The Rule of Law Must Apply to Everyone
Okot Nyormoi, 11.23.06
Dear Editor,
I am writing in response to your Sunday Editorial entitled, “Acholi MPs wrong on investor threats.” While your argument, based on your theoretical construct sounds right, it bears little relevance to the facts or issues of concern. While I agree with you about the need to promote the rule of law, we must also agree that it must be done for everybody across the board. We cannot expect some citizens to abide by the law while others do not.
While I do not approve of mob justice, it is also not at all surprising if it happens because such people live daily in an atmosphere in which the president of the nation is the chief advocate and practitioner of non-compliance of the rule of law, except when it suits him. Similarly, people of the press like you who should be promoting the rule of law also display selective memory when privileged people break the law. For example, about 1.6 million people in northern and eastern Uganda have been incarcerated in internally displaced people’s camps (aka concentration camps) as President Museveni’s war strategy for years. For some, it is not even clear when and how they will return to their homes. In those camps, a lot of laws are broken daily by the very people who should be enforcing them, let alone the fact that the very motive for and the manner by which they were created are gross violations of International Law, Conventions and Protocols governing the conduct of war; to which Uganda is a signatory.
Yet, most Ugandans, especially opinion formers like you, for reasons best known to you only, have become tolerant of such situations. Instead of castigating those who may resort to mob action out of frustration, you should be castigating those who create the environment which breeds mob action. As part of that tolerance, you will probably not publish an opinion such as this because it makes you or the powers that be feel uncomfortable. Yes, we should promote the rule of law, but it must be applied uniformly all across the board and not selectively, as is the case now. After all, if the GOU can use its power to illegally sell public land in and around Kampala to the politically well placed (The Daily Monitor Nov. 22, 2006), what would prevent it from doing the same or worse to land that it fraudulently identifies as free or unoccupied land?
As for the substance of the issue, the MP’s are absolutely right about the potential threat of land-grabbing in the name of investments (New Vision, March 19, 2005). You have simply selected the parts of their statement to erect a target to shoot down. First of all, they never said that they are against investments. They are concerned about where and how the investments will be done. They were addressing a specific phenomenon of land-grabbing not only by foreign investors but also their Acholi collaborators. For example, how do you figure MP’s or ex-MP’s from Kitgum or Pader Districts going to establish commercial farms in the newly created Amuru District in West Acholi where such people have no connection whatsoever with the land, and yet the people who own that land rightfully, are firmly locked up in the camps by Museveni’s army?
Second, you know that the MP’s were not addressing situations involving legally leased or government owned land. They are addressing situations in which would-be-land grabbers claim to acquire “unoccupied or free” land. Surely, practically most of the Acholi land is currently unoccupied for the obvious reason that the owners have been forcefully deported from their land by the government army (UPDF) or by the UPDF-provoked LRA and left the people unprotected so that they would be attacked and forced off the land to live in the horrendous camps. So then, which unoccupied land are the potential land grabbers talking about?
Your article also displays your utter ignorance of the land system in Acholi and the history of the struggle to protect the land in Acholi. Most of the people who are in the camps do not hold titles to land, because land, including “tim dwar” or common hunting grounds, common gazing grounds, etc. may look empty to outsiders, but those who live in the area know that they belong to the community. Thus, you just cannot come from outside and acquire land because it looks unoccupied. Likewise, nobody in the community can sell a piece of communal land because he needs money to invest in some short term projects. You cannot also live in one community and cultivate land in another community without their permission. It just does not work like the way you perceive it. There are other options that such a person would take to meet his/her needs before selling the land.
As far as the needs of the people are concerned, it is utterly unjust to deprive people of the use of their land, as is now the case, so that they are forced into selling the very land from which they were forced out to meet the needs which they would have otherwise met had they been left on their land. This is why people are suspicious that part of the military strategy of forcing people into the camps has been a design to acquire the so-called investment land. That is coercion. That is the problem that the MP’s were addressing, not land which was legally acquired long before the war.
Finally, while the MP’s talked of instant spearing of intruding investors, you must not take it literally. If it happens under the current situation, it will be a culmination of a long process which has been going on for the last 21 years or so. It is just that although people like you have been seeing the process unfold, including facilitating it through your skewed deceptive reporting of the events in Northern Uganda, you have chosen for the sake of convenience not to acknowledge it. This is not the first time that the land question is being debated. You can check your own archives and you will see that in the current struggle for the protection of land, our concern goes as far back as the time of the creation of the camps if not earlier. You may recall that General Salim Saleh made serious proposals for a novel use of the land as part of the government security arrangement reported by Civil Society Organisations for Peace in Northern Uganda (CSPNU), 10 December 2004, Nowhere to Hide; Indian farmers want Ugandan land By Frank Nyakairu & Grace Masiko, The Daily Monitor, Nov 7, 2004. One can also go back and find evidence of land grabbing during the Amin regime both within municipalities as well as in areas as remote as Amuru. Furthermore, there were land disputes between Langi and Acholi during the Obote rule involving land around Minakulu, as well as during the colonial era involving land around Atura Port. It is only through vigilance that the people can protect their land rights against land-grabbing in the name of investment.
In conclusion, you should not trivialize the concerns of the MP’s because someone like MP Okello Okello is not only from the threatened land, but is also an expert on land by right of having been a national land commissioner. Obviously, he knows what he is talking about. Instead of trivializing the MP’s concerns about Acholi land, it would serve you well to first seek to know the various Ugandan land systems. One of the best documentation of Acholi land system is to be found in a study entitled, “Land Matters in Displacement,” by CSOPNU. As they say, ignorance is no excuse. Unless the goal is something else other than the truth, the Monitor should not have editorialized without first investigating the relevant information. Thus, if any potential investor were to be speared, it would not be because the MP’s have mobilized them, but rather because the government is hell-bound to sacrifice the rights of the people to their communal land on the alter of, the all too often dubious, investment.
In the situation of despicable human suffering and degradation as in northern Uganda that has been going on continuously for the last 21 years while other Ugandans and their investor friends looked away as the people cried for help; moral responsibility and shame should prevail, irrespective of wealth. Where were the ‘good investors’ for the last 21 years when the Acholi were crying for help that they turn up now with their money while the people are still locked up in concentration camps in extreme poverty by the army? Monitor Editor you should be ashamed of this kind of insensitive and demeaning editorial. We should never forget, what goes round comes round in parallel and equal force.
Dr. Okot Nyormoi can be reachead at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
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