Sanyu Romina Mary and Consensual Land Occupation

Sanyu Romina Mary v Hamurwa Town Council and Others, Civil Appeal Number 4 of 2024, is a recent Supreme Court decision with practical importance for landowners, local governments and lawyers handling land used for public purposes. The case is about a public market, but its precedent reaches beyond markets. It clarifies that long occupation does not automatically become ownership, especially where the occupation began with consent. It also restates a constitutional point that may sound obvious but is often contested in practice: if a local government needs private land for a public purpose, it must acquire it lawfully.

The appellant, Sanyu Romina Mary, was one of the administrators and surviving beneficiaries of the estate of the late Simeo Ruritwa. The estate included about 17 hectares of unregistered land at Karukara in Hamurwa Town Council, Rubanda District. A public market had operated on part of that land for many years. The appellant’s case was that the market occupation came from permission given by the deceased or his successors. She also relied on a tenancy arrangement that, in her view, showed that the local authorities recognised the estate’s ownership.

The respondents, including Hamurwa Town Council and district land institutions, resisted the claim. Their position, put broadly, was that the old market land had become government or local government land through long occupation. The dispute travelled through the courts. The High Court substantially accepted the appellant’s claim, while the Court of Appeal reversed that outcome and treated the long occupation of the market land as defeating her claim. The Supreme Court was therefore asked to decide whether long public use could displace beneficial ownership where the occupation had been consensual.

The Supreme Court substantially allowed the appeal. It declared the appellant the beneficial owner of the 17 hectares of unregistered land at Karukara, including the portion on which Karukara Market was located. It ordered the relevant land board to process a freehold title for the appellant’s land and restrained the respondents from alienating any part of the estate without her written consent or that of her assignees. The Court also awarded special damages, general damages, interest at 8 percent and costs. These orders gave the judgment practical weight rather than leaving it as an abstract statement of ownership.

Yet the Court did not ignore the public character of the market. It did not simply order immediate eviction. Because the land was being used for a public utility, the Court allowed time for the appellant and Hamurwa Town Council to negotiate continued use or lawful acquisition of the market land. If no agreement was reached, the Town Council would have to give vacant possession within one year of the judgment. That remedy is important. It shows that the Court was not hostile to public need. It was hostile to public need being used as a substitute for lawful acquisition.

The first rule from the case is that occupation with consent is not adverse possession. A tenant, licensee or permitted occupier may be physically present on land for many years, but that presence is not hostile to the owner while consent continues. Time does not begin to run for adverse possession merely because the occupier has stayed for a long period. It begins only when the occupier’s possession becomes adverse, such as when the occupier clearly denies the owner’s title or claims ownership in a manner inconsistent with the owner’s rights.

This distinction between possession and adverse possession is not a technical detail. It is central to land justice. In everyday life, land is often occupied through family permission, informal arrangements, local authority agreements, rent payments, market use or community understandings. If every long occupation could later be turned into adverse possession, owners who acted generously or cooperatively would be punished for giving permission. Sanyu Romina Mary avoids that unfairness. It asks how the occupation began and what legal character it had, not only how many years passed.

The second rule is constitutional. Local governments cannot acquire citizens’ land by informal absorption. Article 237 of the Constitution recognises that land in Uganda belongs to citizens and vests in them according to recognised tenure systems. Article 26 protects property from compulsory deprivation except under lawful conditions, including public purpose and compensation. A public market may serve the community, and no one should pretend otherwise. But public benefit does not erase private title. It creates a need for negotiation, lease, purchase or compulsory acquisition according to law.

Justice Madrama Izama’s separate reasoning is useful because it places the case within the constitutional restoration of land ownership to citizens. Justice Bamugemereire’s concurrence also gives the judgment a human dimension by linking land to dignity, identity and constitutional protection. Those concurring views matter because land in Uganda is rarely just an economic asset. It may represent family history, burial ground, inheritance, security and social standing. A market built on family land may benefit the public, but that does not make the family’s interest invisible.

The case fits well with Uganda National Roads Authority v Irumba and Another, where the Supreme Court emphasised compensation before compulsory acquisition. Irumba concerned state taking for infrastructure, while Sanyu Romina Mary involved local government use of land for a public market. The constitutional logic is similar. Public authorities may need land. The Constitution gives them a route to acquire it. What it does not permit is taking possession first and using time, administrative convenience or public sympathy to defeat the owner’s rights.

For local governments, the practical lesson is straightforward. If land is needed for a market, office, school, health centre, road or other public service, the lawful options should be documented. The authority may negotiate a lease, pay rent, purchase the land, obtain written consent or begin compulsory acquisition under the law. What it should not do is occupy land indefinitely and later argue that the owner has lost it because the public facility has become useful. Long use may explain why a negotiated solution is necessary. It does not by itself create ownership.

For landowners and estate administrators, the case teaches the importance of records. Written permission, tenancy agreements, rent receipts, meeting minutes, letters and acknowledgments may later decide the dispute. In Sanyu Romina Mary, the evidence of tenancy and recognition of the estate’s interest appears to have been central. A landowner who allows public use should not rely only on memory or goodwill. Public bodies change leadership, records disappear and successors may deny earlier arrangements. Documentation protects both sides.

The decision is also useful in litigation because it gives courts a structured way to handle the common defence that the occupier has been on the land for many years. After this case, the question should not stop at duration. The court should ask whether the owner consented, whether rent or acknowledgment existed, whether the occupier ever clearly repudiated the owner’s title, whether the owner was truly dispossessed and whether lawful acquisition procedures were followed. Long occupation is evidence, but it is not a magic formula.

There is a difficult human side to the case. A public market may support traders, customers and local revenue. Removing or relocating it can affect ordinary people who had no role in the original land dispute. The Supreme Court’s remedy appears to recognise that reality by allowing negotiation and a period before vacant possession. That approach may suggest a mature balance. The law protects ownership, but it also gives the public authority a chance to regularise the public use instead of causing immediate disruption.

The precedent value of Sanyu Romina Mary is therefore quite strong. It says that consent defeats the hostility required for adverse possession, and it says that public use must be brought within the Constitution rather than placed above it. For Uganda’s many disputes involving schools, markets, health centres and roads on land with contested ownership, the case offers a clear warning. Government convenience cannot replace lawful acquisition. Public purpose matters, but legality matters too.

Source note. This article is based on Sanyu Romina Mary v Hamurwa Town Council and Others, Civil Appeal Number 4 of 2024, [2026] UGSC 6, Supreme Court of Uganda, judgment delivered on 23 February 2026, with reference to Article 26 and Article 237 of the Constitution of the Republic of Uganda, 1995, the Land Act, the Limitation Act, and related compulsory acquisition reasoning in Uganda National Roads Authority v Irumba and Another. It is prepared for public legal education only and should not be treated as legal advice for any specific land dispute.

Suggested citation

Ronald Serwanga, “Sanyu Romina Mary and Consensual Land Occupation” East Africa Legal Insight (1 July 2026).