I’m 
... on Today’s contribution to DM, see full article here.
“How about this hill? Who is the owner of this hill?” asked Jimmy Kisara, a member of Nilefos Minerals team surveying Sukulu Valley residents. The team was assessing the value of the residents’ assets before the company starts mining phosphates from the mineral rich area, displacing between 8,000 and 10,000 people.
“It’s mine, from this side,” Abdu Kakande replied, pointing in the distance to the rising slope behind the cluster of houses and patch of banana trees. “Where is madam? Sometimes she knows things as well,” interjected Local Chairman David Okurut, present at the survey to make sure everything goes smoothly and his constituents’ property is duly accounted for.
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| AT WORK: Ms Akello breaks stones in Tororo recently: Photo by Glenna Gordon |
Mr Kisara ignored the comment and continued with the survey. ” Your address?” he asked. “This very place,” said Mr Kakande, motioning towards the ground that would soon no longer be his. Mr Kisara soon asked Mr Kakande to produce a land title, but he had none.
“I am born here, and my grandparents left this land for us,” he said. “But what will I leave for my children?”
The 27th Comrade says:
Well, here I’m not taking sides. We can’t pretend modernisation is going to occur in the face of continuity. Some things have to change. Some people have to move. Some people have to die. Some forests have to be cut.
This stuff of thinking we are the finals, of thinking change should stop where we are comfortable with, is, I am sorry to say, very brain-dead.
Move the buggers. We need to put a mining company. Sounds harsh? Well, welcome to Capitalism.
Kill all Americans and Brits!
Ah, bleedin’ heart! Okay, not that harsh, of course, but you get the point.
[Reply]
— June 4, 2007 @ 10:47 am