Bamalete: Defending land to the death
For Bamalete, a tribe in the South Eastern part of Botswana, the only compensation for land is land. “Re kampa ra seka 100 years, fa ele sengwe bana ba rona batla tsweledisa fa re feletseng teng (We will opt to continue this legal fight for another 100 years, in the culmination of it all our children will continue where we left off,” uttered one Molete tribesman following a Court of Appeal (CoA) session this week. He spoke with confidence like he was about to galvanise and spur on every Molete to fight and endure this period as the Bamalete tussle with the government over the lucrative farm known as Forest Hill 9-KO.
He implied that like Petra, a Belgian draft horse, they will pull the hope carriage until a new generation comes on board and continues the crusade perhaps for another century. Speaking of centuries, two years from now in 2025 it will be exactly 100 years since Bamalete purchased Forest Hill 9-KO for investment purposes.
The land, whose ownership dates back to 1925, was acquired through contributions and Bamalete then managed to raise 3,000 Sterling Pounds required to purchase the land from a certain Aaron Siew. In the same year, a title deed was issued by the Deeds Registry in the names of Bamalete Kgosi on behalf of the tribe. To this day, the title deed is in the name of Kgosi for and on behalf of the tribe.
A lot has happened since and now Bamalete and the government find themselves fighting over the land in a case which has since reached the CoA following last year’s High Court judgement in favour of the tribe.
Bamalete elders filled up the CoA double court session on Tuesday to hear the final argument before the judgement comes out next month. This was after Balete Kgosi Mosadi Seboko had asked them to come in droves for support at the CoA.
Kgosi Seboko made the plea at the tribe’s cultural event dubbed, “Letsatsi La Barwa Kgodumo, Letsatsi La Ngwao” at Ramotswa Kgotla last Saturday. Kgosi Seboko said they are still going to fight for their land till the end and fight with everything at their disposal.
Linked together in their cause and in their need, the elderly Bamalete tribesmen and women who were mostly past their 60s in age terms were at the court to encourage their Kgosi and legal counsel as they all fight for land, which could benefit generations of Bamalete to come.
The elders looked like people who would defend ‘their’ land to death. Some of them were holding placards which read ‘Farm Forest hill ke ya rona’ and ‘Moseka phofu ya gaabo…’. Those who were inside the court room aided each other like good comrades in the times of struggle. Spending the whole day at court listening to lawyers spewing Latin words, their determination to see the whole thing showed that they would go to great lengths to secure the disputed territory.
For people of their age, they sat through three different court sessions to help inspire a new generation of Bamalete in their struggle against the government, which is according to them is ‘enchroaching’ on ‘their’ territory.
The elders remained attentive like soldiers taking the first orders as some of the youngsters dozed off on the court benches. Bamalete elders who have landless children and relatives in their own territory looked like the kind of people who would offer blood, toil, tears and sweat to reclaim their land.
As they boarded a couple of buses after the court appearance, they did not look like the kind of people who would agree to leave in exchange for money and other concessions. They will be back for the judgement billed for next month perhaps in more numbers and they know that if they go on to win the case, their victory will benefit generations to come.
Conversely, Bamalete lawyer Geoff Budlender made submissions before the CoA to the effect that the case is for the generations and will affect Bamalete’s children and grandchildren for generations to come.
“It is a case that constitutionality has to be decided not just for the present Kgosi and not just for the present residents of the farm but for the generations to come,” Budlender highlighted.
Budlender also emphasised that this is a fundamentally different case because it is about constitutional liberty of a law that was passed by Parliament.
“This is about the validity of rules which affect the lives of thousand citizens in Botswana, it is about the validity of a law which affects and will continue to affect people for the rest of their lives as a daily continuing operation. This is
not a case which started and stopped, it contin- ues every day, it is a life issue,” he said.
He pointed out that the tribe cannot be stopped from challenging the validity of a law which breaches one’s constitutional rights and takes away the land, which their predecessors bought. He further emphasised that it affects multitudes of people for the generations to come.
Still on the matter, State lawyer Advocate Sidney Pilane argued that by taking the land, the government through Malete Land Board will allocate part of the land primarily to Bamalete tribe. He said by taking the land from Bamalete, the tribe is not losing this land.
“They will just have different trustees. It is neither an expropriation nor acquisition, it is a change of trustees from chiefs to Land Board,” he said. As they CoA makes a final judgement on February 17, Bamalete hope the court will restore their land rights.