Land: The chickens come home to roost

Mmegi Editor | Tuesday June 9, 2015 14:26

The residents of Borolong and Chadibe have crossed swords for years over the rights to a piece of land between the two villages. The festering wounds have contaminated relations between the two and Borolong parents now refuse to let their children inter-mingle with their peers in Chadibe.

This is despite the fact that Borolong Primary School is over-capacity, with pupils learning in tents and under trees. Parents there will not transfer or enrol their children in Chadibe, a few kilometres away, even though the primary school there has ample space. Today, the area MP is also at his wits’ end after years of futile appeals. The issue highlights the potential fall-out of policymakers’ failure to deal with the troubles of land in the country. Few and far between have been land allocation exercises free of stampedes, confusion or even physical confrontation between landseekers and law enforcement.

At every opportunity, it appears, policymakers and authorities are only too eager to strip Batswana of their dignity and birthright when it comes to access to land. Land allocation waiting lists are so long and old that some authorities have abandoned them altogether. The point of departure from a policymaking viewpoint should be that land is the foundational resource for sustenance and growth for any Motswana. With land, citizens are able to feed and shelter themselves, provide for their community and contribute to the national community.

Just last week, a groundbreaking new survey was able to break down poverty levels from district to village level, pointing policymakers to where the greatest interventions are required. However, when government or civic parties move in to assist the most desperate amongst us, this assistance is only effective where the recipients at least have to that most basic birthright – land. Presently, the youth have been effectively squeezed out from accessing land, with the parcels available changing hands between a small number of wealthy landowners. As the two villages square off, the children are in the middle suffering. Pupils at Borolong Primary School are learning in tents and under trees, exposed to the blighting winter cold. This is what happens and this is who suffers when our policies fail to adequately cater for citizens.

While empathising with their situation we, however, call upon the villagers of Borolong and Chadibe to retreat from their hawkish positions and consider that this country was built on shared resources and the rule of law.

Today’s thought

“Land is the only thing in the world that amounts to anything, for it’s the only thing in this world that lasts. It’s the only thing worth working

for, worth fighting for…”

 - Margaret Mitchell