The graduates, who completed an LLB programme offered through Gaborone University College of Law and Professional Studies (GUC) in collaboration with the United Kingdom’s Leeds Beckett University, had hoped to sit for the June 2026 Bar Examinations. Instead, they found themselves locked out of the examination room after the LSB refused to register them. The High Court has now revealed that lurking behind the dispute is a BQA audit which allegedly raised concerns about the delivery and quality assurance of the programme. But in a dramatic twist, the court stopped short of deciding whether the LSB was justified in excluding the graduates. Delivering a ruling on Tuesday, Justice Godfrey Nthomiwa found that the competing versions raised genuine and material factual disputes which could not be resolved on affidavit therefore resulting in a stalemate. That single finding lies at the heart of a ruling that could have wider implications for legal education and admission into Botswana’s legal profession.
The dispute centres on an audit conducted by BQA into the GUC/Leeds Beckett Bachelor of Laws programme. According to Nthomiwa’s judgment, the LSB had been trying to obtain the audit report from BQA after concerns about the programme surfaced. The Society said it was eventually given a letter about the report rather than the report itself. In correspondence to BQA dated June 9, 2026, the LSB expressed its frustration in unusually blunt terms. “The Society has therefore all along waited on BQA to share the report of the audit and is now perplexed that what has been shared with it is now a report about a report and not the report itself, and no information advanced as to the reasons for not sharing the actual report,” said the body that preserves and maintains the integrity of the legal profession.
