Dr Sam Mayanja is well known to anyone with a finger on the pulse of Uganda’s land issue. He has spoken at numerous events, on TV, and expressed his opinions in newspapers over the years. It is this steadfastness to his opinions and staying true to what he believes in—God, justice and the rule of law—that earned him the appointment to a ministerial position by H.E. Yoweri Museveni. That and their shared goal of tenure security for tenants and an end to the “mailo curse.”
More than just being the Minister of State for Lands, Dr Sam Mayanja has practised law for over 45 years and received numerous achievements worldwide. It is with this multifaceted life experience and authority that he has gathered his opinions on multiple subjects into the second edition of the book: FROM STREET PREACHING TO POSITION OF RECOGNITION: DR SAM MAYANJA’S GUIDE.
As per the first part of the title, one would expect that the book covers the author’s life with a focus on street preaching and how he transitioned to positions of power. Only about a page is dedicated to that but not as strenuous in the details as afforded to other parts of the book. There is a scattered mention of his religiosity throughout the book but it takes a back seat to the opinions and arguments put forth. So no. There isn’t a portrait of the beloved minister shouting his voice sore as he spread the good news on Kampala streets: his gospel is land, and it has overflowed from newspapers and other media sources. It more than makes up for the missing autobiography once promised.
True to the second part of the title, the book is Dr Sam Mayanja’s guide through numerous political ailments facing the country today, tracing their root causes through facts and history, and offering opinions on how treatment can be administered using the law. Healing these ills is a personal journey that Dr Mayanja started as early as his school days.
According to him, all the trouble, that is in Buganda, can be traced back to Sir Apollo Kaggwa and friends who betrayed their king, Kabaka Mwanga, by collaborating with the colonialists. They crushed the Kabaka Mwanga and Omukama Kabalega-led rebellion against colonial rule and installed the 3-year-old Daudi Chwa as King of Buganda. This allowed Apollo Kaggwa, Stanislaus Mugwanya, and Kizito Kisingiri to assume positions of power in Buganda by appointing themselves regents and taking effective control of all power in the kingdom including control over land. What followed was nothing short of “land grabbing.” 9000 sq. miles (mailo akenda) had been curved from the Kingdoms of Bunyoro, Ankole and Kooki in the 1900 Buganda Agreement which [it] gifted Buganda while the colonial government got Crown land.
“The authority to allocate land was to flow not from kabaka but from higher chiefs to lower chiefs. The higher the hierarchy of the chief, the more land measured in square miles allocated to him.”
The landlords exerted heavy levies on the peasant tenants whom they easily evicted and left landless and poor. The failure of these land owners to enterprise and subsequent failure of their descendants who resorted to selling off pieces of land is the reason, Dr Mayanja believes, behind Buganda’s current poverty.
There’s little further interrogation, however, of this failure to enterprise. I wonder why little became of the swathes of land these chiefs held: could it be their lack of education? How about their descendants?—what pressures forced them to sell their land?
Within the historical analysis of Buganda’s land system, Dr Mayanja casts his net wider to tie it to the decline of Buganda as a kingdom. The Buganda chiefs, the land barons, set up a protestant oligarchy that came to be known as The Mengo Establishment in the 1960s. To Dr Mayanja, it is this group that destroyed Buganda Kingdom through their machinations to maintain Buganda’s special status like what they had with the colonialists. As independence drew close and unity under one government became imminent, the Mengo Establishment felt their special status slipping away and made political blunders that cost the country.
It was The Mengo Establishment that frustrated the Democratic Party under Benedicto Kiwanuka, by joining with Uganda People’s Congress under Kabaka Yekka to retain power and a special status in a new independent state—their king would also be the head of state. When they learned of the “cosmetic” position of Kabaka Mutesa II as president of Uganda, they plotted to take power from Prime Minister Obote leading to the Buganda Crisis of 1966. Guns were smuggled into the country. There was a battle at Mengo and trouble in the streets. They failed, their king was exiled and Obote abolished kingdoms. At a crucial point in Uganda’s political history, the Mengo Establishment chose to cut itself from national interests for its own, thus becoming a nuisance.
Dr Mayanja’s frustration is palpable in his description of this group of people as a “myopic arrogant rugged band of ex-soldiers and rioters.” Even more frustrating for him is the same lack of foresight by leaders at Mengo evidenced by the repeated call for ‘federo’ towards the February 2021 general elections.
“It is a retrogressive call which Ugandans must resist and speak out loudly against… Baganda have to abandon the naivety with which they approach their relationship with the rest of Uganda…”
Using Buganda’s history to criticize current and past choices made by the Buganda Cultural Institution, one would think the author holds a grudge against the establishment. In fact, in an interview with a Luganda tabloid (transcribed and published in the book), the question is put to Dr Mayanja.
Dr Mayanja handles the land question in Buganda with its intricate political history to make clear his dream, the goal shared with the president, the “dream of tenants getting land titles on their bibanja.”
In the second half of the book, Dr Mayanja turns his gaze to the judiciary and explains in as little legal jargon as a well-educated lawyer can use, quoting the constitution and other sources, what happened to Robert Kyagulanyi’s election petition describing it as mere sound and fury. The discussion is continued in chapter 5 where he defends the constitutional court’s decision to render People Power irrelevant.
He criticizes the US government’s sanctioning of Judges Moses Mukiibi and Masalu Musene on 17th August 2020 and offers his detailed opinion on the age limit debate that sparked the T’ogikwatako-k’ogikwatako episode in Uganda’s recent political history. He pays tribute to Hon. Peter Nyombi, an important figure in Uganda’s political landscape and praises president Museveni’s resolute handling of the covid-19 pandemic and saving the country from a power vacuum.
One is left wondering if that is truly so. Furthermore, where is the critical Dr Mayanja of the first half of the book in the second half? What are Dr Mayanja’s thoughts on the sociopolitical years after the Buganda Crisis in 1966 but preceding Museveni’s revolution?
In the introduction, Dr Mayanja establishes that the book is one of various themes and a collection of articles he has published over the years. His desire is to ease access to his ideas and opinions. In that regard the book is successful—a blessing to have his mind, or at least a part of his thought process, recorded and collected in a single volume.
Because it is “a cocktail of various themes” from various articles, there is a fair share of repetition of ideas, arguments, and histories often with minor additions. Most obvious in the reading is the story of The Mengo Establishment and the 1900 Buganda Agreement. And yet at the end of it, one feels there’s so much more Dr Mayanja has to say about the issue of land. A whole book’s-worth even.
Among intellectuals working today, Dr Mayanja sets himself apart. Beyond the intellectualizing and arguing in “big words” that is characteristic of Uganda’s intellectuals, Dr Mayanja grounds his reasoning in his dream for “omuntu wa wansi” having the security which was stolen from them by colonialists and myopic cultural leaders. There is a track record and personal testimonies to the work he continues to do today. I am glad for leaders like Dr Sam Mayanja.