Mmegi: What are your credentials?
Manatsha: My PhD dissertation focused on the land question in postcolonial Botswana with special reference to the North East District. I obtained my MA and PhD from Hiroshima University, Japan in 2008 and 2011 respectively. I have since published a total of nine academic articles on the land question in Botswana including one on the Historical and Politico-Cultural Significance of Nswazwi Mall in Francistown.
Mmegi: We have realised that there is a close relationship between poverty and landlessness in Botswana. In your view, what would you say are the reasons why most of the informal settlements emerge, especially around urban areas such as Mmamashia, Senthumole Ramadeluka next to Jwaneng (which has now relocated to Sese)?
Manatsha: The rural areas are the hardest hit with high poverty and unemployment rates forcing the rural dwellers to migrate to the cities/urban centres with the hope of getting employment. When people in rural areas reach the urban centres, they face acute problems of shortage of 'affordable' accommodation and decent employment. The skyrocketing rent prices, for instance, force them to retreat to the neighbouring urban villages where they rent one-roomed houses with friends, often overcrowded. We have seen such developments in Tlokweng and Mogoditshane, near Gaborone. Some, unable to cope with the ever-increasing rental prices, end up building shacks; a typical example is the recent demolished Senthumule Ramadeluka squatter settlement on the outskirts of Jwaneng, the long demolished Machimenyenga location in Francistown, which was built on land belonging to the Tati Company, and the Old Naledi location in Gaborone.
