Land grabbing generals

Land grabbing generals

Greedy Generals

Gen Moses Ali vows that the land in dispute will be demarcated by whatever means, in the same length Gen Aronda echoed the same statement, our attention should be drawn to the fact that Gen Ali is serving out of fear, the very medieval system that detained him in Makindye, tortured him and his son who he unfortunately watched die before him. 

But now that the system has ordained him to defend their scheme of grabbing land from his very own people his tone has changed to the detriment of the entire future of northern region and his mode of fight back is that petty allegation that Gen Sejusa and Gen Muntu were in charge of his torture.

To most of us Gen Moses has been serving as a minister since 1971 in Iddi Amin’s regime and it’s said he acted then in the national interest to preserve the economy of Uganda, however time has changed him to start behaving selfishly.

 

Gen Moses Ali, the people of Acholi and Madi do not need stones to separate them. The two tribes have lived alongside each other for decades. Why didn't this wrangle surface during Amin's regime when you were an independent and influential minister?

It’s known that Museveni and Saleh are pushing for acquisition of land in Acholi by deception, they have used Madhavani but local resistance made him uncormfortable to proceed with the project despite the state assurance of protection and now step in Gen Moses Ali who is more than ready to be a middle man in the project.

 

Mr. Livingstone Okello-Okello, the former Chwa County MP, once said the issue of land demarcation is “suspect” and has not helped allay fears of the locals. Allegations of land grabbing in Acholi against Mr. Museveni’s household date back to the 1990s when MPs in the 6th Parliament, accused his brother, Gen Salim Saleh of attempting to grab Acholi land using a company called Divinity Union Ltd.

Gen Saleh had suggested that Acholi land could be turned into the food basket of Uganda. Under the proposal, IDP camps were reportedly supposed to be turned into ‘urban centers’ with the people restricted there and stopped from returning to their cultural heritage - the land.

“We are not even sure whether there is serious intention to grow sugarcane there in Amuru. You can’t say that you want 40,000 hectares in one district, there is no such estate in the entire African continent,” Mr. Okello-Okello says.

 

Gen Moses Ali, I advise you to go slow lest you die a miserable death like the Late Brig Peter Kerim, who had the misconception that he belonged to the inner circle of the NRA/NRM, the usual suspect brought him down after being used. Peter Kerim the son of west Nile was one of the first commanders in the bush during the struggle he fought from Masaka to North, its true he played a big role in bringing the regime to power but in the end the intrigue in the system ate him up to the extent that he had to beg for medical treatment from the people he brought to power.
They intentionally impoverished him with the tool called “katebe” for an extended time and he died a bitter man.

 

The people know there is a hidden agenda behind all this façade of land demarcation, game reserve and sugar cane industry. The people are demanding to resort to the coordinates in the 1962 Constitution as handed over by the former colonial master, the British.

Many residents on the disputed land believe the boundary is in the stream of River Zoka, which separates Adjumani and Amuru districts. They also believe that during the colonial era, the British used physical features to demarcate boundaries unlike the government approach of surveying the land and planting mark stones. To avoid a backlash and protracted conflict the government should have used civil society organization to perform serious civic duties on land matters. Instead they prefer a militaristic approach of solving community contests.

The unprecedented scramble for land in northern Uganda and subsequent threat of eviction of thousands of communities from their customary land that has increased in recent time’s calls for immediate redress before it’s too late to handle.

 

Land in the rural areas of Acholi is communally owned and not a single inch is vacant, it may not be under effective production for various reasons. Even before the war each clan had its own portion of land for grazing animals, hunting and crop production while other parts were left to fallow. Unfortunately, most of the elders who knew the clan land boundaries died in the IDP camps during the war and now some people are taking advantage of the situation to privately claim ownership of the land, which shall boomerang in future as the rightful owners may have children still growing up, either in displacement outside the country or in other parts of the country. It should be noted that Thousands of northern Uganda communities are still displaced and scattered across the globe and are aware of what they left behind.

It’s certainly not outrageous to say that Museveni has vested interested in trouble shooting land conflict in amongst communities that have lived side by side for ages, Museveni is architect of divide and rule and he has built his legacy entirely through deception and riding on people’s blood.
After 25 years of a brutal war in the North of Uganda instigated by NRM with a conspiracy to cleanse the chimpanzees off the fertile lands of the people of the north. But by God’s grace the population did not get wiped out through subjugation, massacre, displacement and incarceration we still survived.

 

However now when our people want to regain normality the regime seems vested in provoking us into their war agenda" Museveni and Saleh connection should not dream that the armed UPDF minorities cannot be out gunned by a popular revolt, their bogus confidence in militarism to justify keeping the people of north in perpetual slavery and begging culture. 

The war path they cherish will head us in another direction of moral, political and economic bankruptcy. The result from the previous war accounts for the present day astronomical number of poor, marginalized, disadvantaged, uneducated, and disconnected northerners.
Museveni and his cliques are in the innuendo that greater power and wealth will entrench them in leadership position at the expense of a country in decline, corrupted leadership, crumbling infrastructure, and suffering millions on their own, uncared for, unwanted, ignored, and forgotten.

 

I would like to remind my readers that a bullet fired cost $2 and that signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, because statistics shows that a bigger proportion of Ugandans survive in less than a dollar day.
The only sensible conclusion one arrives is questions: Is there a broad declaration to wipe some citizens into extinction by whatever mediaeval means?

 

Bottom line is for every action taken there is equal and opposite force in the case of the people of North we shall not any longer submit to fear, we shall organize and say ENOUGH is ENOUGH.
Power comes only through either CIVIL OR MILITARY ORGANISATION.