Move or be moved: Block 5 squatters face Feb 28 deadline

Things had been quiet for five years.  At some point during those years, the community of squatters living at the edge of Block 5 must have believed the October 2011 Lobatse High Court ruling ordering them off the land, must have simply been forgotten by authorities.

Since 1999, or even 20 years earlier by some reports, the squatter community had grown steadily, fuelled in part by the fact that the 77-hectare plot lying west of the Grand Palm complex appeared to have no owner. From shacks, the squatters grew bolder, building permanent structures and establishing informal businesses as their numbers began to rise.