For nearly sixty years, Botswana’s land boards have been the quiet arbiters of one of the nation’s most intimate assets – the ground beneath its people’s feet. Now that machinery of tribal land administration faces an uncertain reckoning, as the governing Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC) weighs a sweeping redesign of how the country parcels out, oversees and safeguards its communal land.
At the heart of the deliberations, according to reports reaching this publication, is a proposal that would dissolve the existing land boards altogether and fold their authority into a single, centralised body; a “Land Commission.” It would mark the most consequential restructuring of the system in a generation, trading a dispersed network of locally elected custodians for a consolidated seat of power.
The timing is conspicuous. The potential shake-up arrives just weeks before the three-year terms of land board members across the country are due to lapse, lending the question of their survival an unusual urgency.
The Ministry of Lands and Agriculture is understood to be studying the restructuring, yet the contours of the plan remain stubbornly opaque. How the proposed commission would be constituted, who would sit on it, and what powers it would wield are all, for now, unanswered.
Those gaps are compounded by a notable silence. The WeekendPost understands that the Botswana Association of Tribal Land Authorities (BATLA) – the body representing the very officials whose roles hang in the balance – has neither been formally consulted on the proposed Land Commission nor given an opportunity to make representations.
Behind the scenes, the groundwork appears to be further along than the public reticence suggests. A committee within the ministry is reported to have been established and to have already drafted a proposal, which has since been submitted to the minister for consideration. At the time of going to press, however, the WeekendPost had not independently established the proposed structure of the commission, the manner in which its members would be appointed, or the breadth of its authority.
Swirling alongside the policy questions are the political ones. There are reports that some UDC supporters could be appointed to positions within the proposed commission in the wake of the party’s victory in the 2024 general elections – a prospect that would knit the technical overhaul to the spoils of electoral triumph.
The ministry is also understood to be considering a stopgap: extending the tenure of outgoing land board members by several months while amendments to the Tribal Land Act are drafted. Those amendments could then be laid before Parliament, possibly as early as the November sitting.
Reached by the WeekendPost, BATLA vice-chairperson Fidelis Machola confirmed the looming deadline. “It is true that our three-year term as land board members is coming to an end,” he said, acknowledging that the current terms expire early next month.
But on the more combustible question; whether the land boards might be abolished outright; he was circumspect. Machola said he was unaware of the reports and would not be drawn into speculation. “I am not aware of such rumours and I cannot respond to rumours,” he said, adding that if the ministry intended to reshape the land board system, it would communicate any changes officially.
He was similarly measured on the suspended chairperson of the Kweneng Land Board, Kgang Kgang, saying the matter had not come before the BATLA executive committee, as it was regarded as an employer-employee issue.
Efforts to obtain comment from the Minister of Lands and Agriculture, Edwin Dikoloti, were unsuccessful at the time of publication.
The present uncertainty cannot be read apart from the system’s recent history. Nearly 400 land board members were elected in 2023, under the previous Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) government — appointments that drew sharp criticism from the then-opposition, including allegations that some who had lost BDP primary elections were quietly redeployed to seats on the boards.
The UDC, for its part, has spoken openly of its intention to recognise and reward the supporters who powered its 2024 campaign. Whether those loyalties bear on the reported restructuring remains unclear – but the question lingers over the proposal like an unspoken caption.
What is certain is that the clock is running. With the terms of the current members approaching expiry, the government confronts a decision over the fate of an institution that has shaped Botswana’s tribal land administration for almost six decades – and over who, in the years ahead, will hold the pen that draws the lines on the nation’s land.
QUOTE
A proposed overhaul would retire a six-decade-old institution just as its members’ terms run out – and before the public, or the boards themselves, have been consulted.
