By Mulengera Reporters
Its official Hope Pearl Investments Ltd wants Bobi Wine and 400 other residents out of the Kamwokya land they currently occupy. In their 11th March letter, the Company lawyers gave Bobi & co just 7 days to vacate or risk violent eviction. At stake for Bobi is the Ssemakokiro Plaza which houses his music studios & his other business. Bobi & others are Kibanja holders and the real registered land owner is Pearl Hope Investments having acquired the same from its predecessors (Musa Musisi, Joseph Kagumba & Samuel Kasoma) in title. In early 2000s, Mr. Wine bought from another Kibanja holder called Gladys Nanyonga. Measuring 26 acres, the land is particularized as Block 213 Plots 20-78. It covers the three ghetto zones of Mulimira, Kisenyi and Old Kira Road. Mr. Wine is increasingly getting frightened at the prospect of losing his prime business because buying out himself will require parting with billions of shillings which he doesn’t readily have. The area LC1 Chairman Kabuye Sebatta too realizes hundreds of his residents risk eviction and resultant homelessness because the monies Pearl Hope Investment wants is way beyond their means. Sebatta has now resorted to calling on President Museveni to come to the area and announce generous financial package to bail out his poor residents who risk being evicted anytime soon. “We here of the Land Fund which our dear President created in the Ministry of Lands. We are on our knees begging the President to help us access that Fund so that governmemt pays the Landlord on our behalf so that we continue living in peace,” says Sebatta adding that the formal petition to the President (calling on him for help) will be drafted and agreed upon during a village community that has been organized this week. Sebatta says whereas, there are more than 400 families living on the land now, so far only 222 are verified and confirmed to be properly living on the land. He says if the President is to hear their cry and help them through the Land Fund, there will be fresh verification exercise to weed out sham occupants whose status has never been verified. Given the 2021 election-related political dividends associated with getting involved, Museveni will most likely extend his phillanthropist hand because the Kamwokya dispute gives him an opportunity to further isolate Bobi Wine by creating a wedge between him and fellow residents who clearly risk homelessness. The Land Fund has previously been used by governmemt to pay off Landlords in return for the would-be homeless occupants to continue living on the land. For that is why the Fund was created in the first place & Museveni (who is politically at war with Mr. Wine) has firm control over the Land Fund to the extent that he simply has to direct Lands Minister Betty Amongin (another Bobi Wine hater) on what to do & how to expend the money.
