Somewhere in Kampala today, a signboard reads “For Sale”. Passersby nod knowingly. They believe they have solved the mystery. The name is right there, embedded in the transaction. Sale. Salim “Sale(h)”. It is practically a confession.
Elsewhere, another signboard reads “Not For Sale”. The nodding continues. Of course he would say that. In Uganda, denial is often treated as the oldest form of confession.
This is the trap of perception in which General Caleb Akandwanaho, better known as Salim Saleh, now finds himself.
In a country where rumour often travels faster than fact, every unexplained property acquires his name, every denial deepens suspicion, and every “For Sale” sign risks being interpreted as “For Saleh”.
One could laugh and leave it there. Yet the absurdity has a serious side. It sits at the intersection of a fragile land information system and one of humanity’s oldest social reflexes. When people cannot tell who owns something, they assign ownership to whoever seems most plausible.
In a city where a large proportion of land parcels remain unregistered or poorly documented, “most plausible” ends up doing an enormous amount of work. For many Ugandans, that often means assigning ownership to General Saleh.
But who actually owns Kampala’s land?
Public land is administered by the Uganda Land Commission under Article 239 of the Constitution. Many government buildings and properties fall under its mandate.
The Buganda Kingdom’s Mailo land system covers a significant portion of central Uganda, with ownership structures dating back to the 1900 Uganda Agreement.
Churches, whose land holdings trace their origins to the missionary era of the late nineteenth century, own substantial acreage. KCCA manages city properties.
The Catholic Church, private developers, returning Asian-Ugandan investors and various government agencies account for other holdings.
Beyond that lies a vast grey area of contested Mailo tenancies, informal settlements, customary claims and parcels that have never been properly surveyed or mapped.
The problem is that ordinary citizens cannot easily access reliable ownership information. Land records remain fragmented across institutions, data systems are not fully integrated, and updates are often inconsistent. What many Kampala residents encounter is not a transparent registry but a fog.
And in a fog, imagination begins to perform the work of governance.
General Saleh is not the central figure this story requires. His public focus in recent years has largely been Operation Wealth Creation (OWC) and what he has described as “humanomics”, an economic philosophy centred on improving household incomes rather than accumulating personal wealth.
At a national land policy workshop in Kapeeka earlier this year, he publicly called for greater accountability in land administration. Ironically, it is the same land administration system whose weaknesses have helped fuel speculation about his alleged ownership of countless properties.
In 2001, President Museveni reportedly directed him to dispose of some assets to clear debts arising from cooperative investment ventures.
Whether one agrees with Saleh’s politics or not, the notion that he secretly owns most of Kampala is difficult to sustain through evidence alone.
Yet evidence is not the currency of rumours. Perception is.
That perception flourishes because the fog remains.
The consequences extend far beyond one man’s reputation.
In June 2024, more than 200 homes were demolished in the Lubigi wetland during enforcement operations. One resident, Rose Namuddu, returned to the remains of her home and later found herself in conflict with authorities. Her story became a symbol of the human cost of environmental enforcement.
At the same time, questions persist about why some developments in wetland areas appear to survive while others are removed. Critics argue that enforcement often seems inconsistent, fuelling perceptions that influence and status matter as much as the law itself.
Whether those perceptions are always accurate is almost beside the point. Public confidence weakens when rules appear unevenly applied.
The American political scientist James C Scott once described rumours, gossip and misattribution as “weapons of the weak”, tools available to people who feel abandoned by formal institutions.
Social media platforms such as TikTok have become remarkably efficient vehicles for those impulses.
In many Ugandan communities, there is a saying that the man with the biggest head cannot dodge the stone. It is more than a proverb. It is sociology.
When institutions fail to answer basic questions, society looks for visible figures to carry responsibility. The biggest names become the easiest targets, not necessarily because they are guilty, but because they appear to embody the system that people distrust.
The solution, therefore, is not to rescue Saleh’s reputation through arguments over whether a property is “For Sale” or “Not For Sale”. The solution is to remove the fog itself.
The Uganda Land Commission’s ongoing land digitisation efforts should be accelerated and made as accessible as possible. Citizens should be able to verify ownership information quickly and transparently.
KCCA and the Ministry of Lands should deepen data integration and establish systems that allow information to be shared seamlessly.
Environmental regulators should publish comprehensive records of enforcement actions, exemptions and decisions so that scrutiny can replace speculation.
Transparency should not be selective. It should be systematic.
As a final modest proposal, perhaps the General should simply rename himself General Not-For-Sale. It might spare the country considerable confusion.
More seriously, Saleh has repeatedly called for greater transparency in matters of land ownership. Uganda should take him up on that challenge.
Publish a complete, searchable and publicly accessible land registry. Let citizens know who owns what. Let facts perform the work that rumours are currently doing.
Until then, General Saleh remains trapped in a uniquely Ugandan paradox.
If a building is for sale, it must be for Saleh.
If it is not for sale, it is probably still for Saleh.
If nobody knows who owns it, then it is definitely for Saleh.
That is a remarkably heavy burden to place on one man whose only provable offence may be carrying a surname that happens to sound like a transaction.
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