Was the Land Reform Decree (LRD) a facilitator of economic development?
Khiddu-Makubuya contends that the LRD was a positive legal instrument because it created one system of land tenure, the leasehold system. He adds that under a leasehold system, it is easier to impose a policy and that whoever owns land is duty bound to effect improvements thereon and develop the same or else forfeit it to the government. He observes that the tendency in Uganda has so far been to base security of tenure on the fact of registered proprietorship rather than on improvement. He contends that improvement of the land should be the owner’s only guarantee of security of tenure. (Khiddu Makubuya, 1981: p. 322). When Makubuya was interviewed by the Author on February 15, 1996, he asserted that abolishing of customary tenure that was initiated by the Decree should be carried forward because he knows no country which had modernised its Agriculture on the basis of peasantry forms of production. Dr. Makubuya must be congratulated on having been so candid in advancing an important poi
