball weevil. While the production of cotton in America was not increasing greatly, a rapidly increasing quantity was being consumed in America itself. Following the American war of independence, of 1776, the North had become industrialised and therefore broken links with its former colonial masters. This left less and

47 Here consideration is made to average land available to peasant households in comparison to sample A in the same District. 48 M. Mamdani, op. cit., pp.45.

less cotton every year available for export to England whose cotton requirements were increasing rapidly.

Governor Robert Corrydon correctly portrays the public opinion in England then that,

many authors in England, including leaders of industries in Manchester, the whole of the Empire Cotton Growing Associations, members of the House of commons and responsible officials including the Secretary of State himself, and all, impressed upon me the urgent need in the empire ground, of increasing production of high class Uganda cotton as rapidly as possible. The position is one of definite anxiety. We must on the broadest imperial ground do our best to increase our cotton exports.49

The position of Britain as regards demand for cotton had grown stronger

by the day. The Secretary of State, was at a much later date reckoned to have asserted,

I should emphasise to all colonies now concerned or likely to be concerned in the near future with cotton production, the importance to the United Kingdom of increased supplies of cotton from colonial sources and the prospects of cotton continuing for many years to be a profitable cash crop. Any increases in supplies of raw cotton from colonial sources, therefore, means in many cases, a direct saving of dollars and in all cases will be of assistance to the United Kingdom's export drive.50

Initially cotton seeds were imported into the country by Borup of the

Uganda Company. The very first consignments were,

distributed to 27 chiefs in 8 districts of Buganda and the results were promising that the government soon took over the task of importing seeds.51

By 1910 seeds were obtained from locally grown cotton, but; "as far as

possible, Busoga cotton was avoided; the preference being given to Buruuli and Bulemezi cotton. Busoga cotton seeds and Buganda as well had earned a bad reputation"; and the method of selection followed was "simply the choice of the seed cotton of the longest staple and cleanest appearance", since it was believed,

49 Uganda Herald, July 6 1920 Vol.xiii, No. 416. Address to Uganda Planters Association at a dinner thery hosted for him on his return from England in 1920. 50 File A46/1054 UPSMP No.3165 Part II Cotton Policy in Uganda: Item - Uganda No.232; From Secretary of State for Colonies to Governor of Uganda, Despatch no. 232 of May 8, 1948. 51 M. Mamdani, op. cit. pp.51.

then, that even if Uganda could not supply the quantity, could nevertheless, "supply the quality that reckoned the Egyptian Upland staple".52

Cotton was therefore to become an important crop for Buruuli, and which was later to influence the politics of land. The colonial state's overriding interest in obtaining cheap raw materials was later to influence the development of transport and other infrastructure which would facilitate the extraction of the colony's resources. Roads, port facilities, and harbours were developed in places which were convenient collecting centres for cotton. Pre-colonial Bunyoro-Kitara's physical infrastructure was rudimentary. It has been said to have been the result of the absence of compulsory labour services similar to Buganda's Luwalo system.53 In Buruuli there was no demand exacted on the peasantries save for maintenance of their chiefs' palaces. Therefore for the express purpose to ensure progress in the development of cotton; roads, and other related facilities had to be constructed. Brakenbury had this to say about transport in Tropical Africa,

transport in Tropical Africa resolves itself from the European point of view largely into the question of how; on one hand, best to bring raw produce from the interior down to the coast, so that it may be shipped to Europe; and how on the other hand, to send up manufactured articles of Europe to inland dwellers.54 Porterage for long was the mode of transport. It was risky, costly, slow

and therefore uneconomic. Because of high risk involved for cattle (oxen) which are prone to attacks by rinderpest, or were lamed by steep inclines and boulders and the wagons and tackles knocked to pieces by boulders. Since there were no good roads, porterage was to remain the most important means of transport. Between January 1st and March 31st, 1911, no fewer than 100,000 men were employed in the porterage of cotton, in Eastern Province alone.55

The President of the then Uganda Chamber of Commerce noted that,

in spite of the labour being used, there are still 1900 tons to be brought down in the Eastern province and 300 tons from the Districts that send to Kampala.56

52 File A46/172 UPSMP No.507: Cotton; Annual Report for 1909-1910; Item Report on the Cotton Department of Uganda for the year ending March 31st 1910, dated 12-4-1910 pp.3, 4, and 8. 53 Nyangabyaki Bazaara (1988) `The Food Question in Colonial Bunyoro Kitara: Capital Penetration and Peasant Response, M.A. Thesis, Unpublished. 54 R.H. Brakenbury `Transport in Tropical Africa' paper read at a meeting of the Royal Society of Arts on the 24th February 1925, Item No.98 in File A46/763 UPSMP NO.2016 Part I: Roads and Transport Uganda. 55 See File A46/ 763 UPSMP No.2016 Part I, ibid. 56 ibid.

And yet with water transport "Speke" (the name of the steamer) could only carry; "50 tons, and with a crop of cotton in the districts served by Lake Kioga ports, will be 3,000 tons", hence this meant that it would take, "two and half years to move down next season's crop".57

Sir Ernest Swinton (quoting Rudyard Kipling) rightly observes,

when a nation is lost, the underlying cause of collapse is always that she cannot handle her transport. Everything in life, from marriage to manslaughter, turns on speed and cost at which men, things and thought can be shifted from one place to another. If you can tie up a nation's transport, you can take her off tour books.58

Nowhere did the subject demand more earnest consideration to the

colonial government than in the colonies where virgin natural resources were later to be exploited, through essentially opening these areas to the capitalist world economic systems. And transport was a critical factor in this process.

The President of the Uganda Chamber of Commerce bluntly made his point,

if facilities of transport are not granted soon, there are many of us who think that a very serious crisis is in the store for this country. If there are no fit roads for transport, there will be a considerable reduction in the amount of cotton brought; and if the natives find out that there is no market for their cotton, they will cease to grow it.59

The Uganda Company put the precedence of the roads in their order of

priority, "to the road from Kampala; a continuation of Bombo road through Bulemezi and Buruuli Districts to Nakasongola", and second on the list was the Mbale to Iganga road.60

57 ibid. 58 E. Swinton, in a speech at a meeting of the Royal Society of Arts on 24th February 1925, Item No.98, in File A46/763, ibid. 59 See File A46/763 Ibid. at a meeting of the Royal Society of Arts on 24th February 1925, Item No.98, in File A46/763, ibid. 60 See paragraph 13: Despatch from President of the Uganda Chambers of Commerce and also General Manager of Uganda Company Ltd. of January 3, 1991 to the Chief Secretary in File A46/763, ibid.

Priority was put on Bulemezi and Buruuli roads because then, up in the district to which this road leads, a large quantity of cotton was simply dropping off trees and rotting for want of people to either pick it or bring it down.61 For only five roads, the money that would be availed was, "Pound

Sterling 30,970, in which the PWD staff was to be augmented by 5 road Engineers, 20 foremen to do 34 miles of road a month, and would necessitate the employment of 10,000 men per month for 12 months".62

To make the costs as minimum as possible, labour was to be extensively used. The natives only had the option to choose where to sell their labour: to the planters, government for roads, or to grow cotton because taxes had been introduced including hut tax and poll tax, which as extra economic coercion, was an avenue through which labour was appropriated. This was so because the taxes were paid in money, which money was obtained by either growing the badly needed raw material crops, or by selling labour to those who were growing these crops. Labour was similarly extracted through the Kasanvu system.63

The roads were to become a particularly important means for transport in Buruuli because the railway line which would have facilitated the transport of cotton in Buruuli and the outlying districts had been built in Jinja.

The General Manager of the Uganda Company had this to say about the Jinja-Kakindu rail-line,

It seems to me that the originators of that line were so blinded by the glorious prospects of adding a connecting link to the direct route from Mombasa to Egypt and at the same time adding to the importance and profit of Uganda Railway, that they failed to see that the benefit from it by this protectorate would be totally insignificant. At not a single point does it touch a single cotton district, and it is only from the districts having Ports on Lake Kioga that it will be possible to bring cotton down. Had it run from Kampala to Nakasongola, it would have brought down the produce from all Ports on Lake Kioga, and would at the same time, have tapped all cotton Districts in Bulemezi and Buruuli.64

61 See paragraph 3: Despatch from President of the Uganda Chambers of Commerce; ibid. It has already been observed that cotton from that area was, "of longest staple and cleanest appearance", See File A46/172 UPSMP No.507, op. cit. 62 Letter No.529/561 Part II from Chief Engineer PWD, UP, of July 17th, 1911 to CS, UP in File A46/763, op. cit. 63 Nyangabyaki Bazaara, op. cit., pp.78. 64 Paragraph 9-11, Despatch from General Manager of Uganda Company Ltd. of July 13, 1911 to CS, in File A46/763, op. cit.

Therefore, the drive to build roads and other transport facilities to transport cotton and other raw materials was to influence subsequent land politics in Buganda, Bunyoro as well as Buruuli. Under very difficult conditions, native labour had to be used to construct these roads. Most outstanding were the road to Port Masindi and to Port Butiaba from Masindi. Peasant option, which, coupled with other factors was flight. This started as single placements but culminated into waves of migrations. The initial migrations from (Buganda's) Buruuli were into Bunyoro, as a result of the scotched earth policy, the accompanying cruelty meted out by menacing British forces that devastated areas in Buruuli where Omukama Kabalega fought his very last wars of resistance and the subsequent famines that followed from the wars. Migrations continued as a result of the indignation the people had because of subjugation and humiliation by the Baganda agents.

In Bunyoro it was the demand for labour on the roads that triggered off migration. The requirements for labour to build roads to connect cotton growing areas to inland ports was too high. The Nubian settlers in Bunyoro were the first to resist demands for native labour for road construction.

The DC Unyoro complained in 1909,

Nubian settlers on being asked to contribute their share of labour have refused to do so in the plea that they are discharged soldiers. The 35 men enjoy the privileges of natives of the country and the only demand upon them beyond the payment of hut tax and rent is road work. This they refuse stating that this is only the thin end of the wedge, when we have done that, you will want us to carry loads and to do other work, you can imprison us if you like, but we won't work on roads.65

The demand for labour, which was one way labour was appropriated by

the colonial state, was too much for the natives, who unlike the Nubians, had no solace to fall back to. The labour at times was forcefully extracted from the people. Many Banyoro (as it later turned out to be were people of the Buruuli bwa Nyangoma Chiefdom mainly) voluntarily migrated from Bunyoro into Buganda.

The DC Unyoro informed the PC Buganda,

the Masindi Chief Kimbugwe has reported to me that 200 tax payers have left this district and settled in Mukwenda's and Kimbugwe's country....Kindly instruct the Chiefs concerned have these Banyoro sent back; as my information is that they have left Unyoro in order to evade the usual demand made upon natives for labour on roads, carrying loads on payment....66

65 Letter from DC Unyoro No.216/09 to PC Buganda dated 11-11-1909, in File A45/375 UPSMP No.1731/09: Emigration of Natives from Unyoro to Buganda. 66 ibid.

The PC Buganda went on to inform the DC Unyoro that the Governor had already ruled on the matter thus,

that natives migrating from one country to another must pay the highest scale of tax comparing the rate of taxation between the country they have left and that they have migrated to. In this case as these people have settled in Buganda, they must pay the highest Buganda Poll tax of Rs 5/=.

The PC was content with the Governor's decision, because according to

him,

by leaving Unyoro for Buganda, to evade taxation and their other obligations the Banyoro have only fallen from the frying pan into the fire, which they will probably soon discover, and so in the natural course of events, return on their own accord.67 And it came to pass: between 1910 and the 1920's, there were massive

migrations back into Bunyoro by the Baruuli people fleeing taxation, notwithstanding the indignation they felt at being subjugated. The migration was referred to as PULUJJA.68

The effect of these migrations between Bunyoro and Buganda was that the Baruuli people throughout their colonial history (we said even before, they migrated from lowlands to uplands depending on the seasons) did not develop any particular attachment to land anywhere. Their family systems were disrupted, and their social development process, to say the least, disoriented and hindered. These migrations similarly led to spread of diseases which accounted for high death tolls, thereby denying these communities the important asset of human resource that is very important for the development of any society at a level where it has low level of development of its productive resources.

The DC Unyoro in the year that ended August 1915 reported that,

of the people who had recently returned from Buganda, there was an outbreak of small pox. Six cases occurred at Kigumba, saza Kihukye; and one at Kiliandongo, saza Kibanda; the case at Kiliandongo has since proved fatal.69

67 Letter by PC Buganda No.227/09 of 19-11-1909 to DC Unyoro in File A45/375, ibid. 68 Today on beer parties the Baruli sing; "Ebya Buganda bindemere, Pulujja; Balinsaanga Rwampodo (Masindi Port), Pulujja: Batambula Bagadiika; Pulujja...`Pulujja' is the literary connotation depicting the sudden flight of a sparrow's sound of its wing flappings. Like the sparrow, the Baruuli fled the high-handedness of Baganda agents. Then, not to identify as a Muganda or with anything Ganda was tantamount to sacrilege and one would not be worth any human treatment. Natives were hacked to death on allegation of witchcraft. 69 Paragraphs 21-22: Report on Bunyoro District: August 1915 in File A42/191: Northern Province; UPSMP No.557: Monthly Report August 1915.

The other diseases included plague, dropsy, dysentery, leprosy, and syphilis, "some of them brought in by the fighting forces".70

Sleeping sickness took a high toll because the colonial government had imposed a hunting licence seeking to conserve animals for European tourism. By killing wild beasts like buffaloes, antelopes, the native Banyoro ensured a natural thinning process of vectors that carried the sleeping sickness virus. The hunting licence which was imposed by the colonial government turned hunting into a profit making venture for the colonial state. Chief secretary F.J. Jackson said the information from Game rangers in East Africa (Kenya) then indicated that,

26,312 lbs weight of Buffaloes hides have arrived at Kisumu from Uganda within the last four months.71

Whereas this licensed hunting became as important avenue of resource

appropriation from the colony, it put the African rudimentary technology of naturally thinning animals at bay for no alternative measure was put in place by the colonial state. This restriction, statutory or otherwise; "created conditions which favoured multiplication of both wild game and the tsetse flies, as the former act as the host of the latter".72

Since the outbreak of epidemics in Buruuli and Bunyoro in general, the natives' movements out of the district were confined, to the extent that when the ADC Masindi toured Buruuli "he found the affairs of that country in a satisfactory state...the tax had been very well collected".73

But the taxes were being collected from an ailing population, which was as a matter of fact also famine prone. And poll tax accounted for the highest revenue of Bunyoro then. One of the reasons for this was that chiefs who collected tax in Bunyoro received 10 per cent of the collection, whereas; "vide minute 280 of 22-7-1922, collectors (for example) in Madi by 1922 received only 3 per cent".74

Even in Buganda, especially the outlying parts of the Kingdom (such as Buganda's saza Kimbugwe of Buruuli) the amount received by the collectors was only raised in January 1916 from 7 per cent to 10 per cent by the PC who argued, that 10 per cent; "is not an excessive remuneration when it is considered

70 Bunyoro Kitara....Memorandum to Uganda Constitutional Commission, op. cit., pp.16. Also see Nyangabyaki Bazaara, op. cit. 71 From CS, F.J. Jackson of 21-3-1913 in File A46/434 UPSMP NO.3055; Game Ordinances 1906 and 1910 - "Buffalo". 72 See also Nyangabyaki Bazaara, op. cit., pp.67. 73 Paragraph 28: Report on Bunyoro District, August 1915 in File A42/191, op. cit. 74 See File A46/177 UPSMP No.516/08, Part II: Crown Land Rent and Poll taxes; Appointment of collectors.

that we are more or less dependent on chiefs for this collection in outlying parts of Buganda Kingdom; also it would make the collectors keener on their work if a universal rate of 10 percent were allowed instead of 7 per cent".75

A few years later planters in Hoima and Masindi were experiencing severe crisis because of labour shortages.76 The natives of Unyoro were constantly on the move in defiance of the colonial economic conditions, which became the only feasible mode of response after their violent resistance had been brutally put down. These Banyoro were constantly migrating into Buganda and back. Others, however, migrated into Zaire.77

The Labour Commissioner in 1921 did note,

there has of recent years been a very large migration of Banyoro from Bunyoro district into Buganda. The Planters in Bunyoro have as a result got to resort to West Nile for labour.

and that,

voluntary labour should be encouraged into Buganda from Bunyoro, Into Toro from Kigezi, into Western Buganda from Ankole and Kigezi, into Busoga from Bugishu and Budama.78 The problem with the West Nile labour was that they were not coming

forward in their usual numbers. One reason was that,

men were being forbidden to come across unless they had already paid their tax. As it is with the object of earning their tax money that these men come over, and arrangements have been made for a West Nile chief to collect taxes here in Masindi, it is considered that this restriction is unnecessary and undesirable".79

The Labour Commissioner did not apparently buy the Planters' view

point of creating labour reserves in certain parts of Uganda, because the Planters had resolved,

75 PC Buganda dated 28-1-1916 Vide Minute 165. Letter No.157 to CS in File A46/177, ibid. 76 Item 564 UPSMP No.2002/08: Excerpt from Memorandum presented to HE The Governor by a Deputation of Masindi and Hoima Planters on May 12, 1922 Vide Minute 43 SMP 4571 in File A46/760 UPSMP No.2002 Part V: Labour Supply Relative to: 77 Bunyoro Kitara - Memorandum to the Uganda Constitutional Commission, op. cit. 78 Letter No.41 from Labour Commissioner to K. Remane Esq. of Nantove Estates Kampala of September 21 in File A46/760 UPSMP No.2002, op. cit. 79 Item 564, SMP No.2002/08 ibid.

to approach government with the request that Bunyoro be gazetted a closed district for labour recruiting.80 Discouraging the Banyoro from migrating would make their labour very

costly because apart from developing an attachment to land and therefore beginning to demand for allotments similar to Mailo in Buganda, the cost of labour maintenance would be unsubsidized as was the case with migrant labour.

The Bunyoro Planters had indicated that; "the PWD in Kampala were paying Rs 11 shs a month"81 which was attracting too much labour. The implication was that a large army of wage-seeking migrants would keep the cost of labour for Capital at its minimum.

And since the conditions of labour of migrant Banyoro had not improved in Buganda as "the PWD in Kampala were turning away over 1000 men a month".82A great many Banyoro, the Baruuli inclusive, who sought to migrate from Bunyoro, could no more move into Buganda but crossed the Lake Kioga into especially Lango, but some went as far as Bugerere, and Busoga (whose present day descendants are people called the Bakenye and Bapakoi respectively).

A majority had crossed into Lango where as indicated by the Labour Commissioner, "labour shortage had created a serious augur for the handling of export of cotton" that the Langi and Acholi, "are naturally averse to any labour other than cultivation and unfortunately under the existing circumstances can only be converted very gradually, if at all. Yet recruiting from Bunyoro would not succeed because food was a problem in Lango. If you are successful in obtaining labour from Bunyoro, I would then suggest you offer an inclusive wage with free food."83

The wages that were paid to labour in Lango were higher while the taxes were lower compared to either Bunyoro or Buganda. The other reason why the Banyoro, and more particularly the Baruuli whose settlements were as indicated earlier clustered along the Lake Kioga shoreline, migrated in their multitudes into Lango, is implied in the argument put forward by Bunyoro Planters, who wanted a reduction in wages paid to laborers in Lango and other outlying districts. They argued thus,

80 Uganda Herald; August 20, 1920; pp.15. 81 Item 564, SMP No.2002/08 op.cit. 82 ibid. 83 In No.11/11 From Labour Commissioner, Kampala, of September 5, 1923 to the General Manager, The British Cotton Growing Association, Jinja, in File A46/760 UPSMP No.2002 Part V, op. cit.

If the natives are willing to work for Shs.11 in Kampala where all are clothed and living in dearer conditions than in any other place in the whole Protectorate, why is it necessary for the government to pay Shs.9 in the outlying districts in Lango, Gulu, and Kitgum; where the populace are nude, and they live at home, their requirements being very small and their taxation low.84

The Planters felt that, government could economize very considerably in these outlying districts" and that the recruiting of labour in the district mentioned above was even made more difficult by the government paying such high wages, as the Langi and Acholi said, and justly so; "why should they go away from home to work for Fl. 3 shs. and food (which is equivalent to shs.8) when they are paid shs.9 by the government to work at home.85

According to the Planters, in comparison with other countries "the

maximum economic wage in this country is shs.6 per month".86Tenant movements of the 1920s declared all land in such places as Lango Crown land, under the communal customary land law, which guaranteed usufruct rights to peasant cultivators.87 The repealing of the customary forms of tenure that had protected usufruct rights of peasants in land by the 1975 Land Reform Decree "cleared ground for the entry of capital into the communal countryside.88

Emergent local capitalists began by enclosing communal lands in their own localities, claiming it as land of their forefathers. Mamdani has indicated,

no outsider is allowed to have access to village land, even through purchase, every land hungry bureaucrat is compelled to return to his own area and to none other.89

84 Item 564 SMP NO.2002/08: Excerpt from Memo presented to HE Governor by a Deputation of Masindi and Hoima Planters on May 12, 1922 Vide SMP 4571 Min 43, in File A46/760, UPSMP No.2002. 85 ibid. 86 ibid. 87 James Opyene, "Pilot survey findings on the Dynamics of the Land Question in Apac District." 88 M. Mamdani, "Extreme but no exceptional: Towards an analysis of the Agrarian question in Uganda" Development Policy and Practise, Working Paper No.5, Open University, pp.20. 89 M. Mamdani, "Forms of Labour and Accumulation of Capital: Analysing a Village in Lango Northern Uganda", Paper presented to 3rd Mawazo Workshop "A hundred years after the Berlin Conference: Perspective of Africa's Liberation", October 12-14, 1984, pp. 19-20.

And when there was no more agricultural well suited communal land to claim from the village communal lands, discontent mounted to the extent of resulting into the weeding out of all non-natives of Lango who held Bibanja. Local peasants deprived of communal lands by capitalistic ventures of their own blood relations saw in the capturing of power in 1979 by a Langi-strong Uganda National Liberation Army (UNLA), an opportunity to re-emphasize the exclusiveness of traditional claims to communal lands to only the relations of kin.

The Baruuli and people of other tribes who had settled in Lango as customary tenants were told to go back to their home: "DOK TURWU", so they said in Langi. More than 2000 families are said to have crossed Lake Kioga back into Buruuli within just months of the conclusion of the Liberation War in 1979. Some went back to Bunyoro mostly to present-day Kibanda county in Masindi District while a majority came back to Buruuli (Nakasongola county), in Luwero District.90

The pattern of emigration back into Buruuli, especially as depicted from land acquisition can be empirically verifiable. In the sampled area of Wabinyonyo alone, the majority of the households (33 out of 55 households or 60 per cent) acquired land after 1980. In the year 1979 alone 6 households gained access to land in the village, 4 by purchase and 2 by grabbing. Of the 33 households which gained access to land starting from 1980, 20 purchased Bibanja, 2 purchase Ttaka, 6 gained access through donations and 5 were bibanja custodians. These statistics are summarized in the table below:

90 This was established an interview with one respondent in sample B, who hastily returned following their expulsion from Lango, fleeing from the fracas.

Table 1

Sample B: Periodisation o Land Access Inherited Purchased Donated Custodian Grabbed Tot K T K T K T K T K T 1960-64- - - 2A - - - 20A - - - 22A 1H 1H - 2H 1965-69 - 20A 33A - - 20A - - - - 73A 1H 2H 1H 4H 1970-74- - 2A - 4A - - - - - 6A 2H 1H 2H 1975-79 16A 90A 21A - - - 8A - 2A - 137A 1H 6H 1H 2H 14H 1980 & - - 101A 20A 12A - 45A - - - 178A Above 20H 2H 6H 5H 33H Key: K - Kibanja; T - Ttaka; H- Household A - Acres Source: Field Data

The present politics of land in Nakasongola County in general and Wabinyonyi sample in particular has to a large extent been shaped by its history; a history of the specific nature of its integration into the commodity production economy.

3. Conditions of Access and Contemporary Agrarian Relations

The prevailing tenure system has been highly influenced by struggles to gain access to means of production especially land. These struggles have also conditioned the nature of appropriation of surplus characteristic of class relations of production.

The crisis in the agrarian relations is such that different sections of the population have employed varying methods to ensure their continued access to their only means of subsistence which has been at a cost of their surplus product. The amount of surplus product appropriated in return for gaining access to land depends on the nature of use rights, but it is fixed in the sense that even when families fail to realise subsistence needs, the landlord will appropriate his/her share.

The landlords are not affected in case of such deficits since tenants gain access to land on condition that they surrender part of their produce in form of

rent. The tenants have only their labour and implements of labour. They require land to put to use their labour. The landlords who have land normally require products labour, over and above the quantity they are willing or able to supply, in order that their land and the labour of tenants are utilised to the extent deemed necessary.

The selling of bibanja, renting or borrowing are avenues by which landlords acquire access to the products of others' labour, which may not necessarily be their surplus product. The possibility that, "Hungry peasants" can "Sell off" even the "meagre food stocks..." from their shambas, "in order to obtain cash for basic necessities of life"91 questions the surplus product theory.

Peasants part with their food stocks not because they have surplus. Similarly such tenant peasants are required to meet rental obligations irrespective of whether what is realised as over and above subsistence requirements. That is why non-monetary rental contracts such as borrowing have become popular but they still constitute relations of exploitation.

Since there exist significant differences within categories of tenant peasants. Such relations of exploitation also depend on the nature of tenancy relations and such differences arise out of the disparities in the manner and mode of access to land and in the amount of land gained access to.

The following conditions of access were identified, with certain degrees of rights specific to each.

1. Ttaka 2. Kibanja 3. Renting 4. Borrowing

3.1 Ttaka Rights and Landlordism

Tenure regimes make distinction between the soil (Ettaka) and any manifestation on the soil such as crops, trees and buildings which symbolises man's interaction with the soil. Ttaka rights refer to those rights where the holder possesses rights in the soil and the developments on the soil.

Not all those who possess Ttaka rights are landlords. There is a category who emancipate themselves as a result of internal differentiations within the peasantry. Those who do not have Ttaka are not necessarily poor, but those who possess Ttaka are not poor. To gain access to Ttaka through purchase, in this category amongst the peasantries shows the existence of some form of economic surplus.

91 `Weekly Topic No.15 1990, for week ending Friday April 20 pp.1.

The majority of landlords became large landowners not because of the internal dynamism of capital that seeks to overcome constraints of productivity as a result of small-scale holdings. To be a landlord meant something different. Said one elderly landlord, "land is wealth. I am weak without a child to help and no money but I am not poor because I have land which is rented". This elderly man saw land as his security in old age; like most other elderly landlords. Post-1975 landlords too seek security in large land holding but for purpose of obtaining loans from banks and other financial institutions.

In Luwero District between 5-12-88 and 12-2-1990 the District Land Committee had approved applications for offers of land between 400 and 500 acres for 4 individuals. 30 applications in total were approved; 27 for 3,276.7 acres, 5 applications for 171.75 hectares, and 3 for 31/2 square miles, one for 50 x 150 ft plot and another for a 100 x 40ft plot. Only 9 applications were below 10 acres.92 These landlords have no intention of putting to productive use the land they hold because they are labour poor. Seven of the landlords were elderly and weak yet all the children had moved out of the home to seek paid employment. They cannot hire labour to till the land they posses since they depend on handouts from tenants and relatives to forestall regular deficits. Their only salvation is renting out land to tenants.

92 See File: Register for land applications: opened 5-12-1988 District Land Committee office Luwero.

Table 2

Sample A: Landlords: Landholding, Land Use and Tenancy Amount Amount Amount sold out Amount being of land under to peasants (Ttaka) agric Kibanja Ttaka Rented Borrowed

1 20A 2A 5A 100X - - 10H 100 ft 1H

2 10A 6A 2A 1H - 1A 1H - 3 10A 3A - - - 4A 3H 4 15A 2A - 2A 1H 0.5A 1H 2A 1H 5 50A 5A 8A 5H - - - 6 35A 3.5A - - 1A 1H 0.5A 1H 7 15A 1A - - 1.5A 1H 3.5A 1H 8 32A 5A 5A 3H - - -

9 20A 2.5A 7A 5H - - - 10 30A 2A 12A 5H - - - 11 15A 2A - 7A 3H - -

252A 34A 49A 29H 9A 5H 4A 4H 10A 10H

Key: A - Acres H – Households. Source: Field Data.

Before the 1975 Land Reform Decree, Bibanja tenants paid Busulu and

Envujjo, after gaining access to a kibanja through paying an entry fee (Kanzu). The abolition of Busulu and Envujjo ended landlords'most important means of subsistence and in principle emancipated bibanja tenants at least from feudal control. But it mean't for landlords, that fewer and fewer bibanja would have to be sold. Land is no longer available for bibanja, except in case a tenant is migrating, or in case of donations, or custodians for inheritance. Landlords prefer to provide temporary use rights through renting out and lending. In Lunyolya out of 62 households, there were 11 landlords who held 252 acres of Ttaka and put to use only 34.5 acres, 13.69 per cent of their total holding.

The amount of land the 11 landlords in the sample had sold out as bibanja was 90.25 acres of which 49 acres were settled by 29 tenants in the sample. Five tenants in the sample had purchased bibanja from landlords who were not sampled. Landlords lent out 10 acres to 10 tenants. Four tenants

rented 4 acres from the landlords and the number of tenants who borrowed or rented from either of the landlords in the sample was 14.

The amount of land under agriculture and the nature of their shambas (outgrown with bush) indicate that their main source of income is predominantly derived elsewhere, at least from outside active agriculture. Six landlords have inherited that landlord position and they hold 127 acres 50 per cent of the total land.

Their status does not reflect any form of capital accumulation, but rather such positions have been acquired by virtue of birth.

Table 3

Sample A: Mode of Access among Landlords Mode of Number of Amount Average

access households Purchase 4 115 28.75 Inheritance 6 127 21.16 Donation 1 10 10.0 Total 11 252 22.9

Source: Field Data.

In sample B, where the county was annexed to Buganda by the 1900 agreement, the land was made available for allocations among Mailo allottees. The Baruuli cultivators remained in occupation but Mailo ownership passed to influential but generally absentee Baganda. Tenants in this sample have obtained land from 10 landlords but only 2 were sampled because the 8 are absentee.

During the war of pacification of the resistance in Bunyoro, some Baganda soldiers had assisted the British troops. The leader of the Baganda soldiers Andereya Luwandaga, became the first Kimbugwe of Buganda's Saza Buruli. He therefore held land both as an official estate and private estate in reward for his service. He owned several square miles of land including the sampled village. From his share Luwandaga is said to have bequeathed land to his loyal chiefs, staff, wives, sons and daughters.

All the present generation of landlords have some relation to this first Muganda chief.

Table 4 Landlords in Sample B Name of Land- Land sold to Current Relationship lord tenants place with the of firstÿ Muganda residence chief (d) if Deceased No. Acres Andereya (d) The first Muga- Luwandaga 29 216 nda chief Kityo (d) 4 23 Court clerk Namazi 3 25 Kampala Daughter Kabeja (d) Kabeja (wife) Nansansi 9 78 Wabusana Nansansi (Granddaughter) Nabweteme 3 28.75 Nakaso- Calls Kityo uncle ngola Kaddu (d) 5 15 Kampala Kaddu (d) wife Nakaye Nakaye (Grand- daughter Abel K. 1 2.5 Nakason- Son of one of his Lubega gola chiefs Luzige 1 5 Kampala Son of one of his chief-phalaisa Totals 55 393.25 Source: Field Data.

Three of the landlords were his wives. They have since died and bequeathed land to their daughters (Luwandaga's grandchildren).

3.2 Usufruct Rights

When the holder of land possesses only the rights in the developments on the soil but not the rights in the soil (Ettaka) itself, these rights are termed usufruct. Those who hold only usufruct rights under normal circumstances are landless because they have no claim to the soil.

For purposes of analysis, one is not considered landless as long as he has some form of access to the land for usufruct rights such as Kibanja, renting or borrowing.93 3.2.1 Kibanja

Before Busulu and Envujjo were abolished one was required to pay an entry fee (kanzu) in order to become a tenant (with only usufruct rights to land). Once Kanzu obligations were made, tenants would be required to pay ground rent (Busuulu),94 depending on the size of his holding and commodity rent (Envujjo) depending on the quantity produced and harvested. The bigger the kibanja, the more the Busuulu. The more you produced and harvested the higher the Envujjo. Envujjo also varied for crops. Tenants said it was higher for cotton, coffee and bananas, which are perennial crops. Tenant sentiments in Matalisi Newspaper of July 29, 1925 indicates that,

the cotton levy (Envujjo) has reached the climax and has supped all our energies leading to loss of our enthusiasm to grow cotton,

and the newspaper editorial, to demonstrate the gravity of the exploitation by the chiefs indicates that the peasants has complained,

...in 1924, most of the cotton we planted perished and in some cases completely....after cultivating an area of 150 yards.... after borrowing 150 pounds of seed cotton, from the chief and you harvested 100 pounds....all went to the chief....the cultivator took nothing.

Busuulu was equally devastating, a tenant is quoted in the same

newspaper issue as having said

....I had cultivated 100 yards of cotton....and harvested 160 pounds, the landlord took 100 pounds leaving me with only 60 pounds out of which I have to pay an annual poll tax, Luwalo fee of 10/-, and he is also demanding busulu....now I have to seek wage labour in order to pay my taxes.... after the landlord has taken all my cotton....what will happen to the poor peasant.95

93 The concept of Ttaka has been used in the text to emphasise the absolute rights in soil, while the concept of `having land' unless indicated, was used in reference to usufruct rights.ush and putting it within distance 94 The word busuulu is derived from the Swahili word ushuru, which itself comes from an Arabic word, ushur, "meaning a tenth or tithe, See also, H. West, Land Policy in Buganda, pp.69. 95 See Matalisi Newspaper of July 29, 1925, Quoted in Gariyo Zie, (Forthcoming) The Press and Democratic Struggles in Uganda, 1900-1962.

The Busuulu receipts were the seal of a relationship between the landlord and the tenant. The more receipts one had, the more secure he felt, at least from the inconsequential loss of land by way of eviction.

The 1975 LRD abolished Busuulu and Envujjo. All tenants who had been paying these rents just settled on their bibanja after being turned into subleases to the state and tenants at sufferance. The decree had intention of weeding out of the way of development of agriculture the power of customary tenants as well as the absolute power of Mailo landlords; who became lessees to the state on public land on conversion.

A few landlords have tried to sell parts of their Mailo holdings settled by customary tenants, but without any success. One landlord explained the cause of this thus, "because they were your good men, you cannot victimize them since they were not responsible for Busuulu abolition. Their bibanja have become their butaka".96

The tenants on the other hand attached great importance to the fact that the bibanja had become their butaka "this is only butaka now. I have buried here a number of my people. So I cannot live them here", one tenant indicated. It is because of such feelings that critics of customary tenure in land argue that: "western values of development demanded that they be cast aside", in the interest of development on the land.97

But a materialist appreciation of such sentiments by tenants presents a contrary view. The decree of 1975 turned customary land users into tenants at sufferance. And the peasantries did not just conform to these challenges. To increase their security in their holding, these tenants planted the greatest percentage of their holdings with perennial crops such as coffee and bananas in order to make the possibility of eviction appear costly in terms of compensation. Though the decree gives the landlords the right to evict customary tenants, in practical reality it proves difficult. Out of 42 households with use rights which put to use 97.25 acres (68.5%) had planted 23.25 acres with coffee and 14.25 acres with bananas especially beer bananas (kayinja), altogether 37.5 acres, over half the land held. This situation where landlords see no possibility of successfully evicting peasants under such circumstances, at the least cost to them is what accounts for the feeling of insecurity among landlords.98

96 Interview with an elderly landlord in Lunyolya in March 1991. 97 A. Nsibambi, "The Land Question and Conflict," in Kumar Rupesinghe (1989), (ed) Conflict Resolution in Uganda, James Currey, London pp.232. 98 This is an issue which has been described as puzzling by the MISR-Winsconsin study, and as a result, its theoretical significance for especially land studies brushed aside. This therefore, to say the least makes the study methodologically flawed, let alone revealing the fact that researchers set out to justify a set of pre-conceived objectives rather than using them as test

The 11 landlord households possess 252 acres and put to use 35 acres (13%), with 10.5 acres under coffee and 4.25 acres under bananas, a total of 14.75 acres; 5.85% of total land.

Of the 42 households with use rights, 32 had only kibanja access. Most of these had got access to land by purchasing. Table 5 Mode of Access for Bibanja Holders in Sample A Mode of Number of Amount Average Access Households Purchase 32 104.0 3.25 Inheritance 8 35.0 4.375 Donation 5 6.5 1.3 Totals 45 145.5 3.2 Source: Field Data.

Out of the 32 households which purchased, 20 households had got access to bibanja through purchase after 1975; of which 12 had purchased from fellow tenants, 6 from those who had inherited and two from landlords.

While tenants disposed of parts of their bibanja to fellow tenants, from the portions on the the land they largely held under fallow, following the resulting insecurity, landlords sold less and less bibanja to tenants, because they were cautious there was no more busuulu and envujjo.

hypotheses. Expedit Ddungu, A Review of the MISR - Winscosin Land Tenure Centre Study on Land Tenure and Agricultural Development in Uganda, CBR Working Paper No.11 provides an interesting critique of the study.

Table 6

Year Purchase Inheritance Donation Total No. Acres No. Acres No. Acres No. Acres

1975 above 20 45.5 4 23 4 6 28 74.5 1974 - 1970 2 9 1 3 - - 3 12 1969 - 1965 1 5 1 4 - - 2 9 1964 - 1960 5 19.5 2 6 - - 7 25.5 1959 - 1955 - - - - - - - - 1954 - 1950 2 6 - - - - 2 6

Total 30 95 8 36 4 6 42 137

Source: Field Data.

Of the 8 households which inherited, 4 did after 1975 and 4 household

were donated after 1975. Of those who gained access to kibanja through purchase after 1975, the following trends are noticeable. Table 7 Kibanja Purchase in and After 1975 Purchased From heirs From Total from of landlords landlords tenants Number 12 6 2 20 Source: Field Data. 12 purchased from tenants, 6 from heirs and 2 from landlords.

If the reason why most tenants are evicted is in the event of landlords selling off tenants, then the small number of people who got access after 1975 through purchase from landlords could very likely indicate an absence of such evictions.

The increasing cases of inheritance and donations after 1975 compared to preceding years suggests that access to land by way of subdividing land to cater

for inheritance and donations is by way becoming a very important means of gaining access to land.

Contradictions arise in the process of securing one's tenure in land held by planting most of it with perennials. There is less and less land available for growing food crops. Since land has been under cultivation for long, returns are usually not high for coffee, and thus sales of coffee cannot compensate for loss of arable land for food crop growing. Subsistence levels have to be met otherwise, which varies from class to class. Some sell labour. Six households, holding bibanja rent, 7 households survive solely by borrowing land to grow food for subsistence. It is on these borrowed and rented lands that the highest degree of insecurity is rife. Six households rent while fourteen households borrow; a total of twenty households

Apart from planting perennials and burying their dead on their holdings, bibanja tenants can also transfer developments on kibanja to any other person through sale, or inheritance in case of death. But the new tenant would require the consent of the landlord to take up the tenancy. The landlord's consent is also required in order to fence, build a permanent house or structure on the land.

Any manifestation on the land that is not as a result of human labour cannot be exploited without the express consent of the landlord, for instance cutting muvule trees on the kibanja for timber. Even when tenants find an anthill on a kibanja, they are required (they said it was their own initiative) to offer part of their catch of ants whenever they fly to the landlord. Fun is made of one tenant who tried to dry white ants deep in the bush because he did not want anyone to know he had caught ants. He forgot about them, only to be discovered 3 days later by the landlord.

Unlike Nakasongola as we shall see later, Lunyolya village has been heavily settled for quite some time because of the reliability of rainfall, which is also evenly distributed and the fertile soils imply the agricultural returns from the soils are high.

Post-1975 new bibanja tenants were mostly those who acquired bibanja from other tenants through donations or inheritance. Twenty eight households had acquired bibanja after the Land Decree, 20 through purchase, 4 by inheritance and 4 through donation. Out of the 20 who had purchased 12 bought from tenants, 6 from heirs of landlords and 2 from landlords. Donation of land is a post-1975 phenomenon while those who inherited after 1975 are more than those who inherited before that.

The implications for those who had no bibanja before 1975, especially the youth is profound. They cannot easily gain access to land by buying bibanja. The best they can do to get access to land is by means other than inheritance; to rent and to borrow. Inheritance has increasingly become problematic because

of subdivision of plots into very uneconomic sizes. Purchasing has become very costly. The other option for new tenants is to open up new lands especially in marginal areas.

When land was alienated in 1900, all wastelands in Buganda were vested in the Crown. Such wastelands included swamps, sandy areas (Kisenyi) and others. During the allocation by Lukiiko, such were usually the boundaries for different mailo allocated to individuals. The wastelands which were vested in the Crown subsequently became public lands. Communities had no particular or private interests in such land; they were therefore available for common access. With time these common lands have been disappearing. Mailo allottees have claimed large proportions as part of their ttaka. Others have been turned out as leaseholds for especially developing grazing lands or other agricultural usage.

Disappearance of common lands has only served to reinforce the problems of restrictive conditions of access to land by other modes. Since land which was free for peasants to acqire is now no more, they cannot escape entering into social relations of production which expose them to exploitation, as they will enter them from a point of disadvantage; that of having no other alternative available.

In Nakasongola, where population is sparsely distributed it is much easier to gain access to land by way of acquiring a kibanja, as long as one pays an entry fee (kanzu), which varies according to the amount of rights one wields in the utilisation of land. This diversity in the manifestation of rights associated with kanzu is the result of a historical process. On one hand this process is the influence of the response by landlords in an effort to avoid extinction, and on the other hand, an exploitation of opportunities provided by a large influx of new tenants in a relatively short span of time. Most of them were initially those expelled out of Lango but later included others fleeing from political insecurity in the Northern, and in the Eastern parts of the country.

The desperate immigrants who wish to acquire land have to do so on conditions dictated by landlords and since most are absentee, it is normally through their stewards.

Out of 62 households in the sample, 58 had bibanja. 14 households borrowed, 2 households had grabbed the pieces of land they held from fellow tenants, 11 households had received land through donations while 37 had purchased. One of the respondents was a customary tenant on a Gombolola official's estate. He was among the many who had encroached on this land not for settlement but for purposes of cultivation. Four of the households had inherited their land. Of all these 14 households got access by more than one means. Two who were donated also borrowed, one customary tenant also

borrowed, another with a kibanja and ttaka also borrowed, 10 households with bibanja only also borrowed.

For those households which had purchased the land, the following were the manifestations of kanzu or the payments of entry fees; when a tenant pays for kanzu and the landlord does not acknowledge the receipt of money in writing, the tenant will have very limited security on land. This is hereafter referred to as the `first kanzu' and it takes any form including cash. It is not fixed and can be demanded any time.

There are cases when the landlord will acknowledge in writing the receipt of money, in the form of a written agreement. The tenant will exhibit much more security on the land than in the `first kanzu' case; because the amount of money involved is higher. It shall be referred to as `second kanzu'.

There are cases when tenants either on part, or on the entire kibanja, other than only rights in the developments on the soil, also buy the rights in the Ttaka from the landlord for which the landlord processes a title. The cost of gaining access to land by this level of rights is higher than in either cases above.

With the `first kanzu a tenant is under strict instruction not to erect a permanent or even semi-permanent structure. One cannot plant any trees or perennial crops like coffee or bananas or even fruit trees like oranges. Only annual crops are allowed. The fears expressed by the Area Forestry Officer, about the possibility of landlord restrictions leading to environmental degradation, by way of hindering the planting of more trees, was specifically a reference to these categories of tenants and not others. The gravity of the problem and therefore the justification for his fears is that such tenants were the majority in the sampled area, as shall be shown later.

The tenants are not allowed to cut any trees or even sell the kibanja to another tenant. In case of sale the one who buys is only allowed to harvest the development on the kibanja he has bought, but not to plant any more. The kibanja is not transferable. Rights in property are very limited as tenancy can be terminated any time. Tenants live in perpetual insecurity.

When a landlord acknowledges the receipt of money in writing, the tenant will not be restricted on what to grow. Tenants are allowed to bury their dead if they so wish, but the landlord has to give consent to the type of house the tenants is to construct. One such written agreement stated that,

I....... of Wabinyonyi has sold to.... a kibanja (plot) on my land (ttaka) of 50 x 100ft. He is going to build a commercial house out of bricks. He has paid 100,000/= dated 15-2-1987. (Translation)99

99 See Appendix II for the original text.

The tenant is allowed to plant trees. One can even transfer developments on it, by selling to another tenant. The new tenant is however required to pay an entry fee.

In the sampled village B in particular and Nakasongola in general, a tenant can only build a permanent house of his choice if he procures a title. He can then fence or do anything with the land. It is however important to make the following distinction, that, whereas, it is true that not all those who do not possess these titles are necessarily poor, it is not possible for a poor tenant to buy a title to land under Mailo tenure because it is very expensive. Three tenants have procured such titles by parting with cows. It is also important to make the distinction that the majority of those who had no ttaka could evidently not afford its costs. There is likelihood that for those who procure titles, there is a manifestation of some form of economic surplus. They are unfortunately very few. Such data makes little sense if it is used to reinforce the argument that land registration is a prerequisite condition for investment in land, in which case, a land title would be synonymous with investment.

It makes little sense because of the analogy below. In sample A, the amount of land under effective cultivation on its own, and later as a percentage of total amount of land held leads to an interesting contrast. It is the tenants, without titles to land who have not only more land put under cultivation of such perennial crops like coffee and bananas, but also much more area altogether put to productive use, than mailo land owners from whom they have bought bibanja and rented or borrowed land. Therefore the possession of land titles may not be synonymous with investment in land in particular and agricultural development in general.

What about this highly cherished goal by peasants to buy land titles? Where do you put those peasants who have emancipated themselves? A kibanja owner is much more secure than a tenant who is renting or borrowing though all of them have no ttaka rights. Possession of a kibanja only provides security to use the holding despite interference from the landlord in form of demands for rent, but not to the ultimate security of tenure. The possession of a title to land establishes the recipients ultimate rights, in the land.

The argument, therefore, is that peasants emancipate themselves or seek to do so as an adaptation to structural conditions of landlord tenant relations for which the primary relationship is that of insecurity in tenure. The buying of ttaka rights as a form of investment is geared initially towards security, and rather more incidentally to agricultural development, though within a certain context, it can be one of many conditions. For agricultural development, the most important condition is that of security of tenure.

Why not registration of titles? The procedures for processing lease titles to land on which they are settled, just in case it becomes statutory requirement,

will be as has already been noted, an easier venture for the more affluent strata of the peasantry. It has not been, and neither will be, that easy for the poor peasants who constitute the majority. No matter what scheme for land registration is adopted, it is in the interest of the rich peasants and not the poor peasants. It makes social differences more incisive.

Given the opportunity, the rich peasants would aspire to exploit other section. For instance as shall be shown in the next section, it is not the landlords who lend out land in sample B, but rich peasants. Those who borrow could range from rich peasants to poor peasants. The fact that rich peasants can afford to buy ttaka rights to land and be able to lend out land to colleagues who have to borrow means that not all those who can gain access to land by getting ttaka rights expose those who do not have the capacity to do so to exploitation and incisive social differentiations.

The evidence for a tendency towards such a trend is the increase in cases of renting and borrowing discussed below.

3.2.2 Renting

`Respondents distinguish between okupangisa' (to rent) and okyeyazika (to borrow).

Renting is a production relation in which the tenant enters a contract with the landowner for usufruct rights on a fixed amount of land for a specific duration on payment of a stated amount of money.

The amount is usually determined by the landlord depending on the economic viability of the said land, its location and the market conditions. The tenant has the option to choose where to rent, but only from available alternatives on the basis of which rent is determined.

It is unlikely that tenure is terminated half way the stated period. Hence tenants will grow crops which mature within the period the rent paid expires. Coffee and bananas are not allowed on rented land. The longer the period for rent payable, the higher the amount of money.

With or without harvest, the tenant is expected to fulfil the obligations of rent, and in most cases the fact that such obligations are fulfilled does not signify the existence of surplus.

These tenants are not allowed to fence or transfer the plots to other tenants through sale or inheritance but can sell only the developments on the plots. The practise among landlords is that the terms are usually adjusted upwards at the conclusion of every rental term, or else, for the same terms tenants will be required to rent elsewhere.

The reason given by landlords for this is that they do not want tenants to exhaust their soils, which on the face of it appears justifiable considering the

fact that it is in the best interest of tenants to always rent unexhausted plots. The implication is that the tenant will have completely no sense of security.

The relations of exploitation then take on the form of a labour rent in the form of clearing the bush.

3.2.3 Borrowing

The prevalence of borrowing indicates that the more access becomes restrictive the more the number of people unable to gain access to land, first as kibanja and secondly through renting. The production relations characterised by borrowing seem to be the most economic for the poor, who cannot afford cash payments, as in renting or paying for kibanja.

But borrowing which does not involve the payment in cash for gaining access to land involves disguised forms of rents including labour and commodity rents. For any strecth of land borrowed, which the tenants usually interpret as good will by landlords, the tenant normally parts with a share of produce harvested.

The tenants have no choice where to borrow. It is determined by landlords, and in most cases lent out for the purpose of having bush cleared. In Lunyolya, there is an elderly land lady, who lends plots around her homestead for purpose of having the bush nearby cleared every time it is outgrown. The tenant on top of it shares the produce with the landlord. Crops grown are usually seasonal crops such as beans, maize etc.

In this village also is a landowner whose idle ttaka is separated by a `kisenyi' from a bush which habours venoms and vertebra pests like wild pigs and monkeys. The kisenyi is not particularly suitable for agriculture because the soils are dry and they get waterlogged during the rainy season. Five former migrant labourers, of Burundi origin, who had eventually failed to raise money to go back home way back in the 1960s borrow land for subsistence cultivation in this kisenyi since they have failed to raise money for a kibanja.

The landowner decided to allow them to settle down in the kisenyi "to guard against trespassers", said one of them who was a respondent.

The relationship between the landlord and these tenants is such that in the process of cultivation, these tenants clear bush hence the kisenyi cannot harbour pests. These tenants' presence in the kisenyi provides a `human perimeter fence' which acts as `temporary buffer' against pests which used to destroy the landowner's crops. Now if pests have to destroy the landowner's crops, it will most certainly be after they have destroyed the tenants' crops since they have to cross the kisenyi in order to reach the landowner's gardens. The possibility of these pests being scared away is very likely because of human presence in the kisenyi.

These tenants keep off any would be illegal encroachment by other landless tenants. The former migrant tenants, now turned tenant peasants, have acquired rights to cultivate plots of land by entering into social relations that appear philanthropic but characteristically entail elements of surbodination and dependence and disguised relations of economic exploitation. This form of borrowing would seem to benefit the tenant because, after all, the tenants do not, pay any cash in order to gain access to land. But essentially their condition arises out of their inability to gain access to land because of restrictive access conditions.

There are households which have family kibanja but supplement it by renting, and others which supplement by borrowing. There is not a single households which combines renting and borrowing. Peasants borrow land because they have essentially failed to rent it. One gains access to more land by renting than through borrowing. The fact that renting is becoming common with households with bibanja, in addition to those whose access to land is through borrowing only shows how landlords have successfully adapted to changing economic circumstances in order to make those conditions essential for their existence, and part of production relations.

In Nakasongola both borrowing and renting are disguised in the different forms of kanzu paid for bibanja in case of a landlord - tenant relation. All the cases of borrowing which were registered were between respective tenants. This is because landowners in sample B find selling of `1st kanzu' more economically viable than either renting out or lending. It is richer tenants who lend to less affluent colleagues. The bibanja are more easily accessible here than in sample A, except the degree of rights enjoyed depend on the initial relations entered into. Bibanja owners who have more land than they can economically put under productive use lend plots for cultivation to their desperate colleagues.

The practice by landlords is that `1st kanzu' tenants are held at ransom whenever they have any urgent problem for which money is required. At the time of the research a landlady who had just inherited ttaka from her grandmother had circulated handwritten chits to different tenants, who had no written agreements acknowledging their tenancies, to the effect that she had a financial problem that as a matter of urgency required money that was to be raised by tenants. She wanted four different tenants to realise 1,000/= each which would definitely not be acknowledged in writing. When tenants did not pay promptly because they anticipated to contract some work for a wage, which work was not forthcoming, the landlady threatened to evoke the indulgence of her auntie (senga) in sanctioning her demand for their eviction (For details of the letter see Appendix III).

4. The Agrarian Structures

The few who got land were provided with readily realisable capital source, while the majority, because of the inequitable land distribution were provided with the necessity and opportunity for securing their future through the purchase of land. Land ownership was therefore the very foundation for the development of inequity in society. Contemporary agrarian structures have tended to crystallise along the manifestations in ownership of land.

4.1 The Peasantry

The peasantry derives their livelihood by tilling the land. Since they do not own land, they gain access to land through relations of tenancy, for usufruct rights. The capacity for each peasant household to gain access to land varies under different conditions.

Nakasongola for instance experiences prolonged drought conditions, rains come as late as March, and continue to May and August and seldom to October. Rainfall is unevenly distributed and unreliable; hence the returns from the soils are low for many crops such as coffee, bananas, maize, which need much rainfall.100

An average family would need much more land to be able to meet subsistence needs using family labour at the present level of development of technology. The hoe is the most commonly used instrument of labour. The prolonged drought makes the rate of soil exhaustion higher, hence in the absence of a capacity to utilise artificial fertizers, a long fallow period would be necessary to allow soils regain their fertility. The restrictions by landlords have exacerbated the effect of nature by hindering high productivity in agriculture.

The high average of 8.50 of land available to each household in Nakasongola of 8.50 acres does not mean land shortage is not a critical factor in determining agricultural productivity and subsequent social differences. These average figures do not reflect the actual distribution of the land. The figures therefore do not preclude the existence of a social question.

To be able to increase agricultural production, one would usually require to access to labour or the means to be able to hire it. For those without working capital, domestic relations have remained important as mechanisms of access to others' labour. This is particularly important in the poor peasant households.

100 See DAO Luwero - Agricultural Returns - Appendix 1.

4.2 The Poor Peasants

The poor peasants are the majority in samples A and B. They are all tenants. The majority of those insecure in their holdings are poor peasants. They gain access to land by borrowing in Sample A. Some have purchased land while others rent, the size gained access to, is disparagingly insufficient to meet family subsistence requirements on family bibanja. Intense subdivision of land due to inheritance has left many such households with barely enough land to survive on.

Many a family with bibanja, tilled by family labour do not obtain the family's minimum subsistence requirements. Several factors can explain the conditions of such households which numbered 12 in sample A. They are labour poor and cannot open up more land. Some are weak due to old age. Yet they have no capacity to hire labour. Many cannot cultivate more than they are doing because their implements are poor. They use worn out hoes. A tractor costs 12,000/= to plough an acre (March 1991) and to hire an ox-plough it costs 10,000/= (March 1991). Even many of those who are still strong cannot afford to hire these implements. In the event of a deficit such families find solace in selling their labour to supplement their meagre returns.

In sample B, many families are unable to realise subsistence requirements. It is the poor peasants who are found cultivating least agriculturally suitable areas since landlords are not willing to offer their best areas for `First kanzu'. To be able realise any meaningful returns in such situations, higher levels of inputs are required. These poor peasants subsequently find the hiring out of their labour as the only means to be able to meet subsistence demands.

The long drought and unreliable rainfall make the returns from the soil low. I have observed elsewhere101 that drought conditions experienced in Buruuli facilitated the rapid multiplication of the cassava mosaic virus. The drought was a condition of nature, but the famine, a result of the spread of the virus that devastated almost the entire stocks of cassava, their most important staple food, was a creation of man. Because of landlordism, the poor peasants found it even much more disastrous to destroy infected cassava stocks. These poor peasants preferred to harvest the little there was, if any, other than having to wait for the next season because they were not able to have any part of their bibanja under fallow. Tenants who gain access to land under `First kanzu' cannot afford to put any part of it under fallow, because the landlords immediately claim it.

101 Frank Muhereza-Mbura, “Cassava Mosaic Causes Famine in Burul”, New Vision, Tuesday September 10, 1991, p.8.

They normally require a high labour input to be able to realise subsistence demands. Since the family cannot adequately support its members, most move out in search of wage employment while others go fishing on Lake Kioga. But in spite of having critical shortages of labour, these households will sell labour in order to solve the family's immediate needs.

As land gets exhausted faster, the peasants are required to allow a longer fallow period by opening up new areas in order to realise substantial returns. Even if it were possible, it costs between 20,000/= and 50,000/= (May 1991) for labourers to clear trees, pegs and tree stumps and remove stones from an acre. A tractor ploughs for 12,000/= (June 1991). An ox-plough costs slightly less but it takes 2-3 days to clear an acre. There are 3 tractors available for hire by those in the village while 4 households possess ox-ploughs. The chances that the poor peasants can afford the cost let alone the competition for them is limited. They are labour poor and yet find it equally difficult to adopt labour saving production techniques.

The other aspect of their lack of implements is their inability to reproduce their labour even with the available implement of labour, the hoe. The soils in the area are relatively dry and stony and the rate of depreciation of their hoes is very high. A hoe needs replacement twice every year with a 6-man hours agricultural day in order to be labour-effective.

Characteristic of poor peasants in Lunyolya is borrowing of land. Out of 14 households which borrow, 7 have bibanja and 7 depend absolutely on borrowing. 11.5 acres were acquired by borrowing by the 14 households, an average of 0.821 acres. It is very unlikely that on such borrowed pieces, any surplus can be realised by the poor peasants.

In sample B, tenants who gained access to land by the first category of kanzu live in perpetual insecurity. Out of 37 households which had gained access through kibanja, 30 had no agreements. The first kanzu is apparently the most dominant mode of access among the poor peasants.

4.3 The Labour Processes

The labour process as has been indicated above is essential in identifying the distinctions that develop in the agrarian structures. Of these the hiring out of labour by the poor peasants and other social classes is most pronounced. There are two categories which can be discerned:

1. Those who till the land to realise subsistence demand but supplement it by hiring out their labour.

2. Those whose primary occupation is the selling of labour.

Land labourers of Lunyolya are not landless though they gain access to land absolutely by borrowing. Borrowed land on which subsistence cultivation is carried out is not sufficient to meet family demands. They, therefore, sell labour for food wage or a monetary wage.

In sample B, during the dry season when no agriculture is taking place labour is abundant and therefore cheap. But when the rains come the labour becomes scarce and expensive. This implies that a majority of those who sell labour also participate in agriculture. Therefore in the dry season, most of these poor peasants' labour is liberated into the market.

The category of those whose primary occupation is to sell labour is on the rise in the sample. Because of the insecurity in Northern and Eastern parts of the country there are many immigrants into the area. Households with cattle employ herdsmen. If a herdsman grazes cows daily he is accommodated, fed (2 meals per day) and his graduated tax paid. In addition to a salary ranging between 2000/= and 3500/= the herdsman also gets a share of the daily milk collection. If it is little he takes precedence and receives not less 1 litre of milk daily.

The terms of payment, however, vary if one employs more than one herdsman their bargain is less because they graze in turns. The peasants of Lunyolya who seek their survival on borrowed land and those in sample B who can only gain access to agriculturally less suitable lands are typical manifestations of the difficulties conditions of access to land can create for agricultural performance. Misery is a condition that prevails in perpetuity and significant deficits are the order of the day because:

a) the land they hold is small, on average 0.821 acres in sample A. The climate in sample B would necessitate a much higher land average, than in sample A.

b) the rights they wield in the utilisation of land are very limited and therefore;

c) they are the most insecure in their holding.

To such households, to live is to make the daily ends meet at the least possible cost. Hiring in of labour is alien to their relations of production. On the contrary they survive by hiring out their labour. They cannot realise family subsistence demands on the family land - usually borrowed land. If they wish to make any advancement economically, and such is usually an optimism dearly nursed by such peasants, they have to vigorously sell their labour, at times being joined by their entire families.

For such households, the most critical factor of production is not labour, but land. It is because of the inability to gain access other means of production

that makes their labour power a commodity. Therefore, policies that are geared only to generating sufficient employment incomes of rural population are not bound to succeed if they signally fail to restructure the land relations.

The critical scarcity of land has also fundamental implications for their long term labour capacities. In spite of depending absolutely on sale of labour, such households are usually short of labour. They have small families, fewer children most of whom have moved out of the home in search of wage employment even before they become of age.

4.4 Middle Peasants

Because of the fear of the danger of having a deficit, or the desire to generate a surplus, households which rely on their family holding to meet subsistence needs using family labour will either work harder if the land is adequate, or enter into other relations of production such as renting.

The population pressure on land increases the demand for land, making it difficult to gain access to more land. Such relations of production like renting become fashionable in order to:

(a) forestall a deficit (b) generate economic surplus (c) meet Subsistence family requirements which cannot be realised on

the family land.

In Lunyolya, out of 42 households with use rights, 35 hold 118.5 acres in bibanja. Seven households which gained access to land only through borrowing hold 11.5 acres. Of those with bibanja, 6 households also rented 12.0 acres. Several of those households which rent land only use family labour on rented land in addition to family holdings in order to meet family subsistence needs.

It is, therefore, the restrictive conditions of access to land that undermine the independence of such households (of middle peasants) as producers. There are 22 households which rely on family kibanja only, and no renting or borrowing. Such households will till the family land using family labour. Without entering into other relations of production, except the extent to which they are exposed to the market. The majority have gained access to kibanja through inheritance.

Such households are unable to hire labour because they cannot afford. They do not hire out their labour because they are much more preoccupied on family land. The family's monetary requirement for such needs like soap, medicine, paraffin are met by sales of part of family food stocks even when they are not in surplus.

These work hardest and longest on the family land, apparently a realisation that deficits can easily come by.

In sample B, any desire to remain an independent producer would imply not hiring more effective means of labour like the ox-ploughs and tractors because to do so exposes them to relations of exploitation. They cannot afford to hire labour, and will therefore not go into such ventures like rearing cows, opening up more land where a high labour input is a prerequisite.

The implication of the above is that the middle peasantry as a stratum is more or less a transient category. Being sandwiched between the poor and rich peasantry implies that its constitution is largely a result of the process by which the peasantries strive to acquire more independence as producers in the process of producing to realise a surplus, on top of subsistence demands.

Cases among these categories of hiring out labour or selling products of labour are on the increase.

4.5 Rich Peasants

The rich peasants are a manifestation of a successful merging of agrarian occupation with other economic activity like trade, craft making and brewing. In most case where such households rent land; it increases the family demand for labour which is provided for by hiring it. Hiring of labour has become an essential condition of their production relations.

In Sample B, there are 3 levels of Kanzu and levels of security correspond with the degree of rights. Those who do not enjoy the highest degree of rights are not necessarily poor, but all those who enjoy these rights cannot be referred to as being poor; because for instance in order to build a permanent house one needs money, as well as money for buying the second level of kanzu. One peasant was rich enough to buy himself out on 20 acres in 1987 by paying 3 cows (the equivalent then of 240,000/=). Another bought a plot 47x47 ft in 1987 at 100,000/=. Three households had altogether bought ttaka rights.

This would mean unless ttaka rights have been inherited or donated to the recipient, they can be acquired by paying dearly. Surplus in most of such households is as a result of savings derived form wage employment outside agriculture, either in the civil service or in the private sector. This is combined with other sources of income such as petty trade, brewing and distributing alcohol to retailers, running a retail shop in the village and tailoring.

Permanent house with burnt bricks or cement blocks are found on only those plots where peasants have ttaka rights, or the landlords have given written consent. In such circumstances the most viable form of investment which ensures as much independence from the landlords as possible is rearing cows. Rearing animals manifests itself in varying tendencies which all depend

on the intensity of hiring of labour, and landlords' compliance is assured with occasional donations of milk and butter. The following categories were identified.

1. There are households who own one or two cows tie them on a rope like they would do to goats. Here family labour is used.

2. Those who have about five cows each will pull them together in a kraal and are grazed collectively by the same herdsman. The respective families will pull resources for the upkeep of their herds equally, irrespective of how many each has.

3. Two or more families will only pull their herds at the beginning of the day for grazing. Each of the family has a herdsman, with a separate kraal. One herdsman grazing all year through has to be fed, accommodated paid a salary, given milk on a daily basis on top of paying graduated tax for him. For those who have many animals, it is not cheap to employ many herdsmen, and one herdsman can not marshal all the tasks. That's why families pull their herds such that herdsmen can graze in turns.

4. There are families with many animals and a capacity to hire more than one herdsman, without the labour costs adversely affecting their net incomes. They marshal the grazing single - handedly without combining with other households. The herdsmen employed will do the grazing in turns.

5. There are families which entrust their herds to pastoralists who are charged with the task of looking after all the animals in return they take all the milk. Most of these are households without sufficient land to keep their many animals.

The reason why the ownership of individual kraals is associated with the

appropriation of economic surplus is because of its reliance of the hiring of labour of others. These households are of the peasantry because their detachment from the land has not been effected. They are peasants with economic surplus - the rich peasants.

Table 8

Sample B: Economic Activities Among Cattle Rearing Households Activity Other Number Ttaka Grazing process in wage Economic of cows employment activities

in addition to Agric. 1. Surveyor Brewing, 5 47x47ft Combines with Retail another family shop, in same kraal rents out rooms for money 2. Store- Brewing 25 47x47ft Combines with

keeper two other families, but each has a herds-

man and separate kraal 3. Coope-

ratives Officer - 10 - Combines with

another family. Each has own Kraal and herdsman 4. Gombolola Brewing - Has own herds-

chief 10 men (two) 5. Primary school teacher - 10 - Combines with 4 other families 6. Bursar at All animals are secondary with a herdsman school - 100 - in the ranching scheme. 7. Primary - 15 20 Has own herds- school man teacher 8. Retail 2 - Cows are tied on shop rope 9. Retail 10 - Combines with shop two others 10. Selling 30 - Has own herds- milk to man Source: Field Data.

Such other activities like brewing only became economic; especially for the rich peasants whose operation is large scale. There are three categories in brewing:- (a) Large scale brewers. Who sell to retailers (b) these who buy in wholesale and sell at retail (c) the small scale brewers who brew for retail as well as home consumption. The wholesale price = 3000/= for 5 litres, 1/2 litre

sells at 300/=. Retailers sell 1/2 litre at 350/= - 400/=. To produce 20 litres of waragi, the brewers need the following:-

4 tins of cassava at 2000/= @ 8000/= Yeast - 1/2 tin (25 legs) of millet 1500/= Frying pan (hiring) 200/= Distilling pipe (hiring) 400/= The drum (hiring) 500/= Water at least 10 (20 litre) jellycans 250/= Firewood for frying and distilling 600/= Labour - largely family labour -

Total 11,450/=

It is a 15-day process. Pounding cassava takes 2 days, fermenting 4 days. Frying is done on the 7th day. After which water and yeast are added takes 6 days and distillation starts on 14th day and continues to 15th.

Deductions:

1. Beer permit - 50/= 2. Mpooza (Market due) for every 20 litres produced 500/=

paid.

Deductions= 500 + 50 = 550/- Total Costs = 11,450/- + 550/- = 12,000/-, minus the labour costs which are never part of the peasants calculations.

2 to 3 litres of super are put aside. You get 20 litres of regular waragi. The super is mixed with residue alcohol to obtain 5 other litres of regular = 25 litres. 25 x 2 x 300/= a 1/2 litre = 15,000/= Profits = 15,000/- - 12,000/- = 3,000/-, which does not take into account the cost of family and personal labour.

The implication is that the rich peasant's capacity to sustain his household's economic surplus appropriation is to intensify labour exploitation

by producing on a large scale and regularly on one hand, and involving in more than one economic activity outside agriculture without having to break links with the land.

4.6 Capitalist/Capitalist Landlords

The internal differentiation among the peasantry has led to the emergence of a class whose main source of income is exploiting the labour of others, whether in agriculture, petty trade, animal rearing, brewing or even brick making. This capitalist class is withdrawn from the production process, but only to the extent of supervising the labour which they hire.

Brick Making: in Sample B

The making of burnt bricks is a brisk business in the area. It is, however,

highly competitive because water is scarce and to stand any chance of success, it has to be on a large scale. Most of the brick makers are small scale and for personal use and not purely on a commercial basis, except for one man. Because he is the RC1 Chairman, he has been in a position to monopolise the village borehole - a community based water pump. In order to scoop the land for soil used in the making of bricks this man has paid the landlady 4000/= in addition to a Busuti costing 15,000/=. The soil is dug next to the pump for convenience.

This man has some other activities. He is building and supervises other market masters in the Gombolola. So he has left the task of making the mud bricks to a sub-contractor. The capitalist provides all implements. The sub-contractor sells him an unburnt mud brick at 10/=. He is paid 10/= for his labour, but his profit margin is reduced because he also hires two labourers to mix the mud and squeeze it to make the bricks and dry them properly in the sun. -It takes him 30 days to make 2000 well dried mud bricks. He earns 2000 x 10 = 20,000/=, from which amount the two labourers are paid.

The capitalist's calculations are:

1. 2000 bricks for a single kiln @ at 10/= ..... 20,000/= 2. 2 labourers to pile the bricks on the kiln for 2/= for @ brick put up (2000 x 2) 4,000/= 3. He cuts the fire wood with help of family labour. Hires a tractor to transport it. One tractor load of firewood 10,000/=. He needs two trailers (10,000/= x 2)……. 20,000/= 4. He hire labour to transport the firewood from the bush and putting it within distance for the tractor to pick 5000/= while the loading and off loadingis 3000/= (3000/= + 5000/=)... ....8,000/= 5. Licence and taxes NIL. Total 52,000/=.

Out of 2000 bricks, 200 - 400 can get singed. He gets between 1500 - 1700 bricks and sells at between 25/= and 30/- @ brick. Assume he gets all the 2000 bricks without any damage and sells at maximum price 30/= @ 2000 x 30 = 60,000/=. In a month he makes 2 or 3 kilns. For each kiln he makes (60,000/= - 52,000/=) 8,000/= profit. For 3 kilns he would earn 24,000/=. At times he does not immediately sell all the bricks. At the time of research he had a contract to supply Nakasongola Development Programme with 5,000 bricks.

This capitalist can only increase his profit margin by intensifying his exploitation of the labour of those he employs and making as many kilns as possible. The more the number of kilns the higher the intensity of labour input.

In Sample A, a capitalist held a 5-acre kibanja on which subsistence cultivation was undertaken by hired labour supervised by the wife. The man was an artisan making kettles, saucepans, dishes, pails. He employed a total of 7 craftsmen two of them experienced and were teaching the skills to the other five while on the job. One of the five had dropped out of school and had just inherited his late father's ttaka and landlord status and was renting out land to tenants. Those who came to gain the skills while on the job were not paid a salary, but whatever they made a certain percentage was given as a token of appreciation. These largely accounted for the surplus labour appropriated. The proprietor of the workshop only came in to give expert advise, since he had been on the job longest. He generally supervised their activities. His duty was to procure raw material - scrap metal - and receive orders for any item. He was completely withdrawn from direct production.

The other capitalist was a high ranking civil servant resident in the village and comes for weekends on Fridays till Monday. He has invested his savings from his salaried employment in buying ttaka. He started with a kibanja but finally bought himself out. He rents any piece near his land and finally buys it to add his ttaka. He is the first person to be approached in the village when any landlord has any piece of land he/she wants to convert. Landlords who have any financial problems ask to be bailed out with money by offering their land for security which land he eventually buys up. His land is fenced with a permanent house on it. He employs 3 porters at home, 3 herdsmen and has more than 20 cows and 4 labourers on the farm. Labourers in the village usually hang around his compound waiting to be called upon for any work. He has also used his income to try to increase or protect his access to means of production in future. Social identity and status have, therefore, become objects as well as instruments of investment. His strategies of production and accumulation are directed towards establishing and strengthening social relations; for instance he undertakes the upkeep of the village road. He pays whoever clears the bush. He had the 5 mile distance of the road from Kalagala to Lunyolya graded at one time when it had become

almost impassable. He owns a saloon car. He has employed a permanent labourer for weeding the village foot path right from the main road via his home to the nearest primary school and church where he is also the Head of Christians.

4.6.1 Capitalist Landlords

The other category of capitalist is a landlord whose proceeds from rents and the sale of bibanja has been invested in building of houses for renting. This individual has also built a lodge and a kraal. These are all avenues through which labour is appropriated. In spite of his landlord status, other forms of appropriating surplus are employed. He continues to rent out land and sell bibanja to those who are willing. His economic mainstay is the rents as well as the proceeds from the houses and the lodge.

Table 9

Sample A: Modes of Acquisition by Class/Strata Class Inherited Purchased Donated Borrowed Rented Strata Land K T K T K T - - Landlords - 127A - 115A - 10A - -

6H 4H 1 H Capitalists - - 5.5A 20A - - - - 2H 1H Rich - 39A 26A 71.5 - 10A - - Peasants - 1H 4H 3H 1H Middle 16A 15A 60A - 1.5A 4A - 15A peasants 2H 2H 12H 1H 1H 7H Poor 19A - 13.5A - 5A - 6.25A - peasants 6H - 35 x - 50 x70ft - 9H 100ft Labourers - - - - - - 5.25A - 5HH KEY H - Households; K-Kibanja; T-Ttaka; A-Area Source: Field Data

Table 10 Sample: B Land Holding by Class/Strata Class/ No. Amout of land Total Av. land Strata of Hs Amount per K T Borrowed Rented of land household Land lords 11 - 252A - - 25.2A 22.90 Capitalists 2 5.5A 20A - - 25.5A 12.75 Rich peasants 5 26A 120.5A - 3A 149.5A 29.90 Middle peasants 17 77.5A 19A - 15 A 111.5 A 6.55 Poor peasants 22 37.5A - 6.25A - 43.75A 1.98 Total 62 146.5A 411.5A 11.5A 18A 587.5A 9.47 Key: K- Kibanja; T- Ttaka; A-Acres; Av- Average; Hs- Households. Source: Field Data.

It has been discussed already that borrowing involves greater levels of surplus appropriation by those who lend out land than in renting by those who rent it out. The fact that someone can afford to rent makes it altogether unnecessary to borrow, at least in economic terms. That is why there is no renting which is combined with borrowing.

Borrowing is a phenomena characteristic of the poor peasants and land labourers. The highest amount of land rented is by the middle peasants, who also constitute the majority of households renting. Of those households renting. Only one is a rich peasant. The largest number of households which gain access by donation are poor peasants. The poor peasants combined altogether have gained access to more land through purchase than any other category. But since they are many, the average amount of land is the smallest. It is also the poor peasants who have largely gained access to land by inheritance. They are the majority and the most insecure in their holdings.

Hence the land question is a problem of access conditions to land for the majority of those whose source of livelihood is the land. The crisis for agriculture are the seemingly immutable conditions of access which have largely shaped land use, because of the corresponding levels of rights of property in land. For instance the grave implications for posterity is defined by access conditions for the youth. Of the 8 households which gained access to

land through donation, 5 were youths (4 males and 1 female) 3 were elderly women. Five were donated bibanja while the 3 elderly women had donations of ttaka. Table 11 Sample B: Modes of Acquisition by Class/Strata

Inherited Purchased Donated Custodian Borrewed Grabbed K T K T K T K K K

Landlords - 90A - - - 20 - - - 1H 1H Capitalists - 20A 4A - - - - - - 1H 1H Rich peasants - 7A 82A 20A+ - - 14A 4A - 1H 6H 4H 1H 1H Middle peasants - - 98A - 5A - - 5A - 13H 1H 4H Poor peasants 16 - 58A - 11A - 59A 8A 1A 4H 7H 6H 6H 9H 2H Key H- Household; T- Ttaka; A- Acres Source: Field Data

Table 12

Sample B: Land Holding by Class/Strata No. Amount of Borrowed Grabbed Totals Average

of land (Acres) Hs K T Landlords 2 - 110A - - 110A 55 Capitalists 2 4A 20A - - 24A 12 Rich peasants 9 86A 27A 4A - 117A 13 Middle peasants 15 106A - 5A - 115A 7 Poor peasants 34 114A - 8A 1A 154A 4 Total 62 340A 157A 18A 1A 570A 9.1 Key: Hs- Households; K-Kibanja; T-Ttaka; A-Acres. Source: Field Data.

Borrowing gains its significance in sample B where landlords do not rent out land since the selling of `first kanzu' is a highly disguised form of renting. Theoretically borrowing becomes more complex because it is not landlord households which lend but more affluent peasant households. Even among those who borrow are also rich peasant households. The significance of borrowing in Sample B is such that in spite of having a high average amount of land, the presence of a social question defined by restrictive access conditions is not precluded.

That's why there are households which gain the access to land by grabbing it. The significance of the existence of grabbing in whichever category it occurs is that it defines that strata of the peasantry for which the land question is a critical problem of their agrarian relations.

5. The Impact of Technology Change on Peasant Production

The increasing realisation that the environment is socially constructed from nature has greatly challenged the techno-administrative approach that explains away the social dimensions of the agrarian crisis by upholding provisions of technology and encouraging its application necessarily as a panacea, since it insinuates a break with tradition.

Technology, if broadly construed to include machinery, equipment, agro-chemicals, fertilisers, agricultural credit and others, is an instrument

through which the peasant can become alienated from subsistence production on land in rural areas and made more disaster - prone than in a natural economy. Technology change could make cultural practices that had evolved to sustain both production and the land productivity such as fallowing, or shifting cultivation under traditional production systems outmoded; hence adversely changing the social relations of production without transforming corresponding social institutions.

The application of technology may at times not resolve the contradictions that make the agrarian crisis an issue of concern, but can become a way of distancing the interests of capital from these contradictions.

Government has provided RC3s with tractors on loans and encouraged the use of ox-ploughs. These have increased the competition for land. More land is put to use but it exposes the soil much more, making it poorer. Much more time has to be spent in production but the returns to labour decreasing.

Peasant vulnerability to circumstances of technology change, can be illustrated by the Uganda Commercial Bank Loan programme for cotton growing during the 1990 season. The programme, called Government assistance to cotton, administered through the Bank by the Lint Marketing Board (LMB) was managed through Nakasongola Growers Cooperative Society Ltd. The programme was objectively operated to incorporate the peasantry further into commodity relations by attempting to standardize and rationalise peasant production of commodities for the domestic and international market.

The choice of crop cotton was dictated by EEC which has provided the donor funds. Peasants grew the cotton because they needed the loan facility. There were 20 tenants who had been recipient of the loan facilities in sample B. One of the recipients of the loan was society's member no.569. The loan was administered in form of materials as follows at an interest rate of 32 per cent per annum of the principal.

Table 13

Sample B: Loan Components Date Item Acres/Units Amount/Acre Total 1 29.6.90 1st

ploughing 2 acres (8,000/=) 16,000/= 2 14.8.90 2nd

ploughing 2 acres “ 16,000/= 3 22.8.90 Spray pump

PTP One unit 15,000/= 15,000/= 4 3.12.90 Chemicals 1 tin of 4,000/= 4,000/= Novattion

PRINCIPAL = 51,000/= Planting - 4 days from 16.8.90 - family labour used. Weeding twice in 2 weeksin September 1990 and December 1990, 8000/=@ acre: for 2 acres (8000/= x 2) 16,000/=

Picking January 1991. One month could have cost him 20,000/= but used family labour - 6 people in the family picked 20,000/=

Sort cotton February 1991 for 2 weeks would have cost a minimum of 14,000/= but used family labour 14,000/=. Spraying was done as chemicals and pump were part of the principal. Labour used was family. Cotton was sold on 11.3.91. 7 bales weighed 710kgs when less 1 kg of the sacks = 603kgs at 32/= per kilograms 132,660/= Interest was calculated at the rate of first loan contractual that is 29.6.90.

- Principal = 51,000/= - Simple interest = 16,300/= - Time = 1 year - Rate = 32%

Deductions

- Principal = 51,000/= - Interest = 16,300/= - Transport paid to lorry for the 7 bales on 11.3.91

= 6,000/= - Weeding = 16,000/=

- Picking = 20,000/= - Sorting = 14,000/=

_________ 123,300/= - Income =132,660/= - 123,300/= 9,360/=

Cotton was handed to the Growers Cooperative Society on 11.3.91 but this peasant had not got money by the time of the research. This would be the balance of the money, after the Bank had deducted its principal, and also minus the transport costs, and weeding costs which money was spent already.

Cotton has increasingly become less and less popular as a crop for certain categories of the peasantry, who live from hand to mouth. Cotton requires a lot of labour yet payment is delayed. It can only be grown at the cost of reducing their input in the food production sector.

Table 14

Sample B: Land Use and Cotton Amount of Land under Land under land use cotton

Landlords 110 6 - Capitalists 24 14 4 Rich Peasants 117 85 20 Middle Peasants 115 91 29 Poor Peasants 154 146 9

Source: Field Data.

More time is spent in growing cotton, which is less rewarding and leads

to less time spent for food production. Yet payment for their cotton delivered to cooperative societies is delayed. The peasants end up with the meagre harvest to obtain cash for various purposes, only to buy back later in order to meet consumption needs. They market food grain and buy back food grain or market non-food grain crop to buy back food grain.

This process is a mechanism by which the exploitation of the labour of the peasant families is intensified to maintain or increase the supply of commodities without capital incurring any costs of management or supervising the production process.

The Buruuli Cooperative Union which receives cotton from the Cooperative Society had first delivered yarn cotton to Lint Marketing Board before payment is made. This was to ensure crop finance would not be diverted, or payment made for no cotton. This unions' ginnery is out of order but it uses Bamunanika' Ginnery which also has its own load to clear. The process is delayed and payment to cooperative societies for cotton delivered and consequently to farmers delayed. The Bank deducts its loan equivalent plus interest before the farmers receive their money.

UCB often dictates very precisely the forms of the labour process and therefore represents a more direct intervention in the organisation of production.Loans are disbursed at the beginning of a rainy season. The UCB Branch liaises with the Prison Farm to lease its tractor to peasants who have been given loans. You do not get the tractor before you receive a loan and the Prison Farm claims its money from the Bank.

Since the rainy season start late, and loans are given at the same time, during that time the talk of the day is cotton planting. The peasants are tied in various ways to cotton. Much more time and labour are put into production. The above calculation has indicated that if it has to be any profitable it ought to be on a large scale but the poor peasants have very limited land at their disposal. Peasant in other social strata cannot expand the land under cultivation by opening up more land because it is expensive to prepare land for ploughing which involves removing stones and tree stumps.

Tractor ploughing destroys soil structure and exposes the dry soils which rapidly lose their fertility. With ever worsening weather conditions such innovations do little to improve the welfare of rural folks. It has been argued elsewhere that the spread of the cassava mosaic virus, which spreads rapidly in dry condition, is a direct result of the deterioration in the soil structure. Any form of technology which helps to degrade the soil by leaving it threadbare contributes to this crisis, rather than seeking to solve it.

Technology in other words, though intended to increase production does not lead to increased agricultural productivity as well as labour productivity. It increases returns to capital but does not increase the welfare of the peasantry.

The most contributory factor is the nature of land tenure by opening up more land. It is usually anticipated technology through mechanisation increases the demand for labour and create employment. This may not be true, as the tractor displaces labour from agricultural production into wage labour. Though it helps to create employment either way, the difference is with the nature of employment.102

102 Gariyo Zie (Forthcoming) `Technology and social change: An analysis of the socio-economic impact of irrigated agriculture on peasant production in Eastern Uganda', deals in a greater details, with the impact of technology change.

Such an argument is essentially true only and only if the land tenure relation make it possible for as much land as there is to be opened up using a tractor. The use of the tractor becomes uneconomic when the size of land one holds limits even the minimum realisation of economic gains. The tractor may not be the best instrument of labour where people hold land from which subsistence cannot be realised.

6. Conditions of Access and Gender Implications Whereas women's access to land manifestly defines the historical subordinate role of the majority of the female sex, it is however a fundamental error to try to conceptualise them primarily as victims because this obscures their historical role. It is necessary to first ask, how and why have women helped to reproduce the relations of production that enhance their subordinate positions.

Property rights have evolved over time. Whereas women in Buganda are not particularly denied access to land as women, their ownership of land is only defined in circumstance of purchased land; and not land gained access to otherwise.

For instance, asked as to why they did not own land, 55 per cent married women interviewed said though their husbands would not forbid them from owning land outside family holding, they had not tried to get land privately. They considered it unnecessary since they were free to gain access to family land under the patronage of their husbands. Of the 62 households in the samples, 10 were female headed in sample A and 17 were female headed in sample B.

The institution of marriage has been central in the shaping of production relation at the level of the family. When women get married, they do not lose automatically the opportunity to gain access to the land back at home. Of the 3 households which had inherited land in sample A, 1 had inherited ttaka from her grandmother. The others had inherited land for purposes of upbringing of children on family land.

The exclusive preoccupation of the married women on the family land which they freely get to produce entirely and solely for the family excludes them from all other activities of social production. In the more affluent families, where family labour is almost removed from production, and replaced by hired labour the women supervise the hired labour and, are therefore, still integrated into there household's economic processes. In both cases men are busy with wage employment outside agriculture. Hence men's control of women's sexuality through marriage has ensured their undisputed access to the free labour of the women.

Production relations are rather different for women headed households. Many more women have gained access to land as a result of generations of Mailo subdivision. The first in this progression were the inumerable concubines of the various Kings and their respective chiefs, for whom the gift for child bearing was the reward of land.

Poor peasant women, who apparently constitute the majority, like their male counterparts find difficulty in gaining access to land because of their social status; but much more less likely because of their sex.

The highest amount of land owned by the women has been gained accessed to through inheritance that is, 30 acres of ttaka and 2 acres of kibanja. One had inherited from a fellow woman and two from their deceased husbands. There were also cases such as a grandson, who inherited part of his grandmothers’ land, but with the largest share taken by his sisters.

Six households had gained access through purchase. Four had been borrowing. All those who gained access to land through purchasing only held use rights. All of them were poor peasants. Therefore the problem of women access to land is largely one of the poor peasantries, which is defined as lack of tenure security in the land gained access to. Since agriculture is their main economic activity, and since they constitute (in addition to the children) the majority of work force in agricultural land tenure, very restrictive access conditions. Obviously deny the vital labour force access to productive resources.

Table 15

Sample A: Women-Headed Households And Access to Land

Number Inherit Purchase Donation Borrow of Households K T K T K T K

Landlords 2 - 30 - - - - - 2H Capitalist - - - - - - - - Rich peasant 1 - - - - - 10A - Middle peasants - - - - - - - - Poor peasant 7 - - 5A - - - 3A 6H 4H Key: K - Kibanja T - Ttaka, H - Household Source: Field Data

The 6 households which gained access through purchase are land poor. They have 5 acres altogether. Out of these 4 have supplemented through borrowing. Three acres have been borrowed by the 4 households.

Land access is more problematic for the women in sample B. The majority of the women gain access to land by donations. Those who have purchased are land poor. Six households have accessed through donations, 9.25 acres as kibanja and 20 acres on ttaka. Three have gained access to 42 acres of kibanja through custodianship and 2 households have inherited; one a 2 acre kibanja and the other 90 acres of ttaka. The 6 households which have purchased have 23.5 acres - an average 3.91 acres. Three households borrowed 2 acres. The highest amount acquired is through custodianship.

Table 16

Sample B: Women-Headed Households and Access to Land Inherit Purchase Donate Custodian Borrow

K T K T K T K K Landlords 90A - - - 20A - - 1H 1H Rich - - - - - - 14A - peasant 1H Middle - - 8A - - - - - peasant 1H Poor 2 - 14.5 - 9.25A - 28A 2A peasant 1H 5H 5H 2H 3H Key: H- Households, K – Kibanja, A – Acres, T - Ttaka Source: Field Data.

7. Nomadic Pastoralism and the Agrarian Question

The problem of livestock production in the District is a reflection of the land relations. Nomadic pastoralists are animal keepers. They are nomads not because they are conservative to modern livestock management methods, but that their ways of life are a manifestation of concrete responses to conditions of access to productive resources including animal grazing pastures and the watering points.

The study of land relations in a pastoral setting was undertaken in a remote pastoralist community of Kirumiko village, Kyangogolo subcounty, Nakasongola County. It is situated about 15 miles west of Migera trading Centre, 97 miles along Kampala-Gulu road. To get to Kirumiko, it is a three and a half hours bicycle ride, with the first 30 minutes along the only murram truck road stretch of the entire journey. The rest of the journey of about 12 miles are cattle foot paths in the jungle. During the rainy season, the cattle paths get waterlogged and muddy. In some sections water is as high as half-way between the foot and the knees. In the villages there are five ranches, three in the government ranching scheme and two are private ranches.

On the basis of a random sampling frame, one ranch was selected from among the list of the private ranches and one from the government ranching scheme. The latter was Buruuli Co-operative Union Ranch Number 1C, a 6- square mile ranch with three permanent squatters and about 20 others who at

the time of the research had just camped en route. Buruuli Co-operative Union had 35 animals on the ranch, according to information provided by the Ranch Manager, Mr Byaruhanga. The structures on the ranch such as buildings are in a dilapidated state, the valley dam in silted, the dip is non-functional and the perimetre fence is as good as non-existent. This ranch for purposes of analysis in this paper shall be referred to as Ranch B.

The former, outside the government ranching scheme, is on a 49-year private leasehold of 3 square miles belonging to Lutakome and Sons Ranchers. It was acquired in 1976. The legal owner was a student in Kampala who had inherited it from a father. It had 120 cows. In addition there were 4 pastoralists who had settled on the ranch with their 245 animals without having to be required to make payment of rent in form of cows. There were two others who were squatting on the ranch who were required to fulfil either cash rental obligations or payment in terms of cows. The sample size was 18 respondents altogether including the two ranchers. The rest were squatters.

This sample was considered representative of the rest of their kind. It was not possible to get as many respondents because the ranches are very big, squatters scattered. Locating them isonly possible with the help of an unsuspecting colleague, or one who erroneously felt, or possibly had suspicion that the research could be related to the ongoing process of restructuring all ranches in the government ranching schemes by government.

The phenomenon of squatting is one whereby traditional pastoralists attain access to grazing pastures and watering points, on terms agreed upon with the ranchers. They enter a social relation of production which manifests itself in the form of payment of some kind of rent to the ranchers. This is either cash or in terms of cows. Some of these squatters are always on the move from ranch to ranch in search of grazing land. These are pastoralists who are too insecure to part with any of their animals for paying exorbitant rents demanded by Ranchers.A number of tendencies are immediately discernible, as a result of the differences among squatters' conditions of access to grazing pastures and watering points. They include:

a) Squatters who live on ranches with the consent of the ranchers though pay no rent physically. They pay their rent in terms of the labour, which is appropriated by the rancher in form of services rendered.

b) Those who live on the ranches with the consent of the ranchers

and pay rent in cash or in kind (being largely in terms of cows).

c) Those who live outside the ranches, break into the ranches in order to gain access to pastures and watering points. These are the category of pastoralists who are always on the move.

On ranch A was found 4 pastoralists with their 245 animals. They

physically pay no rent but take charge of maintaining facilities on the ranch while their landlord is away at school in Kampala, though part of the family is resident on the ranch.

These squatters are required to reinstall the perimetre fence whenever it is broken down (and which is actually more often than not) by other intruding pastoralists. One of them held the title of Ranch Manager, but for which he got no salary, except in terms of a place on which to squat. He looks after the ranchers' property as a Ranch Manager, including such activities as counting animals every morning, administering veterinary services, paying herdsmen, as well as looking after the family of the landlord. He has 100 cows and his kraal was just next to the rancher's.

The other squatter who was also the village RC1 Chairman, had 30 animals and lived at one extreme end of the ranch, and was supposed to ensure that his side of the perimetre fence was always in good order and intact.

The third squatter had 55 animals. 25 of his own and 30 belonged to a relative who had failed to get a place where to graze from. In return for the service rendered to this relative of his, the said pastoralist took away all the milk from all the animals, while the other one was as well required to contribute to the cost of maintaining the animals, like drugs and treatment. This pastoralist's involvement in the said ranch is because of the need to get access to grazing pastures. Otherwise, he held a 4 acre kibanja on a stretch of mailo land nearby on which he had built a mud-walled and grass-thatched hut, but on which he could not raise animals.

The fourth pastoralist is the village RC1 Vice Chairman. He had 50 animals, and 1 acre of kibanja on the mailo land adjacent to the said ranch on which he had constructed a homestead of mud-walled grass-thatched huts. He was carrying out some form of subsistence cultivation though he grazed his cows on the said ranch. He lived at another extreme end of the ranch and was similarly required to keep watch over any intruding squatters.

These pastoralists have ensured undisputed access to grazing pastures by paying in form of their labour. The ranches were structured in such a way that each of the ranches had a corridor that extended right to River Lugogo as it flows northwards into River Kafu before it joins the Victoria Nile. Lugogo is only two miles west of the ranch.

The said pastoralists practically manage the ranch, replace the perimetre fence every time it discovered broken down by intruding squatters. Wednesday

has been set aside for grazing around the perimetre and fix it properly. On Saturdays all the pastoralists are required to dip their animals, and this is done at a go, without having to consider how many cows each individual has. These pastoralists are said to be on the look out for wandering pastoralists who normally break into the ranch. Their task has been re-enforced by their position on RCs because any new squatters has to be introduced to either the RC Chairman or his Vice, and these reserve the right to grant permission to stay in the village or not; and in case one is to stay, to spend how many days, and therefore to do whatever for the RC officials for their `hospitality'.

These RCs have as a result managed to protect their interests of exclusive access to services offered on the ranch. The rancher ultimately benefits because he has managed to gain access to cheap labour for the management of his ranch.

The category of squatters/pastoralists described above carry out subsistence cultivation. Among the crops they grow are sweet potatoes, cassava, bananas, maize, pumpkins, and groundnuts. They have constructed grass-thatched mud-walled huts. Their animals are regularly dipped, and have access to adequate pastures and water. As a result the death toll of animals caused by epidemics among such pastoralists was minimal. At the time of research no such serious epidermic had been reported, though the entire district was under a one year quarantine because of bovine disease. It is these pastoralists who had a fairly manageable size of their herds, compared to their other colleagues, who experienced a lot of difficulty in gaining access to similar facilities and yet had more animals individually as shall be explained below.

The implication for land studies is that as a result of the specific nature of their production relations the pastoralists entered into with ranchers, the manifestation of pastoralism as a tendency most commonly referred to as nomadism, is least identifiable with them. They have a relatively higher level of security in tenure, compared to any other category of squatters. They were leading a rather settled pattern of life; their animals were healthier; the sizes were manageable and they were certain about their stay since they were growing annual crops. Their huts were no longer the `Hima' type of temporary grass huts. Their huts though grass-thatched, were mud-walled. Their transhumance was only limited to the confines of the said ranch. The theoretical implication is that the pastoral crises as evidenced from the squatters problems were a manifestation of the rigidities in the land relations, where tenure insecurity is a major contributory factor. This insecurity is translated in form of their inability to easily gain access to grazing pastures and watering points.

In category B, are pastoralists who live on the ranches with the consent of the ranchers, but have to pay a rent. There are 6 squatters in this category with 520 animals. The rent each paid varied between 1 and 4 cows depending

on the number of animals one had. For every 1 to 50 animals one was required to pay one cow per year, between 51 and 100 one paid 2 cows per year. The rent was payable once a year, and the size of the animals was mutually agreed upon between the two parties.

Since the rent would at times be too high for some small pastoralists, the tendency was to merge their herds. For instance there were two pastoralists, one with 76 animals and the other with 12 animals. If they were to rent separately, then their landlord rancher would receive 3 cows. But since they had pooled their animals together to make a herd of 88, they just paid 2 cows for rent.

Table 16

Sample C: Rent Payment by Squatters

Name Ranch No. of Rent Time spent on animals ranch

1 A 100 80,000/= One year 2 A 120 80,000/= One year 3 B 200 2 cows 13 months 4 B 30 1 cow 4 months 5 B 88 2 cows 6 months 6 B 120 2 cows 5 months

Source: Field Data.

These pastoralists do not grow any crops. Their livelihood entirely

derives from the milk from animals, gathering wild fruits and hunting as they graze. Monetary demands to meet other subsistence requirements are realised by selling milk to milk middlemen who bring it to Kampala every morning. At times these pastoralists surrender their milk to these middlemen whom they ask to buy them food on their way back from Kampala in the evenings. They live in grass huts. They are always on the move, should demands for rent turn out to be too high, or the conditions turn out to be disadvantageous. Rent is negotiated every time it has got to be paid. These are more insecure than the category A pastoralists, but when the perimetre fence is being installed, or their labour required for any other activity on the ranch, they are expected to participate fully. They are not restricted on grazing on the ranch once rent obligations are realised.

There were more category A squatters on ranch A than on B, and more category B squatters on ranch B than on A. The squatters combined have more animals than the Ranchers. The ranch Manager on ranch B , an employee of an absentee rancher was not restricting the movement by squatters into the ranch since he directly benefitted from the rent which was being paid by the squatters. It was possible for as many squatters as there were who were willing to move onto the ranch. The more the squatters the more the proceeds from rent, but at the cost of fast depleting the grazing pastures on the ranch. Hence the pastoralists who settled on such ranches were constantly on the move. This apparently seemed to have been the trend on all the ranches in the government ranching schemes, and those whose landlords were absentee.

The collapse of management on ranches in the government ranching schemes has exacerbated the plight of the squatters; to the extent that pastures are not protected, and if used to the exclusion of other pastoralists will be below the optimum. If no control measures are put in place to limit the number of new entrants will encourage overgrazing. In ranch B the perimetre fence had long been destroyed by wandering pastoralists, hence more could easily find their way in and out of such ranches. They set up temporary structures out of grass. They grew no crops whatsoever. They depended on milk for monetary and dietary requirements.

The chances that animals on ranch B owned by category B of pastoralists are prone to attack by diseases because of unrestricted movements than the category A squatters on ranch A, need not to be overemphasised. The possibility that these categories of squatters will constantly be on the move is also higher.

Hence it implies that without a transformation in the relations of production, nomadism can never be eradicated by statutory or rather administrative measures. The traditional nature of pastoralists as characterised by transhumance is a manifestation of concrete economic conditions, rather than a despicable attribute of conservatism. Individually, these pastoralists, compared to the amount of resources they had access to, kept far more animals if contrasted with the category A squatters on ranch A.

There are no social services in the village. The nearest school, market or clinic are found more than 15 miles away, in Migera. Their plight is, therefore, worsened by the geographical remoteness of the area.

On a 100 acre piece of land stretching the distance between ranch A and Ranch B and two other ranches in the area, is a piece of land that is claimed by an absentee landlord as a private Mailo estate. There lived five pastoralists with 230 animals. This piece is surrounded by ranches and so the occupants have no direct access to the watering point on River Lugogo. Since the pastures on this type of land cannot sustain the animals it holds, the only option is to pounce

onto the surrounding ranches for grazing pastures. These are the category of pastoralists who abhor the payment of rent, and will keep very many animals as security against any kind of disaster. These are pastoralists to whom number of animals means much more than meets the eye. All other pastoralists who move in from other areas first camp here before they disperse. At the time of research (June 1991), two pastoralists moved in within just three days of commencement of the research. There were many more moving to other ranches elsewhere, with such movement partly engineered by the belief that when government restructuring takes off, only those who will have been present on the affected ranches will be considered. Some of the pastoralists had moved in from as far as Kabula in Ankole.

It is, however, important to note that the existence in the village of a pastoralist leading a very settled life, and carrying out intensive agriculture in addition to raising animals, is evidence that the plight of squatters reflects the nature of land relations; that of difficulty to gain access to land or the corresponding absence of security of tenure. This particular pastoralist had managed to purchase 10 acres of bibanja in 4 separate instances, as follows:

In 1973 paid kanzu, on 14-7-1982 paid shs.4000 and on 5-12-1981 paid shs.700 and on 7-12-1981 bought development on a Kibanja nearby at shs.700 All these transactions were acknowledged in writing. The pastoralist who raised 30 cows had also cultivated 2 acres of bananas, a quarter an acre of maize and approximately an eighth (half the size of the maize shamba) of potatoes. It is, therefore, most certain that with tenure security nomadic pastoralism can easily be combined with settled agriculture, and squatters can easily lead a more settled life. The squatter problems and the resultant crises are a manifestation of prevailing land relations.

Any policy that aims at restructuring the ownership of especially the ranches in the government scheme but signally fails to benefit those who resort to nomadic pastoralism as a source of livelihood only serves to postpone the problems in the livestock industry. Apparently the problem of squatters has of recent acquired a political dimension that is reflected in terms of ethnic differences. There is mounting pressure as a result of dissent from the native people of Buruuli, whose kins had just recently been expelled from Lango on no other grounds other than their ethnicity. Most of these people, including even those who currently do not have the capacity to manage the smallest ranch, have the feeling that the process of restructuring the ranches should not benefit the Banyarwanda, who constitute the majority of the squatting population in the government ranching schemes. Some of the squatters interviewed during the research indicated that they had been advised by their relatives in the army and government to move onto any ranch within the government ranching

scheme, so that they could be counted on these ranches in order to be certain to become beneficiaries during restructuring.

The elites resident and working in Kampala but hail from Buruuli, through their association, the Buruuli Development Association (BDA) at a meeting held early 1992 convened to discuss the mobilisation of the people for development ended up into a flare of emotions about the impending ranch restructuring benefitting the Banyarwanda the same way the 1900 Buganda Agreement gave the Baganda the control of land in Buruuli through allocations of Mailo. The popular sentiments echoed such fears in no uncertain terms.

Nomadic pastoralists cannot, therefore, be transformed to lead a more settled life and abandon transhumance if no other alternative source of livelihood is at hand. Or rather as long as there exist empty ranches, the last thing they will do is to sell off their herds.

8. Tenure Relations: Land Disputes and the Position of Resistance Councils

Land disputes have become a permanent feature of the contemporary land tenure arrangements, manifestations of which are the changes the land tenure system is/has been undergoing. Contemporary land disputes, whether arising out of conflicting class interests or between individual tenants fall into definite categories.

Between August 1990 and December 1990, 24 land disputes were referred to the District Executive Secretary.103 The majority of disputes were handled by lower RC courts.104 The greater number, (60 percent) were disputes arising from the offers by the District land Committee and the Uganda Land Commission of leasehold to pieces of land already settled by customary tenants (both on former Mailo land and on public land). Other conflicts were due to inheritance, boundary disputes, and others conflicts between ranchers and squatters.

Of the 13 cases handled by Lunyolya RC1 between 6-10-1987 and January 1990, 9 cases were land dispute cases. Six cases were boundary disputes (65 percent). Other cases handled included conflicts between tenants with one accusing the other of trespassing on his kibanja by collecting firewood from it. Another involved a tenant who bought a kibanja which the landlord had already sold to another tenant.105

In sample B, according to records of the RC3 court meetings (File WRC/17- General) land disputes involved conflicts over right of ownership. A court injunction, for instance, had been issued seeking to restrain an individual

103 File LAN/3, Luwero District Executive Secretary's Office, opened 22-8-1990. 104 .Interview with Luwero District Chief Magistrate on 13-2-1991. 105 RC1 Court, Lunyolya RC1A on 6-10-1987.

who had bought land from a trustee of an estate of his deceased relative whose heir was still young. The injunction was issued on behalf of the heir by an aunt106Because of the difficulty of gaining access to land , the peasants were being pushed onto more agriculturally marginal areas, which on the market fetched less value, and competition for them was not very high. In these marginal areas they have settled as customary tenants. But even these areas have not been saved from the “enclosure movement”. Records in the Lands Office indicated that areas formerly considered as being of marginal importance to agriculture were increasingly being appropriated by individuals. Many individuals who have been awarded lease offers have on many occasions failed to have the land surveyed for purposes of opening up boundaries since this meets with stiff resistance from customary tenants, who are not anywhere in the outdated records in the Land Offices. The customary tenants have, in many cases with the help of their local RCs, succeeded in resisting many such surveys. One such individual in Kiwongozi RC2, Mabaale RC1, Katikamu county bought a lease for a piece of land in 1979 but failed to have it surveyed. He had to sell it to another individual, who (according to Weekly Topic of February 21, 1992, pp.1) succeeded in opening up the boundaries of the land that cut across crops which had been grown by several peasants.

An elderly man, a customary tenant on public land at Nakatonya, Bombo, appealed to the District Executive Secretary, Luwero, that,

it is you to protect us who have no money....One rich man is using your office to lease land which does not belong to him legally.107

Records in the Lands offices showed that the land was not settled by

customary tenants, when they had actually been on the land for the last 10 years. Another individual who was offered a lease of several acres by the District Land Committee way back in 1978 failed to have the land surveyed for purposes of opening up boundaries on Bulemezi Block 629, 652 plots 2 and 255 (approximately 91.6 hectares) because the boundaries passed through the gardens of 20 customary tenants, in Mabaale RC1, Kiwongozi Parish, Luwero Town Council.108

The then Deputy Minister of Lands and Surveys, Baguma Isoke was in November 1989 petitioned by 161 customary tenants of Kaikanga-Kabuga, Nakasongola “seeking protection of their tenancy in the land over which a certificate of title had been granted by the District Land Committee”. A 13

106 File WRC/17 - General; Wabinyonyi RC III Court.. 107 Letter by Mohamed Badrudin of 20-9-1990 to DES; Land Dispute at Nakatonya Village, Gombolola Nyimbwa, in LAN/3. 108 From Kiwongozi RCI to DES of 13-12-1990 in LAN/3.

square mile lease had been offered to an individual on which tenants settled on 5 square miles.109

Between 5-12-1988 and 12-2-1990 the District Land Committee sitting had approved applications for offers of land up to 500 acres for some individuals. Thirty applications in all were approved. Twenty seven for 3,276.7 acres, 5 for 171.75 hectares (429.275 acres), 3 for 3.5 square miles and one for a 50x100 ft plot and another for a 100x40 ft plot. Only 9 applications were pending.110

Many disputes between the tenants themselves arise from the nature of landholding in the different villages.

The land held is small and tenants jealously guard every bit of their holding against encroachment from neighbours. During cultivation a possibility always exists that a tenant peasant, keen to maximize whatever resources are available through tending the edge of his plot (kibanja), will expropriate tiny pieces of the soil on adjacent plots by merely digging a few hoes too far from his/her boundary. Most of the boundary cases were handled by the RCs in the local areas.

In the past certain marginal areas, like swampy or sandy valleys were the delineated physical boundaries separating respective Mailo allocations to individual or different bibanja. Most of these were available for easy access by the entire communities. These were lands, in whose usage the society had a vantage point of communality. They were common lands. But with increasing pressure on land these are fast disappearing as they are being ever attached to someone's mailo or kibanja. One such conflict over a previously common swampy grazing land was in Wakibombo, Nakasongola, involving the Saza Chief, Nakasongola County and the Roman Catholic Mission in the area.111

The disappearance of common lands is much more related to private appropriation by more affluent sections of the population than encroachment by the less affluent, especially the poor peasantry.

Another manifestation of land disputes is the concern, raised by monarchists and their sympathizers in Buganda over the alarming rate of disappearances of ancestral lands, which are increasingly and indiscriminately being sold off for money not only to non-clan members but also (worst of all according to them) to non-Baganda. That the culture of Buganda rotates around land (Ttaka) ownership, for without Ttaka, there would be no clans, no Bataka

109 To DES Luwero, from Baguma Isoke, Deputy Minister of Lands and Surveys, in LAN/3. 110 File: Register for land applications: District Land Committee Office, Luwero. Date opened 5-12-1988. 111 Letter to DES of 24-9-1990; Land dispute between Mr. F. Kiiza and Roman Catholic Mission in Nakasongola, Wakibombo in LAN/3.

(heads of clans or rather owners of Ttaka), and therefore no Sabataka and no Buganda.112

Teefe Trust Bank is an institution which has been set up to, inter alia, protect the culture of Buganda.113 Therefore there is a likelihood that any Muganda who wants to mortgage land for money can sell it to the`peoples’ own bank, other than to foreigners.

There are cases where title deeds disappear from the Lands Office, only to be sold later to other individuals. These have led to many land disputes some of which are politically manipulated. The District Executive Secretary Luwero, once notified the Commissioner of Lands about an individual who had “fraudulently maneuvered and obtained the lease offer which would have gone to plot 106, Bulemezi Block 652".The DES went to the extent of threatening,” not to hesitate to contact higher and more authoritative offices in case this (the above) request (of cancelling the lease offer) is ignored; as instability in the area will ensue as long as a solution is not found to this burning issue".114

The state has not been an uninterested observer. The most dramatized land dispute involved the possibility that 3000 residents of a fishing village on Lake Kioga, Kiguli, 15 miles from Nakasongola were to be evacuated to create room for an NRA Industrial Complex under construction. The project known as Luwero Industries, by December 1990 had already displaced Wajala Co-operative Society, which had a 500 square acres of cotton farm.115 The residents were being asked to switch to Kikoiro and Zengebbe fishing villages to create room for the expansion in future of the industrial complex. The source of the dispute was the level of compensation, which the people felt was very low, and would not enable those who had made investment on land to make a humble beginning. Since many were customary tenants, they had been warned as early as June 1991 not to make any new development on the land, for they had no option but to move as they were being evicted in “public” interest of

112 See: 1. Nick Salis, Abatunda Ettaka Ly'obujjajja bateekerwewo amateeka agabatangira, in Ngabo, Thursday October 31 1991 Mirembe III. 2. Drake Sekeba, Okutunda Ettaka Kubeere Kutunda biggya na Butaka, in Ngabo, Thursday October 17, Mirembe IV. Moses Sserwanga, “Ssabataka tells Baganda to stop selling land”, in The Star, Monday October 14 1991, p.1. 113 See: LAN/3; Minutes of 3rd meeting of Katikamu County Resistance Council held on 25th September 1990 and minutes confirmed by the honourable NRC Representative, Katikamu, Bwanika Baale in which it was stated by a member of the Bank's Board, Councilor Sekiwano Richard from Makulubita that, “the Bank was set up to cater for the people's property,” in his brief remarks about the new Bank. 114 From DES of 27-8-1990 to Commissioner of Lands: Lease offer to plot 106 Block 652. There was a similar dispute in Nakasongola between a son and a mother. The son had processed a lease offer to family land in his names without the consent of the family - see NRC/17 - General: Wabinyonyi; RCIII Court. 115 Fredrick Kiwanuka, “NRA project moves 3000", in New Vision, Monday December 9, 1991 p.1.

development.116 The other source of dissatisfaction was the diverging of the road which passed in the middle of the complex to a much longer distance circumventing the complex. The people also complained about their loss of freedom as they were being subjected to unwarranted body searches on roadblocks mounted in the evenings by soldiers.

In many other land disputes, state organs have not been impartial. The Assistant District Administrator, Nakasongola, in a letter dated 1-2-90 indicated that about 12 families with about 100 people were threatened with eviction without compensation by an individual who was releasing his cows which destroyed their crops, and that,

his sons in NRA, on one Sunday in company of their father came armed, one with SMG and the other with SLR, to demonstrate their might to anyone who may make any noise.117

The RC3 Court indicated that “because of his confidence he had defied 3

times the RC3's call to resolve the matter amicably”118 The mystery that surrounds the difficulty in the procedure of processing

lease titles which consciously involves bureaucratic procrastination for purposes of creating an environment for corruption, has been a cause of many land disputes.

In 1975 some families tried to apply as a group for offer of a lease on land on which they had settled as customary tenants. They found it would be cheaper and easier to use a surveyor (Omupunta), one conversant with the entire system. Instead of expediting the process, the Omupunta processed the title deed in his own names. Before he died in 1990, he sold the land. In a letter to the DES, the Vice Chairman RC3 Wabinyonyi, Nakasongola, who was among the 18 families, of the 69 residents faced with eviction from land situated at Nakasongola Sheet, Block 165 of 769 hectares resisted the eviction and demanded that the new proprietor should co-operate with the local leader.[see LAN/3: Land Disputes File, DES Luwero District].

Because of the difficulty of gaining access to land for subsistence, poor peasants were forced into a situation of forcefully entering land in some places without seeking the consent of either the landlords or respective tenants who held some land that was idle. One such land lady was in the process of evicting these categories of tenants after a dispute involving rent.

116 Meeting held at Kiguli Landing site on February 18, 1991, attended by the Director Luwero Industries, Major Fred Mwesigya, District Administrator, Abbey Mukwaya, NRC Member Nakasongola County Muruli Mukasa, a representative of the Minister of Local Government and several elders. I also attended the meeting. 117 Letter from ADA Nakasongola of 1-2-1990 to Dorisa Male, copied to DES in LAN/3. 118 In WRC/17 General: Wabinyonyi RCIII Court.

The DES had been notified;

the purpose of evicting them is that they entered my land without my consent. This serves as notice for 6 months for them to eat their crops.119 In our sampled village of Wabinyonyi there were 2 tenants who had

gained access to land by way of grabbing. The ranching schemes in Luwero District were among those that were

gripped by squatter violence in 1990. The character of pastoral communities' production relations are such that a permanent state of tension between the ranchers and the squatting pastoralists has become part and parcel of the general flux of their communities. It only recently blew out of proportion.120

One such fracas occurred in Butebere, Nakaseke county where landlord ranchers are absentee, their leased ranches undeveloped (they said this was due to the war situation in the Luwero Triangle),121 but with squatter pastoralists grazing their animals on their ranches on payment of a certain amount of rent. Butebere is an isolated and neglected place in Wakyato subcounty, and predominantly settled by pastoral nomads. In September 1990, it had a population of 675 people and 4,257 cattle.122 When government hinted about restructuring ranches in the government ranching scheme the relationship between the squatters and the landlords began to sour. Squatters got the impression that they would directly benefit from the scheme. “They started questioning the legality of landlords demanding too much and unrealistically from them. They therefore started intimidating landlords that they would soon takeover their farms.”123

The landlords reacted by threatening to evict the squatters and restricted them from watering their animals at their dams. This was the source of the armed conflict: squatters armed with spears invaded the ranches water and grazing pastures. During these conflicts, many of the ranches were deserted and destroyed. The landlords or their accomplices fled. In other ranches for example Block 457 Plot 54, Walusi, Wabusana, Bulemezi, there were 13 squatters who had encroached on the 2.5 miles of land and were growing crops in addition to rearing cattle.

119 From Miss Nsibirwa Nkatta, Kikamulo of 5-12-1990 to DES Luwero in File LAN/3 opened 12-8-1990. 120 Report to the Government by Uganda by the Commission of Inquiry into Governement Ranching Schemes, December 1998, Government Printer, Entebbe. 121 ibid. 122 Report on the Findings and outcome of the Meeting between Butebere Squatters and Leaseholders held at Butebere on 25-9-1990 in File LAN/3. 123 ibid.

By allocating large areas for lease to a few individuals, the District Land Committee creates conditions for potential future conflict. For instance an individual with 70 herds of cattle who tried to apply for allocation of 1 square mile on a 6 square mile deserted ranch at Kaboja, Buruuli belonging to an absentee landlord on which the said individual was a squatter, was advised by the District Land Committee,

to negotiate with the landlord as the Committee has nothing to do with Mailo Land.124

Another aspect of land disputes relates to the conflict of interests

between agricultural land use and animal rearing. The sections of the peasantry who have cows are normally the better off, which makes acts of cattle eating up or trampling over and destroying the crops of others more of a conflict of interests of a class nature. It is the poor who can not fence off their land, who do not have cows and whose crops are eaten up. Such cases were on the rise in both samples A and B, some of them deliberately committed for the purpose of seeking to expel tenants from a piece of land by frustrating their efforts to grow crops (see appendix V for one such case).

8.1 The Role of Resistance Councils: Participatory Democracy in

Defence of Interests in Land The resistance councils in Luwero District, it is on record,

get money from people, selling to them plots from public land. The result of that act continually causes land disputes because at the Uganda Land Commission, land is allocated knowing that there is non present on the land; to their surprise, their customers are hindered by squatters from survey.125

Whereas on one hand the above is true, on the other hand, once

individuals gain access to land not under use even without the consent of RCs, the customary tenants (read squatters) they will seek participation on the Resistance Committees in order to defend their own interests in the event of an eviction threat. It is the practise that any application for a lease offer has to be recommended by RCs, and if the people who are to be evicted are also the people who will be required to give a recommendation, chances are that such forms will not be signed.

The RC2 in Kiwongozi, Luwero Town Council, Katikamu county in September, 1991 had managed to block the survey of a lease offer sold by the

124 See Min C/9/9/90 of District Land Committee held on 13-10-1990 p.1 in LAN/3. 125 From District Land Committee To DES of 13-9-1990 in LAN/3.

Uganda Land Commission because when the boundary of the leasehold was opened up, it extended into the gardens of 20 customary tenants.126 It was later learnt that when the individual failed to make use of the land he sold it to another person who used his “good” office to have the lease offer and the survey of the land carried out without having to require the involvement of the RCs since it involved a higher authority [See Weekly Topic, February 21, 1992, p.1].

Between 1989-1990, in Luwero District Chief Magistrate's court, there were no civil suit or criminal cases involving land disputes. The majority of the land dispute cases were handled by RC courts at the lower level. The RC Judicial Statute of 1986, Instrument Number 1 gave the RCs some minimal judicial powers.127

Sixty nine per percent of the conflicts [9 out of 13 cases] before RCs in Lunyolya village between 1987 and 1990 were land disputes. The tenants, who are the majority in this sampled area of study, form the electorate of the village Resistance council, and have therefore become institutions for the tenants to defend their interests especially in land. The landlords, cautious about their position and reluctant to take the tenant dominance just as merely presumed, have also sought to use their land holding capacity to defend their interests through RCs. The landlords have, therefore, advocated for an ex-officio position of a 10th member of the resistance committees, who is appointed not by the village councils but by the landlords and the Bataka to advise the committee on land issues. Less formally though in sample B, RC courts are attended by landlords or their representatives.

The RCs, therefore, in terms of protecting interests, represent the dominant groups in the society.In the predominantly pastoral community of Kirumiko, within the ranching schemes, the squatters who are the majority but constantly on the move cannot defend their interests using the RCs. Instead the category of pastoral nomads who are settled on ranches (category A squatters on ranch A) participate on the RCs to defend their own interests against other squatters. For instance two of these squatters on ranch A are Chairman and Vice Chairman of the village RC1. Any new squatter to the village has to be introduced to the Committee or at least to the Chairman of his Vice to get clearance to stay in the village. But in so doing they limit the number of wandering squatters who roam from ranch to ranch in search for better facilities. In trying to protect their own interests of ensuring that their continued access to pastures is uninterrupted, these squatters also work in the service of the rancher, who by allowing a fixed number of squatters is able to minimize

126 Letter from Kiwongozi RCII of 13-12-1990 to DES in File LAN/3. 127 Interview with Luwero District Chief Magistrate on 13-12-1991 at Luwero Town.

the possibility of a future squatter crisis or shortage of pastures for his own animals and those of the squatters.

Tenants have used the RCs to protect their own positions and to gain access to land in many other instances. In Wabigalo, Nakasongola, 15 families using the RCs forestalled and, therefore, resisted eviction from a piece of land whose offer was being administratively processed from above by a big shot in the districts' Treasury Department. The RCs simply refused to recommend the application for the 500 acre which were, hopefully going to be developed into an apiary farm.128

9. Summary of Findings and Concluding Remarks

How can land tenure arrangement guarantee security to an individual who cultivates the land on the basis of which is derived a source of livelihood? That this is uppermost in the mind of any peasant contemplating social change and land tenure reform in particular, is clear.Let us for example quote from the RCII Council of Wampiti's memorandum to the Uganda Constitutional Commission,129 in which the peasants resolved,

Obusulu ne Nvujjo bizibwewo olwensonga abaana baffe balemererwa okugula e'bibanja olwo'musimbi omungi bananyini Ttaka lye batika abantu alyoke amufunire e'kibanja. Era bananyini Ttaka lyabwe bakirize abantu ku Ttaka lyabwe bazimbengako enyumba ezobuwangazi eza (blocks).

Signed RCII Wampiti.

Translation:

“Busulu and Envujjo should be reinstated because our children are failing to raise money to meet the high cost of purchasing land. Landlords should also permit tenants to construct permanent houses on bibanja on their Ttaka”. The exploitative nature of the Busulu and Envujjo exacted by landlords on tenants has been dealt with at length. (see M. Mamdani, 1976).130 But here are tenants who would rather go back to that system, than be tenants of the state through the intermediary of a landlord. The reason is simple! The 1975 Land Reform Decree that abolished the Busulu and Envujjo laws threatened the traditional landlords with extinction by denying them their periodical source of income. The only way to ensure their continued reliance on land as a source of

128 Interview with a local surveyor (omupunta) at Wabinyonyi Nakasongola in June 1991. 129 See WRC/17 -General - Wabinyonyi RCII Court. 130 M. Mhamdani, Politics and Class Formation in Uganda, op. cit.

rental incomes was to create new terms and conditions of gaining access to land by the tenants. In the past it would be the pleasure of the traditional landlord to have as many tenants on his land as possible, but later with changed economic circumstances, access to land had to be made very restrictive so that its value would increase. The payment of the entry fee was no longer the only requirement for any tenant to gain access to a kibanja. Some money had to be paid in cash since there would be no more periodical Busulu and Envujjo on harvest. The decree also created a new class of landlords, who sought to acquire land so that they would later use it as collateral to obtain bank loans. These were mostly bureaucrats using their offices to get land. Hence far from its professed objective of weeding out of the way of the development of capitalism in agriculture, to the above extent the decree unleashed forces that were detrimental to agriculture. It led to the re-flowering of landlordism.

However, one should not be oblivious of the emergent trends among landowners who combine rental incomes from bibanja - owning tenants with the exploitation of labour, and the proceeds from both invested in capital accumulation ventures such as building houses for renting.

The existance of Mailo landowners whose standards of living are no better than some peasants, points to the fact that landowners are no longer the small group of wealthy landlords whose consumption is largely met by rents paid by tenants.

Neither are the tenants still the class of predominantly traditional peasants refered to as Bakopi whose customary tenure in land was dependent on the Crown which wielded the absolute rights in land, and at the lowest level, the chiefs, as representatives of the Crown. Some have acquired private proprietory rights in land by emancipating themselves.

From the point of view of the peasants, the creation of a uniform system of land tenure in the name of a leasehold, that turned all former Mailo land into public land on conversion, and the mailo landlords, leasees of the state,131 appeared more disadvantageous because it denied them even the most minimal level of security that they had enjoyed under the Mailo land tenure system, irrespective of the exploitative nature of the relations of production that peasants have to enter into order to be able to realise their subsistance requirements.

Peasant attitudes for the restoration of Busulu and Envujjo have far much more implications to agrarian studies than merely an indication of “conformity”,132 which argument is usually buttressed to justify individualised freehold tenure in the name of Mailo land. This yearning reflects concrete

131 The Land Reform Decree of 1975 Sec 2 (1). 132 A. Nsibambi, “From Symbiosm to Antagonism: The case of the relationship between landlord and peasants”, in Rural Rehabilitation and Development in Uganda, p.287.

realities in the material conditions that calls for a system that will ensure, at the minimum, security of tenure. It is true, for instance that development in terms of physical investments in sample B has been hampered in one way or another because the landlord has at any time got to consent, say on the type of house you are going to build, on what type of kibanja, with what materials; and can determine whether, depending on the type of kibanja, one can plant a tree or not.

For any future land tenure policy the lesson is that, even if such a policy proclaims the ressurrection rather that suppresson of the peasantry, by confering on them advantages by virtue of their class, it may be resisted merely from the point of view of their judgements about past experiences. One scholars' fieldwork experience with Indian peasantries is worth our attention:

a group of tenants of a big landlord in Almora District [Uttar Pradesh] vehemently protested against my suggestion that no landowner should be allowed to keep more land than he could cultivate with his family labour. They remarked,in this village we are small people, and if that landlord is reduced to our level whom shall we approach in times of need, and who would protect us against outsiders?.133

The scholar attributed the villagers reply at first to their fear of the

landlord and to their backwardness. But later as his understanding of the village life became deeper he found their answer realistic because no alternative source of help was yet available for the villagers.

Peasants in Buganda are not naive to long for the restoration of Busulu and Envujjo, and nor is this sufficient evidence for conformity and therefore justification for freehold system of land tenure. On the contrary, the message is that of a demand for a guarantee for tenure security. The contemporary conditions of access to land are so restrictive that gaining access to land is costly. In Nakasongola, for instance, peasants bought bibanja using cows, and for those who did not have the cows or the money, the only alternative was to become squatters at the mercy of the landowners, and with the highest level of insecurity.

Peasant responses in such circumstances have been blamed for the problems of agricultural production. For example, the practise of land inheritance which at times leads to land fragmentation has contributed to a failure of mechanization programmes. It makes the size of certain plots uneconomic to cultivate using tractors. Inheritance as a mode of access has only become popular as an alternative means of gaining access to land. The solution

133 P.C. Joshi, “Field work experiences relieved and reconsidered: The Agrarian Society of Uttar Pradesh,” Journal of Peasant Studies, Vol. 8, No.4, July 1981 pp.472.

to land fragmentation is, therefore, not a change in inheritance laws, but calls for policy makers to address the material conditions that restrain land access for posterity. When large landholding dispossesses the majority, inheritance becomes both circumstantial and the only viable means of gaining access to land by especially the youth. In both samples the majority of those who had gained access to land through inheritance were the youth.

Restrictive land access conditions also make such other modes of access like donations and custodianship important avenues by which individuals acquire means by which they can struggle for subsistence food production.

It is becoming more certain that there should be no cause for the nation to celebrate because of incidental increases in crop yields as a result of increase in the crop acreage, because such increases in agricultural production do not reflect the changes in the land and labour productivity. Hence, they may not be sustainable over a period of time. Secondly, such changes have mostly served to increase the marginalisation of the peasantry, as the actual benefits are reaped elsewhere by either the marketing state agencies, the donors of the agricultural inputs which are extended to the farmers, and in many cases the landlords from whom land is either rented or borrowed.

Can, therefore, an egalitarian counterfactual redistribution of land be the basis of change in any tenure relations? The demand for the reinstatement of Busulu and Envujjo, which is, as I have endeavoured to show above, a voice calling for tenure security is largely a chorus by the poor peasants, just as is the possibility of a land redistribution. The most prosperous of the peasantry, who using resources from surplus appropriation have bought themselves bibanja or have the intention to do so in future feel threatened by redistributive endeavours. The short run measure, therefore, calls for security of tenure much more than a redistributive endeavour.

The practise of extending credit to farmers even without the requirement of collateral in form of security for the loan, except the recommendation of local RCs or ones' membership to a local co-operative society has not helped the peasant cultivators. The form the loan takes is not determined, by the beneficiaries who know their environments pretty well. Where inputs were part of the loan, they were mostly sub-standard. For instance in sample B, the wheels that had been fixed on the wheelbarrows that were provided, easily gave way under the weight of workload because they had pressure tubes. The wrong insecticides were at times availed to farmers, or incorrect advise was provided because some farmers lost their crops on application of these chemicals. The insistence on the part of the loan, on the hiring of a tractor has grave ecological implications for the dry soils in our sample B. The peasants were not given the opportunity to determine the best technology for opening

up their land, and since they required the loan money, they could not be beggars and at the same time choosers.

Apart from the ecological implications, the tractor is not technology for the poor. To be able to use a tractor one has to clear the area of any tree trunks and stones, which cost is only slightly less than the cost of ploughing using a tractor, and is almost the same amount of money that is demanded to clear the same piece of land using manual labour. The implication is that using a tractor is almost twice the cost of using manual labour to clear the same piece of land. This makes ploughing using tractors a costly venture for average peasants.

Evidence increasingly points to the fact that increasing agricultural production by adopting new technology to open up more land, without effecting structural changes in the factors that condition the relations of production is only short lived. This is because the problem of agricultural production is not defined in terms of, the factors that lead to the low levels of traditional technology and the productive forces in agriculture such as the feudal nature of land relations, but the inability to co-opt presumably new techniques of production by the small holder peasant farmers.

Whatever the amount of new technology, such as agricultural inputs, expanded rural credit schemes, and ambitious agro chemicals sales programmes that are adopted, the results are bound to be dismally frustrating in future, as long as the conditions that create the present social structures remain largely untampered with. For it is this that is largely responsible for the backwardness of the peasantry; whose production relations have to say the least of recent become identifiable with land disputes. Much of their effort is spent in feuding rather than production. As a result the weak, who are apparently the majority of the peasants, have been driven into destitution. The agriculturally marginal areas have become their haven, where even the bare minimum for survival is hardly attainable, and yet they have obligations to fulfil like graduated tax, payment for medical service, and school fees.

Like “Alice in her race with the Red Queen”, the peasants have to do all the running in order to remain in one place. They as a result enjoy varying rights in the use of the land, and depending largely on how they gain access to that land, and which in turn determines what one can do or not do on and/or with the land.

The question of land tenure, therefore, does not call for just a set of statutes, but for concrete steps aimed at achieving a social change in the powers that be over the rights to control land, with a view to affording security of tenure at the least possible cost to that majority of the population whose principal source of livelihood is the land.

In the meantime, it is essential that statutory sales or allocations of land by the District Land Committee be temporarily suspended, so that institutions

are put in place to strengthen the powers of the people to defend their rights to the land they are cultivating. This would ultimately decentralize the statutory control of land and demystify the work of District and other Land Committees.

Appendices Appendix 1 Table 1 Yields Area Approx. Average Average Average (ha) tonnage tonnage kgms per (100kgs) per ha acre bags per acre Maize 4687 9374 2.0 800.0 8 Finger millet 585 368 0.629 251.6 2.5 Sorgum 1436 3590 2.5 1000.0 10 Sweet potatoes 9012 135183 15.0 6000.0 60 Irish potatoes 1181 70878 60.0 24000.0 24 Cassava 1702 269155 158 63256.0 632 Beans 5863 5863 1.0 400.0 4 Soya beans 1463 1463 1.0 400.0 4 G/nuts 3272 3207 1 392.0 4 Simsim 91 37 1 162 2 Tomatoes 620 22797 20 7610 76 Onions 90 718 8 3190 32 Cabbages 1472 22080 15 6000 60 Cotton 1900 1900 1 400 4 Totals 33374 535613 1637 6548.0 65 Source: District Agricutural Office, Bukalasa. NB: For analytical expediency I have added the last three columns to the

figures obtained from the DAO Bukalasa.

Appendix 2

Table 2 Yields Area Approx. Average Average Average (ha) tonnage kgms per (100 kg ) per ha acre bags/acre Maize 6112 12226 2.0 800 8 Finger Millet 98 98 1.0 400 4 Sorghum 352 880 3 1000 10 Sweet Potatoes 16932 203172 12.0 4800 48 Irish Potatoes 318 1908 6 2400 24 Cassava 23592 542616 2 9200 92 Beans 8829 13244 2 600 6 G/nuts 1164 1164 1 400 4 Simsim 62 16 1 103 1 Tomatoes 1056 3432 3 1300 13 Onions 206 1648 8 3200 32 Cabbages 1559 3898 3 1000 10 Cotton 887 887 1 400 4 Totals Source: District Agricultural Office; Bukalasa. NB: The last 3 columns one my own calculations derived as follows: 1 ha = 2.471 acres

approx. 2.5 acres. - average kgm/acre = [(1000)x (approximate tonnage)] [( 2.5) (Area (hectares) ] - “ “ = [(400) x (Average tonnage per Ha)]

Appendix 3 Wabinyonyi/Buluuli, Gombolola Wabinyonyi, P.O.Nakasongola. 15-2-1987

Nze Julaina Kabeja owe Wabinyonyi nguziza Omwami Johnson Ziiwa Balyejusa Akabanja akali ku'Ttaka lyange, agenda kuzimbako nju yamirimugye akafo ako kaweza obugazi ft. 50 (attano) ate obuwanvu ft. 100 (Kikumi). Ampade e'Kanzu ya mitwalo kumi zoka. Nze Julaina Kabeja. Ffe ababadewo. 1. E. Wandira. 2. Harriet Nansasi. NB. Enju aja Kuzimba ya Blocks. Nze Z.K. Buwanga awandise endagano eno. Source: The Agreement was obtained from the tenant who bought the kibanja.

Appendix 4 25 March 1990

Seruyange, lwaki mwagala okunfuula omubi?. Mubutufu bukya mbagumikiriza e shillings 1,000/- lwena basabye buli'omu; Sendawula taabe kubawa mulimu, kwe kugamba nti telwalimperedwa????. Seruyange, ennusu ezo zakubuze, awo wogambira nkwongereko ekitundu ekirala??. Awo mba musiru!!!. Seruyange werabide obuntu bulamu bwewajirangamu ongambe nkwegayiirire jjajja?; ebyo sibyebivamu empalana munnange???. Seruyange nfuuse mubi jemuli kubanga muja kutuuka okungamba nti wandi tugunikiriza notootumya Senga'wo.

Seruyange wangamba kumurundi guli oguzeeko guno nti nggumukirizaako lwonodda,nange nenkikiriza, kyoka kati ebyali ebyobulungi byagalakufukamu bibi. Bwemuba mulowoza nti njagala kubalya; muuntegeze ekituffu nti ggwe: tetwagala kukuwa sente zafee, nze ntumye Senga ye abamatize.

Bwasalawo okubagobawo Seruyange nebwoyita Kabejja emasinga jebamuziika najja sirina kubawolereza nakamu. Kuba sente ezo zenabasabye zirina kyezingyiriza nakutegeeza bwenjagala okugula ensigo, kyoka gwenagikwatako agamba kujitunda. Lwaki mumbuzabuza?. Mu Sunday eno njagala mbeko ekituufu kyemanya kati ninze kiva eri mwe, ntumye eri ansiingako. Nze Nansasi Harriet. Source: These were hand written notes which were obtained from one of the four tenants to

whom they were distributed by the undersigned landlord. Note:

Because the tenants on kibanja could not afford to pay more money to warrant a written agreement and acknowledgement of receipt of money, the lady, a grand daughter of the Late Luwandaga's wife called Kabejja, would demand money whenever she felt there was a problem that required money. Such was the case for the `First Kanzu'. Also her continued reference to her `Senga' (Auntie) to compel the tenants to pay money implies that though ownership of land was individual (by her virtue of having been heir to her grandmother), control is exercised elsewhere.

Appendix 5 Wampiti RCII P.O. Nakasongola. 2-3-1989. Chairman RCIII P.O. Nakasongola. Re: Maimuna Namirimu.

Ssebo mpereza gyoli omukyala nanyini manya ago wagulu nga omwana Sirasi Sebatwa olwo'kukumpanya ekyapa kye Ttaka lye Nakigya mu Land Office. Ensonga zabwe tuziyingiddemu naye balemeredwa okutegeragana.

Kyetuvude tubawereza gyemuli. Nze Kabonge Fredrick. Chairman RCII. Source: File WRC/17 General- Wabinyonyi RCIII Court.

Appendix 6 Wabinyonyi zone, 12-7-1990 Eri Chairman RCIII Gombolola Wabinyonyi. Re: Ente Okulya Enimiro

Ssebo kunsonga eyo wagulu nsindise gyoli Mukyala Nabukenya, Mutuze mu RC1 Wabinyonyi North nga Ente z'omwami Y.K. Gawera, ziridde emeere era n'okusambirira enimiro yo'mukyala oyo.

Ssebo okusinzira kuteeka elyayisibwa 20-1-1988; ekitundu ekyokubiri era akatundu akokubiri mwami Gawera Y.K. alimanyi.

Era Ssebo omuntu oyo yomu emisango gyenimiro mingi egimuwawabidwa naye ssebo alabika nga munyomi nnyo.

Ssebo musale amagezi gona mumukangavule ayige: kubanga ayonona edembe lyo'buntu mu zone yange. Nze Vice Chairman, Wabinyonyi zone, RCIII. Fredrick Sebuufu. Source: File WRC/17 General- Wabinyonyi RCII Court.

Appendix 7

Secondary Sources of Data 1. Uganda National Archives, Entebbe These were mostly files, and include the following: 1. A46/735 UPSMP No. 1960, Eastern Province, Bululu, Fighting by

Natives at Barr. 2. A46/2293 UPSMP No. 7281: Land: Butaka Lands in Western Province. 3. A45/375 UPSMP No. 1731/1909; Emigration of Natives from Unyoro to

Buganda. 4. A46/2097: UPSMP No.6420: Miscellaneous; Uganda Development

Commission, Western Province Criticisms by: 5. A46/1913: Official Estates: Alienation of:- 6. A46/1937 UPSMP No. 5833 - L33/1 Acquisition of land by retired

Baganda agents. 7. A46/1483 UPSMP No. 4915: Land Policy. 8. A42/116 UPSM No. 581/06: Land Tenure by Natives in Uganda. Report

by Sir W.M. Carter and Commission, 1906-1907. 9. A45/398 UPSMP No. 1796/09 From DC Unyoro 29-11-09; Nubian

Settlers: Refusal to work on roads: 10. A46/199 UPSMP No. 557: Northern Province, Monthly Report August

1915. 11. A46/58 UPSMP No. D187/2: Ordinances; Crown Land Ordinance (Draft) between 1930-1934. 12. A46/177 UPSMP No. 516/08 Part II: Crown Land Rents and Poll Taxes;

Appointment of collectors. 13. A42/88 UPSMP No. 470/1906: Native Land Tenure, Bishop Streicher

Report on;. 14. A46/172 UPSMP No. 507 Cotton: Annual Report for 1909-1910. 15. A46/1054 UPSMP No. 3165 Part II, Cotton Policy in Uganda. 16. A46/1034 UPSMP No. 3055 Game Ordinances 1906 and 1910 -

“Buffalo”. 17. A42/283 UPSMP No. 1484/1906; Agricultural Delopment in Uganda. 18. A46/763 UPSMP No. 2016 Part I; Roads and Transport in Uganda. 19. A46/760 UPSMP No. 2002 Part V: Labour Supply; Relative to. 20. A46/826 UPSMP No. 2198 I and II - On Committees on Land Tenure in

Bunyoro, Toro and Ankole.

2. Luwero District Headquarters; The District Executive Secretary's

Office 1. File LAN/3 Land Disputes in Luwero District. 2. File, Register for Land Applications: District Land Committee Office,

Luwero. Date opened 5-12-1988. 3. Wabinyonyi Rciii, Wabinyonyi Subcounty, Nakasongola County 1. File WRC/17 - General: Wabinyonyi RCIII Court. 4. Luwero District Agricultural Office, Bukalasa. 1. File, Agricultural Returns for Luwero District. 2. Accession File Number 49. 3. Annual Reports, 1990. 5. Uganda Region Mailo Office, Bukalasa 1. Files; Registered Private Mailo Certificates. 6. RCI Lunyolya, Kalagala Subcounty, Wabusana County 1. File RCI Court Proceedings, Register for cases heard. 7. Newspapers. 1. The New Vision. 2. The Star. 3. Weekly Topic. 4. Uganda Herald. 5. Ngabo. 8. Reports 1. Report to the Government of Uganda by the Commission of Inquiry into the

Government Ranching Schemes, December 1985, Entebbe, Government Printer.

2. Orukurato Orukuru Oru'Kuteraniza Enganda Za Bunyoro Kitara:

Memorandum to the Uganda Constitutional Commission, of September 1991.

3. Lord Hailey; Confidential Report on, “Native Administration and Political Development in British Tropical Africa 1940-1942”.

Bibliography Barrows, Richard and Roth Michael (1989) Land Tenure and Investment in African Agriculture: Theory and Evidence Land Tenure Center Paper 136 Madison. Beattie, John, The Nyoro State. Bernstein, Henry (1979) “African Peasantries: A Theoretical Framework”, Journal of Peasant Studies, Vol. 6 No. 4. Berry, Sara (1989) “Access, control and use of resources in African Agriculture: An Introduction”, AFRICA, Vol. 59 No. 1. Beverly Brock, “Customary Land Tenure, `Individualization' and Agricultural Devepment in Uganda”, East African Journal of Rural Development Vol… No. 19. Boserup, Ester, (1970) Women's Role in Economic Development, London, Earthscan Publications Ltd. Chango Machyo (1984) “Communal Land Tenure and Rural Development”, Proceedings of the 2nd Mawazo Workshop on “Agrarian Question in Developing Countries”. Ddungu, Expedit (1989 ) Popular Forms and the Question of Democracy: The Case of Resistance Councils in Uganda, CBR Working Paper No. 4. Galaty, J.G. (1981) Aronson, D.P., Salzan, C., and Choninard, A., (eds) The Future of Pastoral Peoples; Proceedings of a Conference held in Nairobi Kenya, 4-8 August 1980, IDRC, Ottawa. Gariyo, Zie ( ) Technology and Social Change: An analysis of the socioeconomic Impact of Irrigated Agriculture onPeasant Production in Eastern Uganda. (Forthcoming). Gerda, Lerner, (1986) The Creation of Patriarchy, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Gershenberg, Irving (1974) “Customary Land Tenure as a Constraint in Agricultural Development: A Re-evaluation”East African Journal of Rural Development Vol.4 No. 1.

Hansen, H.B. and Twaddle, M. (ed) (1988) Uganda Now; Between Decay and Development, London, James Currey. Herring, Ronald J. (1981) "Embedded Production Relations and the Rationality of Tenant Quiescence in Tenure Reform, Journal of Peasant STudies, Vol. 8, No. 2. Joshi, P. C. (1981) “Fieldwork Experiences: Relieved and reconsidered; The Agrarian Society of Uttar Pradesh”, Journal of Peasant Studies, Vol. 8 No. 4. Low, D. A. (1971) Buganda in Modern History, London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Mamdani, Mahmood (1984) “Analyzing the Agrarian Question: The Case of a Buganda Village”, Mawazo Vol.5 No.3. ------------------ (1984) “Extreme but not Exceptional: Towards an analysis of the Agrarian Question in Uganda”, Development Policy and Practise, Working Paper No.5 Open University. ------------------ (1984) “Forms of Labour and Accumulation of Capital: Analyzing a village in Lango in Northern Uganda”, Paper presented to 3rd Mawazo Workshop, “A Hundred years After the Berlin Conference: Perspectives of Africas Liberation”. ----------------- (1976) Politics and Class Formation in Uganda, London, Monthly Review Press. McKnight, Glenn H., and Robert Shenton (….) Agrarian History in Uganda: A Literature Review. MISR-Winscosin (1989) Land Tenure and Agricultural Development, Land Tenure Centre Study. Mukubwa-Tumwine (1977) “The Economic and Political Basis of Land Law and Policy in Buganda, 1900 - 1966" Makerere Law Journal I (1). Mukwaya A.B. (1953) Land Tenure in Buganda; Present day Tendencies, Kampala, Eagle Press. Nsibambi, Apolo (….) “From Symbiosis to Antagonism: The Case of the Relationship between Landlords and Tenants”, Rural Rehabilitation and Development in Uganda.

----------------- (1989) “The Land Question and Conflict”, in Kumar Rupesinghe (ed) Conflict Resolution in Uganda, London, James Currey. Nyangabyaki, Bazaara (1988) “The Food Question in Colonial Bunyoro Kitara: Capital Penetration and Peasant Response”, M.A. Thesis, Unpublished. ------------------ (1991) The State and Social Differentiation in Kakindo Village, Masindi District, Uganda. CBR Working Paper No. 8. Obol - Ochola, James (ed) (1970) Land Law Reform in East Africa, Kampala, The National Trust. Okoth-Ogendo (1991) Tenants of the Crown: Evolutionof Agrarian Law and Institutions in Kenya, Nairobi, African Centre for Technology Studies. Pearce, R. (1983) “Sharecropping: Towards a Marxist View” in T. J. Byres (ed,) Sharecropping and Sharecroppers, London, Frank Cass. Rigby, Peter, (1985) Persistent Pastoralists: Nomadic Societies in Transition, London, Zed Books Ltd. Sathymurthy, T. V. (1986) The Political Development of Uganda 1900 - 1986, England, Grower Publishing Company. Shanin, Teodor, (ed) (1987) Peasants and Peasant Societies, Suffolk, Richard Clay Ltd. The Land Reform Decree of 1975. Uganda Agreement, 1900: Memorandum on the Constitution of the Native Government of Buganda Kingdom. West, Henry, (1972) Land Policy in Buganda, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Whittemore, Claire (1981) Land for People: Land Tenureand the Very Poor, Oxfarm, Henry Stone and Sons Ltd.

CBR Working Papers 1. Conditions of Labour on Commercial Dairy Farms in Kabale District by Murindwa

Rutanga; 56p. 1989. 2. Social Movements and Constitutionalism in the African Context by Mahmood

Mamdani; 19p. 3. Capital and Conditions of Fisher-Labourers of Lakes Kyoga and Victoria Canoe

Fisheries by Asowa-Okwe; 69p. 1989. 4. Popular Forms and the Question of Democracy: The Case of Resistance Councils in

Uganda, by Ddungu Expedit; 65p. 1989. 5. Uganda Contradictions of the IMF Programme and Perspective by Mahmood

Mamdani; 39p. 1989. 6. Artisinal Production of Salt in Lake Katwe by Syahuka Muhindo; 47p. 1989. 7. The Conditions of Migrant Labour in Masaka District 1900-1962; The Case of Coffee

Shamba Labourers, by Simon Rutabajuka; 45p. 1989. 8. The State and Social Differentiation in Kakindo Village, Masindi District by

Nyangabyaki Bazaara; 43p. 1991. 9. Electoral Mechanisms and the Democratic Process: The 1989 RC-NRC Election by

Expedit Ddungu and Arnest A. Wabwire; 53p.1989. 10. Constitutionalism in Uganda: Report on a Survey and Workshop of Organised

Groups, by Joe Oloka-Onyango and Sam Tindifa; 44p. 1991. 11. A Review of the MISR-Wisconsin Land Tenure Centre Study On Land Tenure

Agricultural Development in Uganda, by Expedit Ddungu; 25p. 1991. 12. Armed Conflict, Political Violence and the Human Rights Monitoring of Uganda:

1971 to 1990, by Joe Oloka-Onyango; 39p. 1991. 13. Appropriate Technology, Productivity and Employment in Agriculture in Uganda:

The Case Study of the Kibimba and Doho Rice Schemes, by Gariyo Zie; 82p. 1991. 14. Uganda National Congress and the Struggle for Democracy: 1952-1962, by Sallie

Simba Kayunga; 206p. 1991. 15. The Rwenzururu Movement and the Democratic Struggle, by Syahuka-Muhindo A;

89p. 1991. 16. Worker Struggles, the Labour Process and the Question of Control: The Case of

United Garments Industry Limited, by Ahikire Josephine; 63p. 1991. 17. Workers and the Law in Uganda, by John-Jean Barya; 79p. 1991. 18. Nyabingi Movement: People's Anti-Colonial Struggles in Kigezi 1910-1930, by

Murindwa Rutanga; 153p. 1991. 19. Workers' Control: The Struggle to take over Mulco Textile Factory in Uganda, by

Edward Rubanga; 41p. 1992. 20. Pastoralism and Crisis in North Eastern Uganda: Factors that have Determined Social

Change in Karamoja by Charles Ocan; 74p. 1992. 21. Pastoral Crisis in Northern Uganda: The Changing Significance of Cattle Raids by

Charles Ocan;43p. 1992. 22. Karamoja: Ecology and History by Mahmood Mamdani and P. M. B. Kasoma and A.

B. Katende66p. 1992. 23. Causes and Effects of the 1980 Famine in Karamoja by Ben Okudi. 24. The Press and Democratic Struggles in Uganda: 1900-1962 by Zie Gariyo; 101p. 1992. 25. The Dynamics of the Land Question and its Impact on Agriculture Productivity in

Mbarara District, Uganda by Lawyer B. M. Kafureka; 130p. 1992. 26. Emergent Changes and Trends in Land Tenure and Use in Kabale and Kisoro District

by Robert Mugisha; 70p. 1992.

27. Land Tenure and Peasant Adaptations: Some Reflections on Agricultural Production

in Luweero District by Frank Muhereza; 110p. 1992.

About the Author

Frank Emmanuel Muhereza is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Basic Research (CBR).