What if Acholi herdsmen tried to graze in the pasture of Lyantonde?

With this in mind, it is unfair to stop Ugandans from settling in other parts of the country simply because their carry-on luggage happens to be large herds of long-horned cattle. But there is more to this story, which makes it complicated.

To understand the normative logic of nomadic pastoralism, consider that the cattle corridor stretches from the Horn of Africa, through the heart of Uganda to the southern reaches of the continent. Communities living in this belt moved back and forth over the centuries in search of water and pasture, and to escape disease.

Staying within this ‘corridor’ prevented animal-eating-crop conflicts with agrarian societies in the more fertile areas abutting it, and on whom the cattle keepers depended to exchange their milk and animal products for food and other items.

Conflicts within the cattle corridor were inevitable but were localised within the natural boundaries provided by lakes, rivers, and swamps. The land itself was only as good as the food and water it provided and these cattle-keeping communities generally co-existed peacefully – and continue to do so in many parts of the country and the cattle corridor.

It is not hard to see why refusing other communities to graze or water their animals in ‘your’ area would trigger retaliation when fortunes turned and you had drought while they had plenty. And if the animals, on which other cattle-keeping communities depended, died while you still had large healthy herds, they would inevitably find a way to relieve you of some, if not all of them. Greed and the primitive accumulation of animals and fertile lands is an ever-present risk, but one invariably settled by time and the tides of fortune. The need to share grazing lands, within and across tribes, was the reason land was, in most cases, owned communally.

This began to change with the colonial-era policy of creating public ranches on what were previously communal grazing lands within the cattle corridor. This was to address the problem of nomadic pastoralism which is inherently inefficient and unsustainable given that land is finite and population growth isn’t. These ranches later passed into private hands, many of them with historical links to the areas, and some of whom have built decent paddocked dairy farms on them.

The insurgency in northern Uganda that ran until 2006 delayed this privatisation of public ranches in that part of the country. It also forced millions of people in northern Uganda off their land and into internal displacement camps where the seeds of fear of land-grabbing were sown.

To some, post-insurgency developments have provided fertile soil for these seeds. When it came to discussing the fate of public ranches in the north, they were not offered to private hands with historical links to the areas, but to state agencies like the Prisons, the Army, NRA veterans and, notably, to ‘large-scale farmers’ to grow crops.

In addition, large chunks of communally owned land outside these ranches have since passed into the private hands of notable members of the northern political and military elite. Some made these transfers ostensibly on behalf of and to preserve the interest of less literate and financially able community members. And some of the large commercial farms sprouting across the region show the potential of leadership unlocking dead capital. But public goods, once sold into powerful private hands, cannot be returned.

Even where community members have consented to the selling or leasing of their land, the mismatch in capacity between buyers and sellers is often stark. A nomadic pastoralist was quoted in this newspaper not too long ago as having paid Shs300 million for a tract of grazing land in Acholi. It was an insight into the kind of cash involved even by little-known individual punters, and the temptation it must provide to poverty-stricken landowners unsure of the next meal.It might explain why some herdsmen graze their animals with assault rifles slung over their shoulders; you don’t bring a grazing stick to a possible gunfight over Shs300m in some far-flung savannah. But images of gun-toting cowboys only cement the power imbalance and feed deep suspicions among community members about the fate of their only valuable possession – their land.

Today land is worth much more than the pasture that grows on it. It is valuable for the many other things that can be grown on it, the things that lie beneath it, as a store of present value, and as a multiplier of that value in years to come.

Land ownership is ultimately political. As a depository of culture and ancestry, land is foundational to identity and belonging. When the Kabaka of Buganda or the Omusinga of Rwenzururu are stopped from visiting parts of their kingdom or when Bakiga settlers are ‘othered’ in parts of Bunyoro, it triggers a need to reclaim and repossess the ‘homelands’ that we bring to the table of what we call Uganda.

The problem, ultimately, isn’t that balaalo from the south are trying to graze their animals in parts of northern Uganda. It is that you do not have balaalo from northern Uganda trying to graze their animals in the south. Once Acholi or Karimojong herdsmen start buying grazing land in Lyantonde to build ranches we will well be on our way to fixing the problem.

Mr Kalinaki is a journalist and  poor man’s freedom fighter. 
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@Kalinaki