For more than 30 years, Henry Jjemba knocked on the doors of church leaders, government offices and land authorities, trying to recover land in Mukono that he said had been left to him by his late uncle, Rev Fr Peter Wasswa.
Last month, the High Court finally agreed with him and criticised the actions of the late Archbishop of Kampala, Cardinal Emmanuel Nsubuga, which largely led to the dispute.
Justice Olive Kazaarwe Mukwaya ruled that Jjemba had been wrongly denied his inheritance for decades and ordered the Registered Trustees of Kampala Archdiocese to either give Jjemba alternative land of the same size and value or pay him its current market value within 12 months.
She also awarded him Shs 100 million in general damages.
The dispute began before 1958 when Jjemba was still a young boy. His father, Joseph Mugenyi, placed him under the care of his brother, Rev Fr Peter Wasswa. According to court records, Mugenyi regularly sent money to Rev Wasswa to educate the boy and buy land for him.
Because Jjemba was still a child, the land was registered in Rev Wasswa’s name.
When Rev Wasswa died in 1973, he left a will which gave Jjemba about 9.7 acres of land at Namugongo and another piece of land at Mukono.
They will also appointed Rev Basil Babumba as the executor, who was supposed to transfer the land to Jjemba. The will was read in the presence of several people, including church leaders and relatives.
But before that could happen, Cardinal Nsubuga obtained letters of administration over Rev Wasswa’s estate on behalf of the Kampala Archdiocese.
That decision became the centre of the entire court case.
The original will, which had gifted Jjemba the land, later disappeared under mysterious circumstances and could no longer be traced.
Over the years, it emerged that the land changed hands and some of it was sold to other people. Part of the Namugongo land is now occupied by a secondary school, a nursery school, a restaurant, and public toilets.
Jjemba never gave up.
From 1999, he sought help from the Administrator General, the Commissioner for Land Registration, the Office of the President, and senior catholic leaders.
In 2013, the late Archbishop Cyprian Kizito Lwanga even agreed that the Archdiocese should compensate him because the original land had already been developed.
The church first offered him three acres in Gayaza, but he rejected it because it was too small. It later showed him four acres in Kisubi, which he accepted, only for the offer to be withdrawn after he was told the land had already been sold.
During the trial, Jjemba testified and produced letters, land titles, and other documents, and his witness, Joshua Matthew Kateregga, told the court that he had been a close friend of Rev Wasswa and knew that the priest had left the disputed land to Jjemba.
Another witness, Robert Nnyanja, said he attended the reading of the will and confirmed that Jjemba was the rightful beneficiary.
The Kampala Archdiocese called one witness, its lands officer, Paul Zziwa, who denied that the Archdiocese was responsible for transferring the land to other people.
Zziwa also told the court that the church had only discussed compensating Jjemba if he first proved that he was entitled to the land.
Jjemba was represented by KTA Advocates together with Kajeke & Co. Advocates while Kampala Archdiocese was represented by Francis Buwule of Buwule, Mayiga & Co. Advocates.
The turning point in the case was a 1988 letter by the then-chancellor of the Archdiocese, Msgr Cyprian Kizito Lwanga, stating that only Rev Babumba had authority to implement Rev Wasswa’s will.
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In her ruling, Justice Mukwaya said the letter proved that the will had indeed existed, but when she compared the letter with the land records, she found that the land had already been transferred to other people years earlier.
That is when the judge turned her attention to Cardinal Nsubuga, saying he should never have taken out letters of administration because Rev Wasswa had already left a valid will naming Rev Babumba as executor.
“His Grace the Archbishop of Kampala Emmanuel Kiwanuka Nsubuga had illegally gotten himself registered on the suit land, as administrator of an estate which was already governed by an existing Will,” Justice Mukwaya said.
She said the circumstantial evidence points to only one conclusion: Kampala Archdiocese and Cardinal Nsubuga gained illegal control over the succession process.
Cardinal Emmanuel Kiwanuka Nsubuga was one of Uganda’s most influential Catholic leaders. He served as Archbishop of Kampala from 1966 until his retirement in 1990 and was made a cardinal in 1973. He died on April 20, 1991.
Although the case was filed against the Registered Trustees of Kampala Archdiocese and the administrator of Cardinal Nsubuga’s estate, the judge repeatedly referred to Nsubuga’s actions because he was the person who took over the administration of Rev Wasswa’s estate, a decision the court found to have been unlawful.
Justice Mukwaya concluded that Jjemba had proved his case and had spent more than three decades fighting for property that should have been handed to him many years earlier.
In the end, the court declared that the Archdiocese, under the leadership of Cardinal Nsubuga, had fraudulently acquired the land.
She ordered it to compensate Jjemba with equivalent land or its market value and awarded him Shs 100 million in general damages.
