Bodungwane: gov’t’s ‘illegal’ village

staff writer | Wednesday September 2, 2026 06:00

The Kgatleng Land Board's Report on the Legitimacy of Land Occupancy at Bodungwane, completed on April 15, 2026, offers the most detailed official account yet of the disputed settlement. It also exposes major differences over how many people live there. Statistics Botswana counted 62 residents in the 2022 population and housing census. The Land Board's profiling exercise counted 162, while the current High Court case has 168 individual applicants. Residents had earlier told Mmegi that nearly 300 people regarded Bodungwane as their home. The figures do not necessarily measure the same group. The Land Board says its total included children who spend most of the year at boarding schools and return to Bodungwane during school holidays.

Its investigators identified 41 homesteads or residential plots, but managed to count the populations of only 28 households. The average household size amongst those counted was six, with households ranging from one to 13 people. The report says the majority of the population was aged 18 or younger. The profiling exercise was ordered by the High Court in April 2023 after an earlier order declared people living at Bodungwane without Land Board certificates illegal occupiers or squatters. The Board was given five months, but completed the report almost three years later. Its team reviewed court orders, Land Board allocation records, a 2010 interdepartmental government study and residents' identity and land documents. Officials also inspected homes, administered household questionnaires and interviewed occupants during a visit in December 2025. The report places Bodungwane about 22 kilometres south of Kgomodiatshaba, 29 kilometres north-west of Artesia, nearly 32 kilometres north of Dikgonnye and 14 kilometres north-east of Kweneng. It remains an ungazetted settlement with no approved layout or formal planning framework. The Kgatleng District Integrated Land Use Plan places it in an extensive rangeland zone intended mainly for communal grazing and livestock farming. According to the report, legitimate Land Board allocations in the area are for agricultural use.

The closest were recorded about 400 metres from the estimated settlement boundary and about 600 metres from the mobile clinic. Thirty-two of the 41 residential plots were confirmed as self-allocated. The status of the remaining nine could not be verified because some residents were absent and some recorded owners had died. Eleven people told investigators that they held legal land rights in recognised villages including Artesia, Kgomodiatshaba and Kweneng. Three others said they had submitted applications for land elsewhere. Most of the buildings were traditional huts. A few were semi-permanent, while the mobile clinic was described as the only permanent building. Some plots were merely fenced, while others contained dilapidated or abandoned compounds. The report nevertheless records a long history of occupation. Drawing from the 2010 study, it says people began occupying Bodungwane in the early 1920s. One of the earliest settlers, Thwane Ruele, reportedly obtained permission from Kgosi Isang Pilane to farm there. Families including the Tlale, Modise and Leburu later settled in the area, mainly as farm workers, and practised arable and pastoral farming. Eight farms were identified during the 2010 study, although some were not formally registered. Current residents also told investigators that the late former Member of Parliament Greek Ruele encouraged scattered farm workers to move closer together so that government could provide services more easily. At present, the Kgatleng District Council delivers water by bowser each week and a mobile health team visits monthly. There is no school at Bodungwane.

Children attend boarding schools at Khurutshe and Kgomodiatshaba primary schools, Artesia Junior Secondary School and Molefi Senior Secondary School. Many households depend on government public works and old-age pensions. Others obtain income from farm labour, small livestock or informal work. Only three residents reported monthly earnings of between P1,000 and P3,000 from operating tuckshops. The residents use this history, their graves, government services and the large number of children to argue that they cannot simply be treated as faceless squatters. Their court papers state that 78 children attend school and another 38 have not yet enrolled. They also identify themselves as predominantly Basarwa.

They say the 2010 government study referred to Basarwa cultural preservation. Syndicate chairman Ramonaka Moji Ruele does not admit that the profiling report clearly characterises the applicants as Basarwa. The main findings of the 2026 report reproduced in the court record do not themselves expressly describe the 162 profiled residents as Basarwa. That description therefore remains part of the residents' case and should not be confused with an undisputed finding by the Land Board. There is a similar difference over possible recognition of Bodungwane. Residents say a 2021 Land Board record treated converting the area into a settlement as one of two options that could avoid eviction. The conclusion of the 2026 profiling report does not recommend conversion. Instead, the report says a substantial number of occupants fall within the definition of illegal occupiers or squatters used in the August 2022 High Court order.

It concludes that historical occupation and generational residence are common, but do not amount to formal legal entitlement under the existing land administration system. At the same time, the Board acknowledges 'socio-economic vulnerability and historical settlement patterns' and records the public services on which the community depends. That leaves Bodungwane caught between two official positions: government has counted its people, supplied their water, treated their sick and transported their children, while the land administration system continues to regard most of their homes as informally and unlawfully occupied. The High Court is now set to decide whether those individual circumstances should have been heard before earlier orders were made and whether the residents may challenge orders that could ultimately remove them from the only community many of them have known.