Mokalake must get real

| Wednesday August 29, 2012 00:00

Indeed, the minister is right because if handled carelessly, shortage of land could turn tribe against tribe in a hitherto peaceful nation.  It will begin with siblings bickering over real estate as traditional handing down of malapa and masimo is progressively disregarded by communities and tossed aside by modern tenure systems that are driven by greed.  In fact, the problem is already evident in urban villages, especially those near urban centres like Gaborone, Francistown and even Orapa.  Urban villages like Tlokweng, Mogoditshane, Gabane, Ramotswa and Mochudi near the capital and Shashe, Tonota, Chadibe, Borolong and Matshelagabedi on the periphery of Francistown are heaving under the weight of relative aliens of commuters who eventually settle in them for good.

But the situation in Gaborone was made worse early by the uneconomic use of space in the city.  For it boggles the mind to see two-roomed hovels in the middle of the city such as in the Main Mall and fallow land three times the size of a football field around there and beyond.  Some buildings that belong to the same government that Mokalake serves have been unoccupied for ages and serve only as a blot on aesthetics.  It is these buildings that are fit for demolition to create space for high-rise structures of the type envisioned by Mokalake, not villages like Ramaphatle.  Another absurdity about Gaborone is how new developments are still stunted at three storeys approved by the municipality and the Department of Town and Regional Planning while the minister cries out for skyscrapers elsewhere.  While we were told that standards at the new CBD included raising the skyline, we still see dwarf-like cubicles in what was promoted as a 21st Century, almost futuristic architectural precinct. At the same time, the BHC continues to build tiny single units after millions of pula were spent buying the land from dubious characters who amassed it in colonial times.

With this in mind, we think it almost cynical of Mokalake to tell a poor nation in a country notorious for being the world's third most unequal society to build skyscrapers when they can hardly afford mud huts. In our view, the minister might be more relevant drafting appropriate expropriation laws that address this colonial incongruence that will forever haunt us it if is left unattended.  'Appropriate' because crude seizure is frowned upon by the descendants of the settlers who themselves seized land by registering title by means relatively alien to the natives then and because the 'willing buyer-willing seller' system has failed in southern Africa.  We dare say the nation would back Mokalake all the way along such a courageous route because land is a basic survival need that empowers those who have it while the rest go hungry for lack of it.  The news the other day that plans were afoot to auction land is to regress in a frightening way. But while we are about it, we repeat that we expect an honest inventory from the nationwide land audit that is currently underway.

                                       Today's thought

'If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in five years there'd be a shortage of sand.'

                                      - Milton Friedman