Big Interview: "What is Mengo? What is Buganda?"-minister Sam Mayanja

Renowned for authoring frequent scholarly missives that are critical of the Buganda Kingdom, Dr. Sam Mayanja, the State Minister for Lands, believes that there are a lot of things that need to be done to settle land wrangles in the country.

In an interview with the Nile Post, Mayanja insisted Buganda Land Board (BLB), the kingdom’s entity responsible for land matters, is an illegal body that profits a clique of people.

 Excerpts below:

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It has been a long time since you took this position as a minister, were you surprised when you were appointed a minister?

No, his excellency the president rang me earlier and we interacted so I had agreed to work in government, thus I was not surprised when the appointment came because I knew the background and where it was coming from to appoint me in this position. As soon as the appointment came of course those who know my views came because my views are public. I have always expressed them, on the Buganda Land Board, on the mailo land system and on public land. There is no point of land which I have not written about. I am just surprised that people sometimes get shocked when I take a position.

Being a born again Christian and prominent lawyer; why have you accepted to serve in this position. Don’t you think that your reputation will be ruined because this is a political position?

No, somebody had to do this job. For me, I still take it as a challenge. I have noticed that these district land boards don’t know land laws, we tell RDCs to mediate over land matters, yet actually they don’t know the land law in which they are mediating. It is a big challenge which I took on very well knowing that although I am a technical person, it is a political position where politics is different from the profession.

They throw mud at you, they want to bring you down and I don’t know how to play that game. I think this is a challenge in life which I took on. I think others will judge me whether my being there has helped or not. 

For starters, what is the situation of land wrangles in Uganda? Give us the general picture.

The Ministry really needs to be cleaned. You have the ministry zones, the land offices. Those are the sources of problems of trouble. There is a lot of corruption in those zones. Of course they were decentralised and you can go to Mityana or to Wakiso and originate the entire process of titling.

For the time being if I had my way, I would just get rid of everybody and start fresh. It would mean us stopping for sometimes as we recruit for two weeks but we would rather stop for two weeks and get the right people in place.

There are many Ugandans who can take those positions, who are trained surveyors, who are trained lawyers. However, the important thing you need is dignity, honesty and being professional and of course you put another system on the ground that you don’t keep people on the same station for too long.

Corruption has been one of the main factors in addressing land matters in the country, as the ministry, what have you done to deal with this vice? 

I wanted to lead by example. Example is a great thing in leadership, so first of all, I had to show as a sector minister that I will not do anything which is not regular. Everything must be regular and everything must have a time limit because you cannot have somebody applying for a title and for two years he or she is chasing it.

What does it take? Unless you are not a professional. So make sure that things have a timeline that a title will not take longer than two weeks. Make sure that every complaint that is lodged is handled immediately.

Number three, to make sure that some of those glaringly corrupt induced transactions are sent to either to CID or IGG or DPP, sometimes even to State House Anti-Corruption Unit.

Recently, I was told that they were teasing me, telling me that I don’t have the power to dismiss on the spot because if you go to Mpigi for example you will have somebody who has double titles, he is a registrar and he is still seated there.

The Ministry recently launched an e-information portal. How will this system help in curbing corruption in the ministry?

Number one, you don’t need to go to the office to get your information, you just press the number on your mobile phone and the information comes to you basically because of the type of digital system put in place. So nobody will tell you that the file is lost, so that eliminates that bit of corruption. If you want to get a title in the wetland the system will reject it, so that huge area of corruption will be eliminated.

So far it is limited to a certain percentage but it is still a backlog because some files have not yet been entered. I think staff have been given up to the end of June 2022 to ensure that all the instruments are in the system. That will be a great way of eliminating the biggest corruption. You cannot eliminate it completely but the biggest part will be eliminated.

You recently suspended Wakiso Land Board officers and later your senior rescinded the suspensions. What really happened?

It was a rotten place. People were not in their places, they still use manual type writers yet we are digitalised. The brokers were actually the people carrying out the work there. Everybody has his or her broker seated outside there. If you know the actual physical setup of Waksio, there are kiosks outside as if they are selling groundnuts etc but those were actually brokers. When somebody is going into the land office, he or she is first trapped at the brokers office, they are told what to pay and then they are directed to go to a particular person, so mine was first of all to close the blockage there, close the offices themselves and then put new people and I gave myself three days to do that.

Actually I did it but unfortunately, I was advised by the technical people that ‘you don’t do that to the civil servants, you need to give them notice, you don’t just transfer them like that’ so in the meantime let the people go back to their offices at the end of the year they will slowly transfer some of them.

What is your working relationship with Judith Nabakooba, your senior? There are claims the two of you are clashing.

No, no, no. I have never clashed with Nabakooba. She is a very wonderful person to work with. She is our senior minister. As a born again Christian, I can tell you leadership is from God. God has put her there. God knew, I am there and God working through President Museveni made her a senior minister. If I am to work with her, I must respect her and this issue came out and I just read about it in the papers.

What is the truth about Naguru-Nakawa land wrangles?

I cannot say I can get to the bottom of it to say this is the truth about it because the things have been there, we have been in the office with our team for only six months but the thing has been there I think for the last 15 years. So there is a big issue with it. I would not go deep into it but people responsible for Naguru-Nakawa are the Uganda Land Commission.

You have written many articles critiquing Mengo and supporting abolition of mailo land. What is your main issue with Buganda at large?

There is no problem with Mengo but I want to also ask you, what is Mengo? What is the legal entity that you refer to as Mengo? I want to know. You have to clarify legally what is Mengo? Which are the Mengo people, is it a debating society over there or discussion group? What is Buganda? When you look at my writing about Mengo, I am specifically on the legal issues, on the mailo land. When I talk about Mengo, I am talking about the Mengo establishment that existed between 1900 and 1966.You are talking about Mengo, what is there? Is it Mengo establishment of 1900 to 1966 which ruled Uganda for 70 years?

You are a Muganda, are you not afraid that your views are causing a lot of damage including putting your reputation at stake?

Was the Mengo establishment from 1900 to1966 a good thing for Uganda, you read the history, no. When I bring out those issues to show that the Mengo establishment which was an instrument of colonial rule of Uganda and that it was not good for Uganda and it was not good for Buganda...people say I am bad.

It destroyed Buganda first of all. Buganda and the rest of Uganda were on the same par as far as colonial rule is concerned, governor on top, provincial commissioners next, district commissioners...and that was the same throughout Uganda.

When you look at the mailo that was distributed only among these cliques, the Mengo establishment and the few nobles and Baganda came off worse because of [dual ownership]. The rest of Uganda was better off because there was no creation of mailo. You don’t go to the North and find somebody with customary ownership and then somebody comes on top of you that he also owns.

Like here somebody has a kibanja and then somebody comes on top. The public land in Buganda was the same as the rest of the country.

Why do you insist that the Buganda Land Board is illegal?

You must make it very clear to the public that once upon a time, there used to be a constitutional body called Buganda Land Board under the Constitution of Uganda which used to manage and administer with constitutional provisions of accountability to the public land in Buganda.

That body ceased to exist when Buganda, a federal administrative unit collapsed and was replaced by the district as an administrative unit. All the boards in the districts or the former federal units, administrative units, were administering public land, their land went into Uganda land Commission which eventually is now under District Land Board.

There used to be Buganda Land Board as a constitutional body administering public land in Uganda, then you ask what is this Buganda Land board of today? Then you will realize that, it is not the Buganda Land Board, rather it is a different animal called Buganda Land Board Limited, a private company and a private company cannot administer public property.

Private company and its objective is not to manage public land, that is illegal! its illegal and it is unconstitutional. Where is the accountability? How can you manage public land without accountability? Illegality number one.

The law of registration requires that you should not have a name which confuses the public, so now everybody, media inclusive, just write Buganda Land Board, now that confuses Buganda Land Board which existed.

Lastly, do you have any ambition to participate in elective politics come 2026?

I am an intellectual, social critic of the events and an observer. Fundamentally, I am a born again Christian, I have been preaching since the age of 13 up to now, that is my passion, to preach the gospel. I don’t have political ambition. I just want to do this assignment which Mzee gave me. [He said] come and help to clean  within the limits available after that I will come back to my legal practice. I will continue criticising those Mengo discussion groups and telling them that Buganda Land Board is illegal.