“destroy the Kabakaship”. c) Reasons for the Land(Amendment) Bill In view of these rather marginal and purely institutional changes one might wonder why the amendment has been proposed at all. Considering the current situation of the land administration system, it appears that the main reason for the amendment is neither to enhance“security of occupancy” nor to grab“Kabaka’s land” but to respond to institutional shortcomings. The 1995 Constitution and the 1998 Land Act introduced a decentralised system of land management and dispute settlement. The main authorities responsible for all land matters at district level are supposed to be the District Land Boards, assisted by Land Committees at division or sub-county level(Section 64 Land Act as amended by the 2004 Land Amendment Act). Land disputes shall be handled by special Land Tribunals at district level(Section 76 Land Act as amended by the 2004 Land Amendment Act). However, to date both the Land Tribunal and the District Land Boards could not fulfil their functions for lack of funding and an ineffective regulatory framework. According to the Land Act, District Land Boards are supposed to be supported by five technical staffs(Registrar, Valuer, Surveyor, Physical Planner, Land Officer). To date, most Land Boards are only manned by one Land Officer 30 or have not been set up at all. The Boards also lack the technical tools to carry out their work and a reasonable pay level to attract qualified staff 31 . Land Tribunals have even been totally abandoned, resulting in the piling of land cases with civil magistrate courts 32 . The proposed amendment, in an apparent move to circumvent these resource problems, now gives the Minister the authority to determine the rent and empowers normal courts to issue eviction orders. These institutional changes are not only unconstitutional as will be explained later, but still worse, they do not address the real cause of evictions. d) The cause of evictions and the problems of the current law The cause of current eviction is not the lack of laws protecting occupants but rather these laws themselves, which create conflicting rights over land, as well as the lack of a functioning registration system and a coherent land policy that could guide land administration. The current provisions which allow the owner to only charge a non-commercial rent and to 30 The Uganda Land Alliance, The Land(Amendment) Bill: Transforming Power Relations on Land Equivocally (March 2008), p. 4. 31 “Objectives of the Land Act were not fulfilled”, The New Vision, March 25, 2008. 32 African Peer Review Mechanism, Uganda Country Self-Assessment Report(November 2007), p. 459. 11