Kanye man says OP officials fooled him
Gothataone Moeng | Friday May 30, 2014 16:50
He says the latest incident took place in March this year, following another wild goose chase over a meeting the OP claimed to have scheduled with the Ngwaketse Land Board. The Land Board claimed it did not know about the meeting.
“I arrived at the OP at 10.30am on March 20, 2014 and wanted to see the Vice President. I was referred to office No 112, which was said to be Mr Senabye’s office. I found a man in that office and when I introduced myself, he said he was Mr Letlhare. I told him I was asked to see Mr Senabye, but he insisted that he was Mr Letlhare,” Kooepile says.
He told Letlhare his story and the official called someone else on the phone, and then kept him waiting until lunchtime, before asking him to come back at 2pm. When he came back, Letlhare took him to another office whose occupant also introduced himself as Letlhare.
“I asked them if they were both Letlhare and whether they were brothers. One of them said, ‘this one must be Letlhatsana’,” the frustrated Kooepile says. When he insisted on knowing their identities, he realised that the man who initially called himself Letlhare was actually Senabye, whom he had originally been asked to see.
“I realised that these people were playing an early April’s Fool with me,” he says.
Attempts to find out which officials had assisted Kooepile on the day were not successful, as government spokesperson, Dr Jeff Ramsay had not responded to inquiries by press time.
Kooepile’s main issue with the OP is the withdrawal of the 2004 recommendation that he be allocated land behind AB Filling Station in Kanye. The OP recommended he should be given the plot he applied for in 1993.
He was scheduled to be allocated the plot in April 1994, but the allocation fell through following claims to the same land by other people, namely Rakgabo Gopane, Boingotlo Laletsang and Kgosi Seepapitso. The allocation was halted pending investigations, with the case being postponed for many years.
In 2003, the case finally came before the Ngwaketse Land Board and was heard in the presence of all the claimants. In May 2003, the Land Board dismissed the case of all the claimants and resolved that any of them who felt aggrieved should take it up with the Land Tribunal. Kooepile argues that this dismissal meant that he could be allocated the plot, as he was the only applicant.
Unbeknown to him, Gopane moved to the Land Tribunal on May 19, 2003. But before the Land Tribunal could hear the appeal, Kooepile had already written to the OP asking for intervention.
In October 2004 current state intelligence chief, Isaac Kgosi, who was Private Secretary to then Vice President Ian Khama, wrote to the Ngwaketse Land Board to allocate the land to Kooepile.
“Kooepile is entitled to have his allocation proceeded with from where it was left off, unless there is a valid objection. Please appraise this office with full justification on your conclusion,” he wrote.
Despite the intervention, the land allocation did not go ahead and 10 years later, in March 2014, Gaolebogwe Stephen Ngidi, an officer in the OP, wrote to Kooepile to explain the state of affairs. The letter from Ngidi said that although Gopane appealed to the Land Tribunal in 2003, Kooepile was never served with any communication informing him of the fact.
He said the Land Tribunal referred the letter back to Ngwaketse Land Board, which stood by its earlier decision. None of the claimants have appealed the decision and now Ngidi has unceremoniously removed the OP from the equation.
“Given the above history of the plot in question, it would be improper for the Office of the President to give an order as to how the matter should be proceeded with. Both the Land Board and the Land Tribunal are competent authorities to handle the matter,” he wrote.
Kooepile is protesting against this. He says only the Vice President, Ponatshego Kedikilwe should hear his matter. He is incensed by the officials who bar him from seeing Kedikilwe. He accuses them of sabotaging government in its duty to help Batswana like him.