FROM SHAMBA BOY TO LANDLORD: HOW MADHVANI ALLEGEDLY POISONED A FORMER GOVERNOR TO GRAB HIS KAJJANSI ESTATE

Who is Madhavani in Uganda?

Madhavani Muljibhai (Mulji Prabhudas) Madhvani was born in India in 1894 and migrated to Uganda in 1908 at approximately age 14 and was hired by H. Dewhurst as a nanny/house boy.
When Dewhurst was going on a holiday in the UK, Madhavani parked for him poisoned bread, and Dewhurst ate it while he was on board the plane and died on 1st July 1916.

Dewhurst had acquired interest in vast pieces of land including land in Nakigalala , Kansiri , Lugazi and Mityana from the Buganda royals like Prince Yusuf Suuna Kiweewa in 1911 to grow pala and coffee through his Company Uganda Rubber and Coffee Co. LTD and Nsimbe Tea estates.

When Mulhjibai Madhavani had ensured that his boss died on the plane, he then took over his vast estate in Uganda.By 1918, Madhivani had consolidated and acquired all land that had belonged to H. Dewhurst, his deceased boss at Kakira, Lugazi, Nakigalala, Kansiri, Mityana, and Jinja and continued the agricultural developments that had been started by his former boss, eventually establishing the sugar operations that became the foundation of the Madhvani Group.

All the land granted to H. Dewhurst, by Prince Yusufu Suuna Kiweewa, in 1911, gave a 99-year lease of approximately 948 acres to H. Dewhurst (sometimes rendered Dewhaurst) under Grant No. G9100 for plantation purposes (coffee, para rubber and tea) were then taken over by Mulhji Madhavani as his own estate until the 1975 land Reform Decree that vested all land in the government of Uganda and the subsquent expulsion of non- nativve Indians.

Documented sequence of interests
1911

Prince Yusufu Suuna Kiweewa granted a 99-year lease (Grant No. 9100) over approximately 948 acres at Nakigalala and Kansiri to H. Dewhurst for the cultivation of para rubber (pala), coffee and related crops. This is recorded on the original mailo titles (Mailo Register Volume 92 Folio 2522). The lease was subject to the usual mailo restrictions.

1920s–1930s

Titles for the same or overlapping land appear in the names of Uganda Rubber and Coffee Estates Limited (of Nsimbe Estates, Mawokota).

How the interest moved from the 1911 Dewhurst lease into the name of Madhivani Group?

According to a 2014 High Court judgment, the land comprised in Freehold Register Volume 45 Folio 2 (Nakigalala and Kansiri Estates, 948.15 acres) was acquired on 8 June 1960 by M/s Madhvani Sugar Co. Works Ltd.

The company and its successors remained in possession and operated the property as a tea estate. Court records treat this as the point at which Madhvani-related entities became the registered proprietors of the freehold title.

Detailed conveyance documents explaining how the interest was transferred from Uganda Rubber and Coffee Estates Limited to Madhvani Sugar Works Ltd in 1960 are not set out in the publicly available judgments.

1972

The property was expropriated under the Asian expulsion decrees and vested in the Departed Asians’ Property Custodian Board (DAPCB).

1991 repossession

Three Certificates of Repossession (Nos. 0578, 0579 and 0580) dated 6 March 1991 were issued in the name of Muljbhai Madhvani & Co. Ltd.

The DAPCB itself later noted (in correspondence from the early 1990s and again in 2026) that the registered proprietors appearing on the titles at the time were still Uganda Rubber and Coffee Estates Limited / Nsimbe Estate, and questioned why the repossession certificates were issued in the Madhvani company name. The estate was treated as divided into freehold and leasehold titles, creating further uncertainty about the origin of any freehold conversion.

Post-1991 to present

Titles were subsequently registered or transferred into Madhvani-related entities. The companies have remained in possession and have treated the land as freehold. Multiple families (Kiweewa descendants, Muwanga Omuweesi descendants and others) have challenged the freehold titles in court since at least 2013, arguing that: the original 1911 mailo lease (or the later 1930 lease) should have reverted on expiry; freehold was improperly created over mailo land; and the 1991 repossession certificates were defective because they were issued in the wrong company name and did not rest on a clear chain from the original lessors.

But now most of the leases have expired and are being contested by the reversionary interest holders while Madhavani has an evil alliance with the current Government of Uganda intended to defeat the interests of the indigenous Ugandans by granting freehold title to the non- native.