Churches face the axe
Pini Bothoko | Friday May 9, 2014 15:30
The evictions will involve the destruction of illegal structures and scattering of all assets associated with the churches.
City Clerk, Leboile Israel, told Mmegi this week that the Francistown City Council (FCC) is awaiting a court order to proceed with evictions.
The churches in question are open-air fellowships which worship in bushes and open fields. The churches are generally associated with the Zion faith movement.
The City Clerk said endorsement of the radical move had been received from other church leaders around Francistown who said churches found outside the law should be removed.
“Among those who have unilaterally allocated themselves, some are willing to comply as instructed by the council, but others are refusing,” he said in an interview.
“We have since applied for a court order and once it comes, we will forcefully evict them. At the moment 130 churches have refused to comply and they face possible eviction.”
Israel said city fathers have applied for the court order to coincide with Sunday church services in order to confront the church members during eviction.
While court orders are usually carried out during weekdays, the FCC wants to destroy the structures on Sundays.
“We don’t want it to appear as if we destroyed their structures whilst they were not around as they will say we did not inform them in time of what we intended to do, “ he said.
Israel said the FCC had long been pleading with churches and trying to show them that occupying land without proper and legal allocation was against the law. He also said they had been advising the churches to move out or risk being booted out.
At one point, the FCC estimated that there were more than 300 “squatting” churches in the city. The council said the numbers were ballooning to the point that authorities were unsure which were operating legally and which were not.
“There is shortage of land in the city and this is the reason why we have not been allocating church plots for a long time,” the City Clerk said.
“It is not going to be possible to find 300 squatting churches temporary spaces of worship. “As soon as the court order comes, we will demolish all squatting churches around the city.”
Affected church leaders say they cannot afford to relocate to legal premises – unlike their Pentecostal peers – as their congregations are cash-strapped and unable to afford rentals.
“Some of us applied for church plots more than 40 years ago and the FCC has failed to give us land,” said one elder.
“After we were told to stop operating our churches from homes, we ended up using open spaces as worshipping areas. “
The City Council reportedly plans to relocate some churches to the city’s outskirts in response to residents’ complaints about the amount of noise produced by worshippers.