Limbo made the remarks when addressing a press conference at the Thapama Hotel on Friday. She said as at April 1, 2023 to March 2024, a total of 400 plot transfers for different land uses (commercial, residential, agriculture holdings and ploughing fields) took place in the CLB. The chairperson noted that most people who transferred land were the youth. “Although everyone is within their rights to transfer their land, it is apparent that after some years, the youth who had transferred their land come to our offices to ask for land again. The Tribal Land Act does not allow anyone who has been previously allocated land to apply for land again. Most of the youth who come to our offices and plead to be allocated plots again tell us they were influenced by their youthfulness to sell their land. Our land tenure system allows people to be allocated land once under the Tribal Land Act and State Land Act. We know that financial constraints and other factors may influence people to sell their land but we don’t encourage people to unnecessarily transfer their land,” said Limbo. Elaborating further on the land transfers, the deputy chairperson of th3 CLB, Kgosietsile Basiamang, said the transfers do not only happen between citizens but also involve non-citizens. He added that available statistics show that 0.5 percent of land transfers took place between citizens and non-citizens within the CLB. Basiamang added that the CLB was not certain why some people elect to sell their land. “We have to carry out a thorough research to determine why people choose to transfer their land. In the absence of a detailed research about why some people choose to transfer their land, we can only speculate that they may be pushed by some financial considerations to sell their land,” Basiamang posited. Meanwhile, Limbo noted that the CLB is unique from other Land Boards in Botswana.
“About 24% (5,414km2 ) of the land in Chobe is Tribal land reserved for human settlement while 55% (12, 407km 2 ) is national park and wildlife management areas and (21%) 4,738km2 is forest reserves. This scarcity of land in the district requires effective and efficient use of land to allow for sustainable development. As such, issues of human-wildlife conflict are common (high) in the CLB. In August 2023, we signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) Wild Cru, a local Non-governmental organisation (NGO), which has partnered with the University of Florida in the United States of America (US) to develop the Land Use Conflict Identification Strategy (LUCIS) model,” said Limbo.
