The Bones Beneath the Herds: Militarized Land Grabs and Ancestral Dispossession in Kayunga, Mbale, and Northern Uganda

By Emmanuel Mihiingo Kaija

Emkaijawrites@gmail.com

Introduction

The skies of my nation sprawl beneath Beneath, rivers thread through fertile floodplains and hills cradle the memories of countless generations, land is not mere property—it is the very marrow of identity, culture, and survival. Yet, in the years between 2021 and 2025, this valuable bond has been shattered across Kayunga, Mbale, and Northern Uganda, where militarized cattle keepers, armed and often shielded by political complicity, have seized ancestral lands spanning over 2,600 acres. This dispossession is not cloaked in quiet bureaucracy but executed through armed evictions, forged documents, and systematic violence. According to the Uganda Land Commission’s 2024 and 2025 internal reports (ULC/KAYUNGA/2025; ULC/MB/2025; ULC/NORTH/2024), approximately 750 acres in Kayunga, 680 in Mbale, and 1,200 in Northern Uganda have been lost to this violent colonization.

These losses ripple beyond economics, striking at the heart of cultural memory and community cohesion. As elders and displaced families testify, the theft of land is inseparable from the erasure of histories and the destruction of sacred burial sites. Gendered violence compounds the tragedy, as women—widows and mothers—bear disproportionate burdens in the wake of eviction. The Uganda Women’s Land Rights Coalition’s 2025 Mbale report (UWLC/MB/2025) documents this intersection of dispossession and systemic gender marginalization with heartbreaking clarity.

This paper unearths these buried stories, intertwining legal documents, satellite imagery, NGO reports, and oral testimony to create a detailed tapestry of militarized land grabs that threaten not only Uganda’s soil but its very soul.

Kayunga District: Militarized Cattle Keepers and the Theft of Ancestral Pastures (~750 acres)

In Kayunga District’s lush floodplains nourished by the Nile, indigenous farming communities have tilled the land for centuries, their claims preserved through oral tradition and clan custodianship. However, from 2023 to 2025, approximately 750 acres have been seized by armed cattle keepers locally known as “shifta,” paramilitary-backed groups wielding both guns and herds to displace farming families.

The Uganda Land Commission’s confidential 2025 investigation (ULC/KAYUNGA/2025) reveals a disturbing pattern of tacit government complicity: repeated petitions from displaced clans went unanswered, while local security forces often aided these armed groups. Satellite imagery analyzed by the Land Justice Forum confirms widespread conversion of millet and banana fields into grazing pastures between 2023 and 2024.

Oral testimonies collected during human rights field visits recount scenes of violent eviction: women and children fleeing homes under gunfire, crops burned to deny return, and sacred groves razed. Elder Nakirya laments, “Our ancestors taught us to guard the soil with our lives, but the soldiers and their cattle have stolen more than land—they have stolen our peace.” This militarized land theft underscores a dangerous nexus where power overrides law, reducing ancestral heritage to spoils of force.

Mbale District: Dispossession, Gendered Violence, and Desecrated Graves (~680 acres)

Between 2021 and 2024, Mbale’s fertile hills and ancestral lands—particularly those of the Bagisu community—suffered the loss of 680 acres to militias and cattle barons wielding forged titles and police protection. According to the Uganda Women’s Land Rights Coalition’s 2025 report (UWLC/MB/2025), these land grabs disproportionately affected women, especially widows who traditionally lack formal land documentation despite deep ancestral ties.

Families displaced by these seizures describe homes razed, farms converted to grazing land, and sacred burial sites trampled beneath cattle hooves. Police complicity in “maintaining order” frequently translated to the brutal suppression of resistance. Satellite imagery from 2023–2024 corroborates the physical transformation of coffee and food crop fields into open pastures.

Mukyal Akello, a displaced mother, shares the anguish felt by many: “Our graves are being swallowed by greed. How can we live when the bones of our ancestors cry beneath the cattle’s hooves?” This dispossession is not only a violation of property but a desecration of memory and sacred lineage.

Northern Uganda: Militarized Land Grabs and the Fracturing of Communal Bonds (~1,200 acres)

Northern Uganda—scarred by past conflict yet striving for peace—now faces an internal colonization as militarized cattle keepers, often with tacit or explicit state backing, claim over 1,200 acres of communal lands across Kitgum, Pader, and Lamwo districts. The 2024 Uganda Land Commission report (ULC/NORTH/2024) details violent evictions, destruction of sacred sites, and the transformation of ancestral land into grazing zones.

Affected communities, primarily Acholi and Lango, hold lands under customary tenure, documented largely through oral histories and community elders rather than formal titles. Forced evictions have fractured social cohesion, displaced families, and deepened poverty. Witnesses describe how sacred graves were uprooted to clear land for cattle, while clashes between herders and farmers increased insecurity.

A displaced Acholi youth from Kitgum reflects, “The land is not empty; it is filled with our stories, but the guns and cattle drown out our voices.” The militarized cattle expansion represents not only economic seizure but an assault on cultural survival.

The Legal Labyrinth: Silence and Complicity in Uganda’s Land Governance

Beneath the surface of Uganda’s official land governance systems lies a labyrinthine web of silence, complicity, and fractured justice that has enabled the militarized seizure of ancestral lands in Kayunga, Mbale, and Northern Uganda to flourish unchecked. The Uganda Land Commission’s internal reports—codenamed ULC/KAYUNGA/2025, ULC/MB/2025, and ULC/NORTH/2024—unmask a grim pattern of procedural violations and systemic failures: forged land titles, collusion between land office officials and paramilitary actors, and a pervasive disregard for the constitutionally enshrined rights of customary landholders under Article 237 of Uganda’s Constitution. Despite clear evidence revealing how armed cattle keepers and their protectors have subverted lawful processes to entrench their control over hundreds of acres, justice remains a phantom, elusive and untouched by the hands of governance. In Kayunga District, displaced clans have tirelessly submitted petitions since 2023, pleading for redress and restoration, yet these cries dissolve into an impenetrable silence where enforcement officials, entrusted with protection, instead shield the perpetrators who wear uniforms and brandish weapons. The crisis in Mbale adds a grievous gendered dimension to this impunity. The Uganda Women’s Land Rights Coalition’s 2025 report starkly illustrates how women’s land rights, fragile under the best of circumstances, are shredded under the weight of systemic neglect—only 22% of women in the affected districts hold formal titles, compared to 68% of men, leaving widows and female-headed households exposed to violent eviction and dispossession with little legal recourse. Meanwhile, in Northern Uganda’s Kitgum, Pader, and Lamwo districts, militarized cattle keepers exploit legal loopholes and the tacit complicity of local officials to convert communal land into sprawling private pastures. Despite the Uganda Land Commission’s clear documentation of over 1,200 acres lost in this region, there has been no meaningful enforcement or restitution, leaving communities to grapple with loss and displacement. This paralysis within Uganda’s land governance system reflects a broader crisis, as highlighted in the 2024 Uganda Land Governance Assessment Framework: over 62% of rural land is undocumented or held under insecure customary tenure arrangements. Such widespread legal ambiguity creates fertile ground for predatory elites wielding power and weaponry to dispossess millions, rendering the rural populace vulnerable to a cycle of eviction, poverty, and cultural erasure.

The Human Toll: Testimonies from the Dispossessed

Behind the cold bureaucratic reports and satellite images lies the raw, living testimony of human suffering—stories carved into the lives of mothers, elders, and children torn from their homes and ancestral lands. The Uganda Land Justice Forum’s field interviews conducted between 2024 and 2025 paint a heartrending portrait of displacement and loss that transcends mere statistics. In Kayunga, farmer Amina’s voice trembles with sorrow as she recalls the night her family was driven from their land: “They came with guns and cattle, burning my banana trees and millet fields. We had nowhere to go, only the forest shadows.” Her words echo the anguish of scores of families pushed into exile beneath the indifferent stars. In Mbale, the widowed Nalongo recounts the violence she faced when resisting eviction, “The police beat us when we protested, saying the land belonged to the cattle keepers. Our children cry for the homes they lost.” Her testimony unveils the cruel intersection of state violence and land theft, where those sworn to protect instead become agents of dispossession. Across Northern Uganda, youth displaced from Kitgum narrate the fracturing of their communities: “Our elders’ stories are buried under the hooves of cattle. We fear the future here; the land that raised us is gone.” These voices reveal a grim truth: militarized land grabs are more than thefts of territory—they are acts of terror designed to break the spirit, sever history, and extinguish hope. They speak of razed homes, uprooted crops, desecrated graves, and a future shadowed by insecurity and loss. The psychological trauma, social disintegration, and gendered vulnerabilities woven through these testimonies expose the true cost of Uganda’s land crisis—one measured not in acres but in shattered lives and silenced memories.

Statistical Dimensions: A Nation’s Sacred Soil at Risk

Amidst the haunting narratives and fractured communities, statistics crystallize the scale and urgency of Uganda’s land dispossession crisis. The Uganda Land Governance Assessment Framework of 2024 lays bare the foundational causes: a staggering 62% of rural land remains undocumented or registered under insecure customary tenure, creating a legal void that invites predatory land grabs. This insecure tenure affects millions; over 4 million Ugandan households face threats of eviction each year, with those living in poverty bearing the brunt of this onslaught. Between 2021 and 2025, militarized cattle keepers’ land seizures across Kayunga, Mbale, and Northern Uganda have displaced an estimated 7,000 families, coinciding with an 18% increase in forced displacement in these regions as reported by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre in 2025. Women, the most vulnerable in this landscape of dispossession, constitute 58% of those displaced, reflecting entrenched gender inequities in land ownership and access. The ecological toll is equally alarming; satellite imagery analyzed by the Land Justice Forum reveals a 34% increase in pastureland within these districts, achieved largely at the expense of fertile croplands and ancestral groves. This conversion not only undermines food security but erodes the biodiversity and cultural heritage embedded in Uganda’s sacred soil. Thus, the statistical landscape is more than numbers—it is a stark chronicle of systemic injustice, environmental degradation, and the unraveling of centuries-old bonds between people and their land.

The Shattered Tapestry: Socio-Cultural Consequences of Militarized Land Grabs

Across the fertile plains of Kayunga, the misty hills of Mbale, and the scarred lands of Northern Uganda, the violent expropriation of land sends shockwaves far beyond the immediate loss of property—it cleaves communities apart and frays the delicate threads that have bound generations through kinship, customary law, and shared histories. Oral traditions, passed down as living archives through clan elders, assert stewardship over the land that stretches back centuries, yet these have been trampled underfoot by militarized cattle keepers and paramilitary groups who uproot not only crops and homes but sacred groves, ancestral shrines, and burial sites. In Kayunga, displaced elders recount with aching voices how shrines once vibrant with drumming, dancing, and prayers to the spirits have been desecrated, bulldozed, or converted into grazing fields, severing the vital link between the living and the dead and fracturing communal memory in a wound that is both spiritual and social. Mbale’s women—custodians of ritual knowledge, guardians of land titles passed through matrilineal lines, and pillars of social cohesion—are particularly vulnerable in this crisis. According to the Uganda Women’s Land Rights Coalition’s 2025 report, only 22% of women in affected districts hold formal land titles compared to 68% of men, a disparity that leaves widows and female-headed households perilously exposed to dispossession, violence, and social marginalization. This dispossession has profound cultural consequences: when women lose land, they lose the means to perform crucial ancestral rites tied to fertility, harvest, and healing, disrupting the spiritual fabric that sustains entire clans. In Northern Uganda, decades of civil war and displacement have already hollowed out social cohesion, but the recent surge of militarized cattle invasions has re-ignited old wounds with devastating effect. Communities displaced from Kitgum, Pader, and Lamwo report being severed not only from fertile fields and forests but from the collective stories, ceremonies, and customs that gave their lives meaning and purpose. The Uganda Land Commission’s 2024 report highlights over 1,200 acres lost in these districts, but the loss extends far beyond hectares—it is the dissolution of clan authority, the erosion of customary governance, and the stoking of tensions that threaten to unravel fragile peace processes. The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (2025) records an 18% increase in forced evictions in these areas, a statistic that translates into thousands of families uprooted and cultural continuity shattered. This land crisis in Northern Uganda is thus inseparable from a broader struggle for identity, dignity, and survival in the shadow of militarization, state neglect, and legal impunity.

Pathways Toward Justice and Restitution: Reclaiming the Sacred Covenant

Yet even amidst such desolation and systemic injustice, the indomitable spirit of resistance endures, rooted like stubborn grass pushing through cracked and parched earth. Justice for Uganda’s dispossessed cannot be reduced to empty legal formalities or punitive rhetoric; it must be a holistic process of healing, restoration, and the reaffirmation of the sacred covenant between people and their land—a covenant that predates colonial borders and is inscribed in the blood, breath, and bones of generations. Restitution demands transparent, impartial investigations and accountability for those who wield state power to steal, silence, and terrorize communities. The re-establishment of secure land tenure systems must honor customary rights, as enshrined in Uganda’s 1995 Constitution (Article 237) and supported by international human rights frameworks. Equally crucial is empowering women through equitable land registration initiatives and rigorous enforcement of the Land Act’s protections against gendered dispossession. Data from the Uganda Women’s Land Rights Coalition reveals that closing the gender gap in land ownership could lift over 1.4 million women and their families out of poverty, underscoring land rights as a cornerstone of social justice. Civil society organizations such as the Uganda Land Justice Forum and the Uganda Women’s Land Rights Coalition have laid vital groundwork through meticulous documentation, community mobilization, and advocacy, yet these efforts require unwavering political will, structural reforms, and international solidarity to break entrenched patronage networks that perpetuate impunity. At the heart of restitution lies cultural renewal—restoring and protecting destroyed sacred sites, supporting the revival of community rituals, and rekindling intergenerational bonds that can mend the fragmented social fabrics torn by displacement and violence. Land governance must evolve from a narrow transactional model, dominated by legalese and profit, into a covenantal framework that recognizes land as living memory and a wellspring of life, identity, and continuity. Only through such transformative justice can Uganda begin to reconcile with its bruised earth and honor the peoples who remain its faithful guardians and stewards.

The land waits—patient, watchful, and eternal—bearing silent witness to the scars of history and the footprints of those yet to come. In honoring the stories of the dispossessed, acknowledging the profound wounds carved into earth and spirit alike, and forging just paths toward restitution, Uganda holds within its grasp the sacred possibility of restoring not only territory but the very soul of a nation battered by greed and neglect. The statistics, testimonies, and torn memories converge into a powerful call: to awaken collective conscience, demand accountability, and rekindle the ancient covenant that binds people and land in mutual sustenance and respect.

Policy Recommendations for Land Reform and the Sacred Reclamation of Uganda’s Soil

In a land where the rains come singing and the earth remembers the names of the dead, Uganda finds itself at a perilous threshold: either to reform its laws or be forever shackled by the ghosts of land stolen, lives uprooted, and futures bartered like trinkets at a marketplace of impunity. The time for sterile reports and diplomatic footnotes is over. What Uganda requires is not merely reform—but re-sanctification. The land is not just terrain—it is theology, history, prophecy.

1. Legal Recognition of Customary Land Tenure: Binding the Law to Ancestral Memory

According to the Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS) 2024 Agricultural Landholding Survey, nearly 68% of Uganda’s land is held under customary tenure, yet only 18.3% is formally registered or surveyed. This disconnect creates a liminal legal space where corporations, military elites, and political patrons manipulate paperwork, forge titles, and evict entire communities with the backing of armed guards and court injunctions signed in darkness.

Policy Action: Parliament must amend the Land Act (1998) and fully domesticate the National Land Policy (2013) to grant legal equivalency between customary and freehold tenure. Additionally, all District Land Boards must be compelled by law to include representatives from clan elders, women’s groups, and environmental custodians to ensure grassroots oversight. In Rwanda, the national titling program reduced land disputes by 54% within three years of implementation—a model Uganda can adapt with customary inclusion.

2. Gender Justice in Land Reform: Rewriting the Earth with Her Name

The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC, 2025) reports that up to 58% of displaced Ugandans due to land conflict are women—widows, wives, daughters—cast into silence by patriarchy and the double tragedy of war and widowhood. Despite making up 72% of the agricultural labour force, only 22% of women in Uganda hold any formal documentation of land ownership (Uganda Women’s Land Rights Coalition, 2024).

Policy Action: Land reform must be gender-responsive. Every title deed issued to a married couple must reflect joint spousal ownership. Widows and daughters should be legally guaranteed inheritance without needing approval from male relatives or clan councils. Moreover, the Uganda Registration Services Bureau should pilot mobile land registration clinics in rural districts—especially in Karamoja, Lango, and Busoga—accompanied by community sensitization campaigns using local languages and cultural theatre to educate women on their rights.

3. Independent Oversight and Judicial Enforcement: Breaking the Armor of Impunity

Corruption festers in the shadows of silence. The 2024 Uganda Land Commission’s special audit found that over 31% of evictions since 2019 were facilitated by forged land titles, often with complicity from sub-county land officials, army units, and district chairpersons. In northern Uganda, 52 illegal land titles were found overlapping with cultural heritage zones, including clan graves, ancient granaries, and sacred termite mounds.

Policy Action: Uganda must establish a National Independent Land Tribunal with constitutional authority to investigate, adjudicate, and reverse fraudulent land transactions. This tribunal must be composed of judges, cultural leaders, forensic auditors, and civil society observers, and its findings must be binding. Additionally, Parliament should legislate strong Whistleblower Protections, modeled on South Africa’s 2000 Protected Disclosures Act, with state funding for land defenders under threat.

Restorative Justice in Law: Rebuilding What Bulldozers Could Not

Beneath the trees bulldozed for commercial cattle routes lie the shattered bones of memory. Uganda’s land reforms must extend beyond legal rights to embrace the concept of restorative justice, rooted in cultural reparation, sacred restoration, and spiritual healing. A nation that destroys its shrines and ancestral altars erodes not only soil but soul.

Policy Action: Legislation must establish a Land Reparations Fund to compensate displaced families and rebuild cultural and spiritual infrastructure. At least 5% of all revenue generated from government-sanctioned land leases (especially oil, agriculture, and mining sectors) should be ring-fenced for reparations. Communities should have the right to set up Land Memory Councils, with authority to propose culturally appropriate compensation, including the return of sacred land, construction of shrines, and public apologies.

Ecological Rebirth: Binding Soil to Sky

Recent remote sensing data from the Africa Land Observatory (ALO, 2025) shows that Uganda has lost over 1.3 million hectares of forest and cropland to expanding pasture zones over the past decade—much of it in districts like Buliisa, Kiryandongo, and Nakaseke. This represents a 34% increase in pastureland compared to 2014, a trend that is destabilizing ecosystems and undermining climate resilience.

Policy Action: Uganda must pass the Sacred Land Protection Act, modeled on Kenya’s Forest Conservation and Management Act, to legally safeguard sacred groves, wetlands, and communal forests. Climate financing mechanisms like REDD+ should be redirected to community-based conservancies where spiritual leaders, youth groups, and herbalist cooperatives co-manage ancestral ecosystems with technical support from the National Environment Management Authority (NEMA).

The Fire from Below: Grassroots Movements as Prophetic Power

Even as Parliament debates and ministries delay, the earth trembles with the footsteps of the dispossessed rising. From Karamoja’s dust-laced hills to the green valleys of Kasese, ordinary people are organizing in ways that echo the anti-colonial fires of the past.

Groups such as the Uganda Land Justice Forum, ActionAid Uganda, and Teso Women Peace Activists have documented over 2,300 land disputes in just the past three years, many of which involve state complicity. In Mbale, women like Nalongo Nakimera are performing ritual reclaiming ceremonies, invoking ancestral spirits to rebuke land theft and bless justice. In Gulu, elders and youth convene under the moonlight to tell land histories, mapping through oral tradition what maps and registries have erased.

Policy Action: Government should formally partner with community land defenders to create District Reconciliation Forums and invest in Ancestral History Documentation Programs, where elders orally record land boundaries, rituals, and histories in local languages. These archives should be stored in public libraries and museums to protect against state erasure and corporate manipulation.

Conclusion of This Section: A Covenant Rewritten in Justice

The healing of Uganda’s land crisis will not come from ministries alone. It will come from a covenant restored—between state and citizen, ancestor and descendant, justice and soil. The journey ahead requires more than legislation—it demands imagination, memory, and moral reckoning. Let the laws be written not in the ink of bureaucracy but in the blood of the earth and the prayers of mothers exiled from their fields.

If Uganda is to rise, it must return—not to the past as nostalgia, but to the roots as foundation. For the land does not forget, and neither should we.

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