Stop selling land – CLB cautions youth
400 plots transferred since 2023
FRANCISTOWN: The chairperson of the Chobe Land Board (CLB), Bwaambo Limbo, has cautioned the youth against transferring their land.
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, 407km2) 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.
According to a case study titled, “Human-Wildlife Conflict and Co-existence/case studies: Spatial planning to ensure future coexistence between wildlife and people”, that was jointly conducted by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO)of the United Nations (UN) and the IUCN SSC Human-Wildlife Conflict and Co-existence Specialist Group (HWCCSG) in Botswana, LUCIS is a tool that helps local land boards to reconcile land use policy overlap, zone various sectoral land use types, and allow officers to allocate land more effectively, to avoid land use overlaps and the ensuing conflicts. “This ensures areas most suitable for agricultural development are zoned on land with the best fertile soils and away from the main elephant pathways,” the study said.
“We hope that the LUCIS model will, among others, help us to minimise cases of human-wildlife conflict within the CLB. We also hope to have partnerships with other organisations that have expertise in issues of human-wildlife conflict,” said Limbo. Recently, the Okavango District Council (ODC) chairperson, Gaopalelwe Ronald, reported during a Full Council meeting that they recorded 368 cases of human-wildlife conflict in the first quarter of this year, albeit without fatalities. According to Ronald, lions have been the district’s biggest problem animals this quarter because they frequently kill livestock. He further explained that for this quarter of the year, the ODC successfully compensated people in cases involving human-wildlife conflicts. “The district was allotted P5, 540, 000.00 for this fiscal year, and payments are still ongoing,” he said.
The issue of human-wildlife conflict is high on the government of Botswana’s agenda as it was in the past. Recently, the government sent a high powered delegation to London, England, to lobby against the enactment of the Hunting Trophies (Import Prohibition) Bill.
The delegation also included journalists from major private news outlets in Botswana, amongst others. The delegation’s trip to London came in the aftermath of ex-president Ian Khama’s visit to England where he lobbied British lawmakers to support the enactment of the Hunting Trophies (Import Prohibition) Bill.
During his presidency, Khama, a well known nature conservationist who favours photographic tourism over controlled hunting of animals for economic interests, introduced a moratorium on hunting of wild animals. A war of words has erupted ever since Botswana’s current President Mokgweetsi Masisi ascended to the presidency and lifted the hunting ban moratorium.
Masisi’s view of controlled hunting of wildlife is echoed not only by Batswana who live on the outskirts of wildlife areas but by most Batswana at large. Currently, there is a narrative, however unverified, that the sour relationship between Masisi and Khama, which happened after their acrimonious fallout, is caused by the fact that the former undid some of the policies that the latter left in place.