Bamalete’s long wait

Bamalete came in large numbers at the High Court in Gaborone PIC: MORERI SEJAKGOMO
Bamalete came in large numbers at the High Court in Gaborone PIC: MORERI SEJAKGOMO

The Bamalete tribe will have to wait until 2023 for the apex court to decide whether the High Court was correct in their judgment that the contested Farm Forest Hill 9-K0 land belongs to them. This comes after the Court of Appeal (CoA) on Tuesday postponed the hearing of the matter after the Land Board’s failure to follow the set CoA rules when it filed the appeal.

The bench consisting of Judge President of the CoA, Tebogo Tau, Chief Justice Terrence Rannowane, Justices Mercy Gaorekwe, Isaac Lesetedi and Lakhvinder Singh Walia unanimously agreed that the appeal could not go on despite the Land Board’s desperate attempt to convince the judges for a condonation. This appeal concerns the ownership of the remaining extent of the Farm Forest Hill 9-K0. Looking back, in 1925, the Bamalete tribe purchased the farmland at the heart of the matter using its own funds to address a shortage of land for grazing purposes.

The farm was transferred to Chief Seboko Mokgosi for and on behalf of the tribe. Now the Land Board wants the tribe and Kgosi Mosadi Seboko to hand over the title deed of the farm land to government. The Land Board is largely basing its appeal on the 2011 CoA judgement in the Quarries Botswana case. According to the Land Board, their interpretation of the 2011 full bench panel was that the land did not belong to the tribe. “After analysing the arguments, the court concluded that at the time of the events giving rise to the litigation, the property vested not in the tribe through its chief, but vested in Land Board,” they argued.

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