Madhvani Amuru out-growers scheme modern slavery no Acholi should support!
Madhvani Amuru out-growers scheme modern slavery no Acholi should support!
By Okello Lucima[1]
Why Onek is not collegial with Acholi MPs (APG)
I would like to comment on Hilary Onek's "Acholi MPs need to educate the public on land" (New Vision, 13 February 2008), which was a rejoinder to Mark Odongkara's letter; "Onek is Acholi first" (Sunday Monitor, 03 February 2008). The subjects of these exchanges and concerns is the squabbles over the Madhvani Amuru land saga and Onek's lack of interest in perceived threats to Acholi customary land from the state, those connected to the state, and the ruling National Resistance Movement / Army (NRM/A). This is noted in contrast to the active voices of his colleagues in the Acholi Parliamentary Group (APG), who have been on the battlefront in underlining the unjust and immoral imports of a "gold rush" for land in the Acholi region, ahead of a properly planned and managed disbandment of concentration camps and resettlement of the Acholi back to their original land.
While Onek admits the land question is a "fundamental" issue, he nonetheless characterises it as merely a matter of "political opinions" on "land politics". I would like to obstreperously disagree with his views. For those familiar with facts of the last elections, it is not difficult to understand why Onek's voice is silent among his colleagues from Acholi. The truth is that, unlike Onek, other members of the APG were elected by the Acholi people, and they are duty-bound to speak for their constituents. On the contrary, Onek was not elected by the people of Lamwo County in the 2006 elections; he was elected by National Resistance Army (NRA) / Uganda People's Defence Forces (UPDF) deployed in Operation Iron Fist in southern Sudan. These troops were re-deployed into Lamwo County; in Palabek Ogili, Palabek Gem, Agoro Potika, and Lokung Ngomoromo, between December and February 2006.
Before and after nominations and in the course of campaigns, it was clear that Onek was going down in defeat. Lamwo County being a border constituency, it was convenient to deploy Ugandan soldiers stationed across the border in southern Sudan, to salvage Onek's political fortunes. His "re-election" was therefore, not a choice of the Acholi people in Lamwo County, but a subversion of their will by Onek and the state. Understandably, his primary allegiance is rightly to president Museveni, and the army in Lamwo county and southern Sudan; constituencies that made it possible for him to return to parliament. It is complete balderdash, his claims that his politics is more cosmopolitan and that of other Acholi parliamentarians, parochial.
Acholi Land exists: It is Hilary Onek Acholi MPs need to educate on land.
Accordingly, Onek is one of a handful of NRM / A demagogues without credible political base in Acholi, who are amplifying Omara Atubo's nonsensical position that there is nothing such as "Acholi Land". For the benefit of Onek, Omara Atubo, Museveni and their cohorts, Acholi District, comprising the present Gulu, Amuru, Pader and Kitgum districts, was represented at the 1962 Independence Constitutional negotiations. Acholiland, today constituted by these four districts, has distinct landmarks and boundaries occupied by the Acholi people well before 1896; well before there was such a thing as a Ugandan identity. It covered a land mass of 15, 000 sq miles; stretching from 2 degrees 30 minutes to 4 degrees north Latitude; 31 degrees to 33 degrees West Longitude; and bounded by natural features of Albert Nile to the west; Victoria Nile to the south; Lolibai, Lomarati, Lotuturu and Agoro mountains to the north and just beyond Labwor and Orom mountains to the north east. This is Acholi land; it belongs to the Acholi people and they reserve the rights to determine land use policies. Neither a minister nor a president –and less so one who shot his way and imposed himself and a sham constitution devoid of the popular will-has any powers to dispossess Acholi of even an inch of this common inheritance and resource; held at once as private and common property by generations of Acholi here and now and posterity.
Given incontrovertible facts of history, geography, ethnology and elementary Uganda primary three civics, geography and history, who, between Onek and the APG, is misleading the people and deluding themselves? Instead of confronting the pertinent issues and credible public fears of the shameless destruction of established institutions in the name of investments; the impending Land Amendment Bill, especially 32 (a) and (b) that aim to derogate constitutional property rights guarantees and subordinate land and private property rights to the pleasures of corrupt ministers and ideologically bankrupt executive, Onek waves a useless, politically convenient constitution as a fig leaf to shield NRM/A ugly political nakedness and lull us to complacency. Although a cabinet minister, he seems unaware the very legal and constitutional protections he invokes are jeopardised by the current bill before parliament, which exposes customary land to the discretions of a political prostitute such as Omara Atubo, and open to speculations from those who benefited from the corrupt privatisation and divestiture of state assets and illegally amassed wealth. In any case, the constitution and the laws did not protect Kitgum government hospital land and public interests from Onek and his NRM cronies on the Kitgum district land board, when they illegally enclosed it for personal use (New Vision, 5 April 2007).
Preposterously, Onek dismisses any notion of "Acholi land". He insists that "there is no piece of land referred to as "Acholi land"." And yet he contradicts himself by acknowledging that "the constitution protects the land ownership system in Acholi (sic!) and nobody can grab it". Let us not be deceived that Onek does not know what he is talking about. He does understand the absurdity of the position he and other NRM /A hatchet men and women have been instructed to adopt. The NRM / A strategy is to divide and reduce Acholi into feuding clans in order to make it easier to manipulate and grab land in the region. This became a new strategy after Museveni and his errand boys in Acholi failed to surmount the popular, unassailable APG collective positions on land issues in Acholi under the distinguished and principled leadership of Hon. Okello Okello. The NRM /A proponents had hoped that by balkanising Acholi into small clannish enclaves, they would be able to isolate people like Okello Okello and Reagan Okumu, and manipulate, corrupt and deal with traditional chiefs and needy clan heads from the concentration camps. To their anguish, the Acholi are the wiser and have admirably acted collaboratively and in solidarity for a common purpose.
Market Economics or politics and corruption?
There is no doubting that, leaders who have dubious political bases such as Onek, will be patronised and used as instruments for diabolical agenda of their patrons to the detriment of the population they purport to represent. A case in point is Onek's support for the proposed Madhvani sugar project in Amuru District, and his characterising the Madhvani land overtures for a sugar industry in Amuru as "negotiations". Based on confidential memos, letters and other documents I have seen, there were three parties interested in establishing sugar industry in Amuru District. These were Kinyala Sugar Works, Madhvani and NileCan, a Canadian company. But the way the Madhvanis have emerged as the sole interest supported by the state, generates more questions than answers. Based on the facts of the proposals in the documents and behaviour of state officials, one cannot help but conclude that the Amuru land saga is more than market economics and far from genuine state interest in pursuing options that offer the best welfare for its citizen, but reek of politics, corruption, ministerial, presidential, and state connivance in defrauding the people of Amuru, Acholi and Uganda.
According to a confidential Madhvani report, item 6.5 states: "Since, there are other parties showing interest, it is suggested that we put forth our application immediately to the Minister of Lands & Minister of Agriculture (sic!) with a copy to LC 5 Chairman of Amuru (sic!), clearly indicating our group's interest to establish a sugar unit in this area. This will enable LC 5 Chairman to ward off (sic!) interests shown by other parties (sic!)." In 6.7, the document advises that "Government should be urged to give us the necessary security cover (sic!) to enable us acquire the land and start land preparation in earnest (sic!)."
My interest here is to introduce facts and evidence surrounding the Amuru land controversy that should vindicate the APG and vitiate Onek's intimations that their politics and positions on land rest on nothing but Acholi nationality provincialism. I will try to defend the assertion that, although Onek is an Acholi, and a member of parliament, notwithstanding his dubious "election", he is a less than honest public servant that cannot be relied upon as a moral compass and defender of the common good. Were this not true, as the substantive minister of agriculture, he should have rejected the Madhvani proposals for 40, 000 hectares of land in Amuru. Instead, Onek, Omara Atubo, the minister of lands, and the president, Yoweri Museveni have become Madhvani's strident, persistent and pestiferous salesmen. Yet based on the Madhvani and NileCan (Eco-Gestion International) documents- barring vested interests from state elements- economics of the proposals would dictate that NileCan should have been preferred over Madhvani for reasons elaborated below.
First, Madhvani wants 40, 000 ha to NileCan's 20, 000 ha of land to be put under permanent sugar cane mono-cropping. Second, NileCan has ready capital through Lonsdale Private Equity to finance its project right away. Conversely, Madhvani has no money to invest immediately in the project, but "will seek Government assistance to identify donor / development agency funding." The urgency and aggression with which Madhvani, Omara Atubo and Museveni are arm-twisting in pursuit of the Amuru land suggest that they want to acquire the land upfront and use it as collateral to borrow money to put into the Sugar project. Third, NileCan's project will produce 200, 000 metric tons of sugar per annum, from 20, 000 ha of nucleus estate, supplemented by independent out-growers. In contrast, Madhvani's proposal suggests 2, 500 tons of cane crushing capacity per day (TCD), from 40, 000 ha of land, of which 10, 000 ha will be leased to 1000 out-growers, who essentially become sharecroppers, no better than slaves indentured to Madhvani for a range of services and agricultural inputs deductible from sales of cane supplies at each crop cycle.
According to the project proposals, out-growers would be housed in labour camps, no less; each on 10ha of land, with 8 ha under sugar cane and 2 ha for food crops. Madhvani will supply equipment to clear, plough, harrow, and furrow the land as well as supply "treated cane seeds" and give technical advice on agricultural matters and cultivation. Out-grower households will plant; maintain crops, weed and harvest. Transporting their cane to the factory will be contracted to "third parties" who will be "guaranteed" payments. Additionally, out-growers will pay unspecified rents on the 10 ha of land, housing in the "out-growers villages" and meet "actual costs" for education and medical treatments. The plan estimates that average out-grower households will earn 340, 800 Uganda shillings net per month; which is contestable. It is common knowledge that some out-growers and Madhvani employees in Kakira do not even see their pay cheques because their economic relations are mediated by a vicious cycles of debt, owing to inflated prices of goods at company canteens, and high costs of professional and technical services that their meagre wages or cane sales cannot offset. There are employees who wish they could leave and find employment elsewhere, but are so indebted to the company, they must continue to work there as virtual captives.
Who are the shareholders in Amuru Sugar Complex?
Given the facts, Onek, Omara Atubo and Museveni have some explaining to do; why a less economically sound proposal, that takes twice the acreage of land, and one that does not have financial wherewithal but hopes to scrounge on the state, should attract such vigorous support from the state and its agents, than its more economically sound private, equity financed competitor. Moreover, the Canadian proposal calls for partnership with local private capital; while Mahvani project does not, at least officially. Consequently, many unanswered questions feed tantalisingly irresistible, yet unverified whispers within Uganda business and political circles that, a Museveni family member has 40% stake in the proposed Madhvani Amuru Sugar Complex. At the same time, there is an uncanny similarity between the Madhvani proposals and Salim Slaeh's (Museveni's brother's) earlier Security and Production Programme (SPP) for turning the death camps in Acholi into towns as a strategy of opening up the countryside to commercial agriculture and industrial development. Curiously, the proposal, like Madhvani's, floated the idea of giving each Acholi family 2 acres of land to grow specific food crops, none of which were Acholi staples. There does not seem to be any substantive conceptual differences between the Madhvani and Salim Saleh proposal, if one disregards the quantitative difference between acre and hectare, and ignore the 8 ha, out-grower families have to plant with sugar cane. In both cases, the policy outcomes (1) displace from and dispossess Acholi of their land , and (2) turn Acholi into wage labourers dependent on the vagaries of the market for their basic needs-food and shelter.
As the evidence show, it is ideologically bankrupt and intellectually dishonest leaders like Onek, rather than the APG, who are misleading the people. There are credible grounds surrounding land rights and access in Acholi that make the APG's circumspect position on land matters in Acholi defensible. Such vigilance is necessitated by the critical importance of land to the livelihoods of the majority of our people whose very existence is still closely tied to land. The Acholi thinking on land is that, it is a mother; a mother to the orphan; to the poor; to the widowed; to the weak and old. It is the quintessential Gaia thought. To underscore this, I will paraphrase in the present context a song the Acholi sang at the turn of the 20th century:
Abiro (Museveni) ooro Onek
Onek mito cato lobo
Abiro ooro Atubo
Atubo mito cato lobo
In ici cat meni ka cate
Iyee-ee-ee
NRM yee, NRM kara lutal
Abiro ooro Onek.
The translation is that, Onek and Atubo are errand boys for M7 to mortgage Acholi land. And that one should contemplate selling one's mothers if mothers are commodities; and for merely contemplating selling land which is a mother, these NRM demagogues have confirmed well-founded suspicions that they are wizards.
When the Acholi say lacan kwo ki lwete, ie the poor subsists by their own fingers, the axiom cannot be understood outside the context of land; particularly when we reflect on the challenges facing inmates of death camps in transitioning from dependence on international charity to self-reliance and settled living in relative peace in the months ahead. The challenges will not be unlike freed slaves in the United States the morning after the abolition of slavery. Introspection for any Acholi citizen and leader is particularly necessary at a time when the state does not seem willing assume its constitutional and classical responsibility to bat for people it drove out of their homes into the death camps. The state and government have maintained the same callous view that they affected when they gave Acholi populace 48 hours to abandon their homes and move into camps without provisioning; now the attitude is to neither do anything nor say anything or take responsibility to facilitate resettlement of people back to their original land. Such irresponsibility is complemented by sinister patterns of actions, policies, legislations, verbal attacks and death threats against authentic Acholi leaders, which combine to prevent or undermine return or alter land rights and access for impoverished population in the camps. It is rejection and resistance by conscientious Acholi leaders to such state and international capital manoeuvres and manipulations that Onek dismisses as waging "a tribal war".
In our tempered view, for the present and immediate future, the key prospect for people in Acholi holding onto their lives will be their ability to access land and grow their own food for basic subsistence. Once they are (re)settled, they can then be able to participate in processes of determining, prioritising, what kinds of socio-economic development should take what proportions of their land acreages. This is the realistic, democratic position the APG advocates, but with which, Onek, Museveni , local and national NRM / A establishments disagree. There is simply no moral, economic and practical rationale for which the Acholi can be expected to donate their land to the Madhvani or any other investor, for such commercial and profit-driven outfits to turn around and lease it back to the Acholi out-growers, who own the land in the first place.
In conclusion, if we go by state equivocations over Amuru land and the Madhvani proposal is a model development and strategy the state plugs as a responsive solution to incidence of poverty and underdevelopment in northern Uganda, the APG is vindicated. APG insistence that no such expansive land alienation be undertaken in Acholi until all the displaced people have resettled to their original land, must be upheld. Moreover, there should be no deviation from the APG position that, any such large-scale investments, rather than benefiting from arbitrary state land expropriation, should only be entertained in Acholi on condition that land as capital input will be factored as equity investments in the particular business on behalf of the communal land owners. And Acholi diaspora communities in Europe, North America and Eurasia, as stakeholders, should be tasked with vigilance and litigating any commercial entity in countries of their citizenship that colludes with the state to arbitrarily derogate private property rights in Acholiland.
Finally, Hilary Onek's contention that his disagreement with his APG colleagues is a matter of principles and progressive politics, is found wanting. Based on the evidence, if anyone is playing politics with the lives of people and are less than honest on the question of national land policy and land conflicts in Acholi, it is Hilary Onek. Fortunately, he does not speak for the majority in Lamwo County, and less so Amuru or Acholi; therefore, he should be ignored.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] Okello Lucima is a graduate of Makerere (Kampala) and York (Toronto) Universities. He is a consultant on development, environment and governance issues. He is currently engaged in researching Outcomes of Decentralisation Under Institutionalised Personal Rule in Uganda, 1986/93-2008.
By Okello Lucima[1]
Why Onek is not collegial with Acholi MPs (APG)
I would like to comment on Hilary Onek's "Acholi MPs need to educate the public on land" (New Vision, 13 February 2008), which was a rejoinder to Mark Odongkara's letter; "Onek is Acholi first" (Sunday Monitor, 03 February 2008). The subjects of these exchanges and concerns is the squabbles over the Madhvani Amuru land saga and Onek's lack of interest in perceived threats to Acholi customary land from the state, those connected to the state, and the ruling National Resistance Movement / Army (NRM/A). This is noted in contrast to the active voices of his colleagues in the Acholi Parliamentary Group (APG), who have been on the battlefront in underlining the unjust and immoral imports of a "gold rush" for land in the Acholi region, ahead of a properly planned and managed disbandment of concentration camps and resettlement of the Acholi back to their original land.
While Onek admits the land question is a "fundamental" issue, he nonetheless characterises it as merely a matter of "political opinions" on "land politics". I would like to obstreperously disagree with his views. For those familiar with facts of the last elections, it is not difficult to understand why Onek's voice is silent among his colleagues from Acholi. The truth is that, unlike Onek, other members of the APG were elected by the Acholi people, and they are duty-bound to speak for their constituents. On the contrary, Onek was not elected by the people of Lamwo County in the 2006 elections; he was elected by National Resistance Army (NRA) / Uganda People's Defence Forces (UPDF) deployed in Operation Iron Fist in southern Sudan. These troops were re-deployed into Lamwo County; in Palabek Ogili, Palabek Gem, Agoro Potika, and Lokung Ngomoromo, between December and February 2006.
Before and after nominations and in the course of campaigns, it was clear that Onek was going down in defeat. Lamwo County being a border constituency, it was convenient to deploy Ugandan soldiers stationed across the border in southern Sudan, to salvage Onek's political fortunes. His "re-election" was therefore, not a choice of the Acholi people in Lamwo County, but a subversion of their will by Onek and the state. Understandably, his primary allegiance is rightly to president Museveni, and the army in Lamwo county and southern Sudan; constituencies that made it possible for him to return to parliament. It is complete balderdash, his claims that his politics is more cosmopolitan and that of other Acholi parliamentarians, parochial.
Acholi Land exists: It is Hilary Onek Acholi MPs need to educate on land.
Accordingly, Onek is one of a handful of NRM / A demagogues without credible political base in Acholi, who are amplifying Omara Atubo's nonsensical position that there is nothing such as "Acholi Land". For the benefit of Onek, Omara Atubo, Museveni and their cohorts, Acholi District, comprising the present Gulu, Amuru, Pader and Kitgum districts, was represented at the 1962 Independence Constitutional negotiations. Acholiland, today constituted by these four districts, has distinct landmarks and boundaries occupied by the Acholi people well before 1896; well before there was such a thing as a Ugandan identity. It covered a land mass of 15, 000 sq miles; stretching from 2 degrees 30 minutes to 4 degrees north Latitude; 31 degrees to 33 degrees West Longitude; and bounded by natural features of Albert Nile to the west; Victoria Nile to the south; Lolibai, Lomarati, Lotuturu and Agoro mountains to the north and just beyond Labwor and Orom mountains to the north east. This is Acholi land; it belongs to the Acholi people and they reserve the rights to determine land use policies. Neither a minister nor a president –and less so one who shot his way and imposed himself and a sham constitution devoid of the popular will-has any powers to dispossess Acholi of even an inch of this common inheritance and resource; held at once as private and common property by generations of Acholi here and now and posterity.
Given incontrovertible facts of history, geography, ethnology and elementary Uganda primary three civics, geography and history, who, between Onek and the APG, is misleading the people and deluding themselves? Instead of confronting the pertinent issues and credible public fears of the shameless destruction of established institutions in the name of investments; the impending Land Amendment Bill, especially 32 (a) and (b) that aim to derogate constitutional property rights guarantees and subordinate land and private property rights to the pleasures of corrupt ministers and ideologically bankrupt executive, Onek waves a useless, politically convenient constitution as a fig leaf to shield NRM/A ugly political nakedness and lull us to complacency. Although a cabinet minister, he seems unaware the very legal and constitutional protections he invokes are jeopardised by the current bill before parliament, which exposes customary land to the discretions of a political prostitute such as Omara Atubo, and open to speculations from those who benefited from the corrupt privatisation and divestiture of state assets and illegally amassed wealth. In any case, the constitution and the laws did not protect Kitgum government hospital land and public interests from Onek and his NRM cronies on the Kitgum district land board, when they illegally enclosed it for personal use (New Vision, 5 April 2007).
Preposterously, Onek dismisses any notion of "Acholi land". He insists that "there is no piece of land referred to as "Acholi land"." And yet he contradicts himself by acknowledging that "the constitution protects the land ownership system in Acholi (sic!) and nobody can grab it". Let us not be deceived that Onek does not know what he is talking about. He does understand the absurdity of the position he and other NRM /A hatchet men and women have been instructed to adopt. The NRM / A strategy is to divide and reduce Acholi into feuding clans in order to make it easier to manipulate and grab land in the region. This became a new strategy after Museveni and his errand boys in Acholi failed to surmount the popular, unassailable APG collective positions on land issues in Acholi under the distinguished and principled leadership of Hon. Okello Okello. The NRM /A proponents had hoped that by balkanising Acholi into small clannish enclaves, they would be able to isolate people like Okello Okello and Reagan Okumu, and manipulate, corrupt and deal with traditional chiefs and needy clan heads from the concentration camps. To their anguish, the Acholi are the wiser and have admirably acted collaboratively and in solidarity for a common purpose.
Market Economics or politics and corruption?
There is no doubting that, leaders who have dubious political bases such as Onek, will be patronised and used as instruments for diabolical agenda of their patrons to the detriment of the population they purport to represent. A case in point is Onek's support for the proposed Madhvani sugar project in Amuru District, and his characterising the Madhvani land overtures for a sugar industry in Amuru as "negotiations". Based on confidential memos, letters and other documents I have seen, there were three parties interested in establishing sugar industry in Amuru District. These were Kinyala Sugar Works, Madhvani and NileCan, a Canadian company. But the way the Madhvanis have emerged as the sole interest supported by the state, generates more questions than answers. Based on the facts of the proposals in the documents and behaviour of state officials, one cannot help but conclude that the Amuru land saga is more than market economics and far from genuine state interest in pursuing options that offer the best welfare for its citizen, but reek of politics, corruption, ministerial, presidential, and state connivance in defrauding the people of Amuru, Acholi and Uganda.
According to a confidential Madhvani report, item 6.5 states: "Since, there are other parties showing interest, it is suggested that we put forth our application immediately to the Minister of Lands & Minister of Agriculture (sic!) with a copy to LC 5 Chairman of Amuru (sic!), clearly indicating our group's interest to establish a sugar unit in this area. This will enable LC 5 Chairman to ward off (sic!) interests shown by other parties (sic!)." In 6.7, the document advises that "Government should be urged to give us the necessary security cover (sic!) to enable us acquire the land and start land preparation in earnest (sic!)."
My interest here is to introduce facts and evidence surrounding the Amuru land controversy that should vindicate the APG and vitiate Onek's intimations that their politics and positions on land rest on nothing but Acholi nationality provincialism. I will try to defend the assertion that, although Onek is an Acholi, and a member of parliament, notwithstanding his dubious "election", he is a less than honest public servant that cannot be relied upon as a moral compass and defender of the common good. Were this not true, as the substantive minister of agriculture, he should have rejected the Madhvani proposals for 40, 000 hectares of land in Amuru. Instead, Onek, Omara Atubo, the minister of lands, and the president, Yoweri Museveni have become Madhvani's strident, persistent and pestiferous salesmen. Yet based on the Madhvani and NileCan (Eco-Gestion International) documents- barring vested interests from state elements- economics of the proposals would dictate that NileCan should have been preferred over Madhvani for reasons elaborated below.
First, Madhvani wants 40, 000 ha to NileCan's 20, 000 ha of land to be put under permanent sugar cane mono-cropping. Second, NileCan has ready capital through Lonsdale Private Equity to finance its project right away. Conversely, Madhvani has no money to invest immediately in the project, but "will seek Government assistance to identify donor / development agency funding." The urgency and aggression with which Madhvani, Omara Atubo and Museveni are arm-twisting in pursuit of the Amuru land suggest that they want to acquire the land upfront and use it as collateral to borrow money to put into the Sugar project. Third, NileCan's project will produce 200, 000 metric tons of sugar per annum, from 20, 000 ha of nucleus estate, supplemented by independent out-growers. In contrast, Madhvani's proposal suggests 2, 500 tons of cane crushing capacity per day (TCD), from 40, 000 ha of land, of which 10, 000 ha will be leased to 1000 out-growers, who essentially become sharecroppers, no better than slaves indentured to Madhvani for a range of services and agricultural inputs deductible from sales of cane supplies at each crop cycle.
According to the project proposals, out-growers would be housed in labour camps, no less; each on 10ha of land, with 8 ha under sugar cane and 2 ha for food crops. Madhvani will supply equipment to clear, plough, harrow, and furrow the land as well as supply "treated cane seeds" and give technical advice on agricultural matters and cultivation. Out-grower households will plant; maintain crops, weed and harvest. Transporting their cane to the factory will be contracted to "third parties" who will be "guaranteed" payments. Additionally, out-growers will pay unspecified rents on the 10 ha of land, housing in the "out-growers villages" and meet "actual costs" for education and medical treatments. The plan estimates that average out-grower households will earn 340, 800 Uganda shillings net per month; which is contestable. It is common knowledge that some out-growers and Madhvani employees in Kakira do not even see their pay cheques because their economic relations are mediated by a vicious cycles of debt, owing to inflated prices of goods at company canteens, and high costs of professional and technical services that their meagre wages or cane sales cannot offset. There are employees who wish they could leave and find employment elsewhere, but are so indebted to the company, they must continue to work there as virtual captives.
Who are the shareholders in Amuru Sugar Complex?
Given the facts, Onek, Omara Atubo and Museveni have some explaining to do; why a less economically sound proposal, that takes twice the acreage of land, and one that does not have financial wherewithal but hopes to scrounge on the state, should attract such vigorous support from the state and its agents, than its more economically sound private, equity financed competitor. Moreover, the Canadian proposal calls for partnership with local private capital; while Mahvani project does not, at least officially. Consequently, many unanswered questions feed tantalisingly irresistible, yet unverified whispers within Uganda business and political circles that, a Museveni family member has 40% stake in the proposed Madhvani Amuru Sugar Complex. At the same time, there is an uncanny similarity between the Madhvani proposals and Salim Slaeh's (Museveni's brother's) earlier Security and Production Programme (SPP) for turning the death camps in Acholi into towns as a strategy of opening up the countryside to commercial agriculture and industrial development. Curiously, the proposal, like Madhvani's, floated the idea of giving each Acholi family 2 acres of land to grow specific food crops, none of which were Acholi staples. There does not seem to be any substantive conceptual differences between the Madhvani and Salim Saleh proposal, if one disregards the quantitative difference between acre and hectare, and ignore the 8 ha, out-grower families have to plant with sugar cane. In both cases, the policy outcomes (1) displace from and dispossess Acholi of their land , and (2) turn Acholi into wage labourers dependent on the vagaries of the market for their basic needs-food and shelter.
As the evidence show, it is ideologically bankrupt and intellectually dishonest leaders like Onek, rather than the APG, who are misleading the people. There are credible grounds surrounding land rights and access in Acholi that make the APG's circumspect position on land matters in Acholi defensible. Such vigilance is necessitated by the critical importance of land to the livelihoods of the majority of our people whose very existence is still closely tied to land. The Acholi thinking on land is that, it is a mother; a mother to the orphan; to the poor; to the widowed; to the weak and old. It is the quintessential Gaia thought. To underscore this, I will paraphrase in the present context a song the Acholi sang at the turn of the 20th century:
Abiro (Museveni) ooro Onek
Onek mito cato lobo
Abiro ooro Atubo
Atubo mito cato lobo
In ici cat meni ka cate
Iyee-ee-ee
NRM yee, NRM kara lutal
Abiro ooro Onek.
The translation is that, Onek and Atubo are errand boys for M7 to mortgage Acholi land. And that one should contemplate selling one's mothers if mothers are commodities; and for merely contemplating selling land which is a mother, these NRM demagogues have confirmed well-founded suspicions that they are wizards.
When the Acholi say lacan kwo ki lwete, ie the poor subsists by their own fingers, the axiom cannot be understood outside the context of land; particularly when we reflect on the challenges facing inmates of death camps in transitioning from dependence on international charity to self-reliance and settled living in relative peace in the months ahead. The challenges will not be unlike freed slaves in the United States the morning after the abolition of slavery. Introspection for any Acholi citizen and leader is particularly necessary at a time when the state does not seem willing assume its constitutional and classical responsibility to bat for people it drove out of their homes into the death camps. The state and government have maintained the same callous view that they affected when they gave Acholi populace 48 hours to abandon their homes and move into camps without provisioning; now the attitude is to neither do anything nor say anything or take responsibility to facilitate resettlement of people back to their original land. Such irresponsibility is complemented by sinister patterns of actions, policies, legislations, verbal attacks and death threats against authentic Acholi leaders, which combine to prevent or undermine return or alter land rights and access for impoverished population in the camps. It is rejection and resistance by conscientious Acholi leaders to such state and international capital manoeuvres and manipulations that Onek dismisses as waging "a tribal war".
In our tempered view, for the present and immediate future, the key prospect for people in Acholi holding onto their lives will be their ability to access land and grow their own food for basic subsistence. Once they are (re)settled, they can then be able to participate in processes of determining, prioritising, what kinds of socio-economic development should take what proportions of their land acreages. This is the realistic, democratic position the APG advocates, but with which, Onek, Museveni , local and national NRM / A establishments disagree. There is simply no moral, economic and practical rationale for which the Acholi can be expected to donate their land to the Madhvani or any other investor, for such commercial and profit-driven outfits to turn around and lease it back to the Acholi out-growers, who own the land in the first place.
In conclusion, if we go by state equivocations over Amuru land and the Madhvani proposal is a model development and strategy the state plugs as a responsive solution to incidence of poverty and underdevelopment in northern Uganda, the APG is vindicated. APG insistence that no such expansive land alienation be undertaken in Acholi until all the displaced people have resettled to their original land, must be upheld. Moreover, there should be no deviation from the APG position that, any such large-scale investments, rather than benefiting from arbitrary state land expropriation, should only be entertained in Acholi on condition that land as capital input will be factored as equity investments in the particular business on behalf of the communal land owners. And Acholi diaspora communities in Europe, North America and Eurasia, as stakeholders, should be tasked with vigilance and litigating any commercial entity in countries of their citizenship that colludes with the state to arbitrarily derogate private property rights in Acholiland.
Finally, Hilary Onek's contention that his disagreement with his APG colleagues is a matter of principles and progressive politics, is found wanting. Based on the evidence, if anyone is playing politics with the lives of people and are less than honest on the question of national land policy and land conflicts in Acholi, it is Hilary Onek. Fortunately, he does not speak for the majority in Lamwo County, and less so Amuru or Acholi; therefore, he should be ignored.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] Okello Lucima is a graduate of Makerere (Kampala) and York (Toronto) Universities. He is a consultant on development, environment and governance issues. He is currently engaged in researching Outcomes of Decentralisation Under Institutionalised Personal Rule in Uganda, 1986/93-2008.
Comments