By Robert Atuhairwe
President Yoweri Museveni’s Women’s Day 2023 message advocating against property fragmentation after the head of a family dies, through the collective use of family wealth to maximise profits is spot-on. This was in his home district of Kiruhura in Sanga last Wednesday where he called on Ugandans to stop making excuses as it is possible to get out of poverty.
I also look back to the President’s press statement issued on Wednesday, January 11, 2023, titled “A FORMULA FOR CREATING LASTING FAMILY WEALTH.” In either case, his concept is very simple and does not require a lot of input or special legal backup. Hopefully, the people were listening!
In the January 11 statement, the President addressed himself to “destructive inheritance practices”, wherein he lambasted the “blindness” of fragmenting family wealth (kuchwanyagura). On page 9, he stated: “The locusts, in the form of children, descend on the family wealth and make it disappear. ‘I want my share, I want my share’, they clamor, only to get their small portions and sell them. Even if the inheritors did not sell their portions, a small property, e.g. land, cannot do what the big one can do. Over-fragmented land becomes LWD (Land With Disability)”.
In Bushenyi, I have quickly realised that land fragmentation is a real danger to war against poverty. In my various outreaches to settle family disputes arising out of disagreements among families, I have found the single most common factor causing conflict among members of the same families is fights over the inheritance. Blame this is on population pressure on land but the bigger problem is successive generations failing to expand the family fortune and turning on what existed before they were born and chopping it up into “nonentities”, virtually scattering their ancestry. Every time I have to work through a family fighting over land, I realise how important it is that we pay attention to the family as an economic unit.
I have never been invited anywhere to preside over a functioning or successful family business; instead, I am nearly overwhelmed, together with my Deputy, with emergency calls to intervene in disputes which if we didn’t come on board, would very easily see bloodshed. Where did our people go wrong?
What is happening on the ground in Bushenyi is perturbing. We need to work towards reversing the situation with urgency.
In some places, when family land is subdivided (and demarcations-emigor’ra-are set), the strips of land each child retains are useless for any profitable economic activity you could think of that could get someone out of poverty. In one case I handled in Nyabubare Sub-County in November last year, 13 siblings were wrangling over their deceased father’s land. A section were opposed to the heir and wanted to get rid of him, whichever way. It was their uncle who petitioned my office, asking that I intervene to prevent bloodshed. I scheduled a meeting and headed there together with LC leaders.
In the discussions, we determined that these siblings could not cooperate and live or work together-their differences were deep-seated. The land in contention had to be subdivided. Of course, I first reminded them of the “crime” of fragmenting land. Nevertheless, I went ahead and presided over subdividing it equally among them all. You should have been there to see what each one got. You can’t build anything thing there-not even a rabbit coop. I presided over the “mutilation” to make everyone see the shortsightedness of fighting among themselves instead of working together to make their late father’s land productive, and expand it.
“Microfragmentation” is a major problem in many districts and it can be blamed for much of the poverty disturbing our people. They come from a background of divisionism yet at communal level we are urging people to form and join SACCOs. The first SACCO one ought to join should be a family SACCO.
Families will not prosper unless members adopt the President’s advice of not physically subdividing their inheritance but owning it collectively through equal shareholding. As RDCs, we have a lot of work here to change the mindset of our people. Families have no choice but to put aside unnecessary fights and build family ventures by pooling resources and investing on the free land that parents and grandparents left for them. The
The overall aim should be to make their own wealth instead of putting their sights on the inheritance, thereby looking at still living parents as a burden and siblings as rivals. It is common now to be called to moderate children pressuring their parents for their share, and when they get it, they sell it off and before long, they are on zero, then they join criminality to survive. The “experiment” of mbegyeraho akangye (serve me my portion) has failed!
“Creating lasting family wealth” will require undertaking a special programme to orient families in the culture of working together (like the Indians), seeing their numbers as a resource. It is possible to create intergenerational wealth because, besides land- based projects, many of the children who have gone to school and acquired skills and are working (employed or self-employed) can simply cede space for those who are not lucky to have alternative sources of income.
In the era of Parish Development Model (PDM), microfragmentation is a big danger that risks the programme’s success if participants find that the space they arranged to use to expand their ventures is not available.
The author is the Resident District Commissioner (RDC), Bushenyi
Email: atuhairwe_robert@yahoo.com
0772468064
