Revised Tribal Land Act operational
The much-awaited revised Tribal Land Act will come into effect today (20 April) after being passed in Parliament. The amendment indicates that the purpose of the revision is to prioritise improved service delivery. The amended
Act stipulates that there would be a more efficient process and quicker turnaround in allocation of land, the allocated responsibilities of land allocations, land transfers, land registration, recording of freehold and state land, as well as land collateralisation, which will now be carried out by the Register of Deeds and not solely Landboards as before. The average turn-around time at all Register of Deeds offices, is expected to be an average of five working days.
Minister of Land Management, Water and Sanitation, Kefentse Mzwinila, recently indicated that this would relieve the Land Boards of the burden of carrying out these roles alone. He also indicated that they had trained officers to assist Batswana, in efforts to make the processes more effective, particularly in cases of land related queries and investigations. “The objective of the revision is to also improve the administration of tribal land in Botswana, improve on efficiency and the turn-around time for provision of services.”
Some of the processes in the revised Act stipulate that when someone has a customary land rights certificate, they can convert to the Title Deed through applying for conversion of the land to common law, and then receive draft leases and have the land surveyed. According to Botswana law, customary rights are not registerable, and so by converting such rights to common law, the practical effect is to introduce customary rights to the Deeds Registry. The revised Act emphasises acquisition of property and land by following the law, prompt and adequate compensation and the right to access the courts in cases of contention over a land allocation process. At the core of the revision is to ensure the upholding of land rights of tribes, communities and individuals in Botswana from the unlawful transfer of land without their consent. The Landboard Act of 1970 and the Tribal Territories Act of 1993 put all rights and claims to tribal areas to the land board.
Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Land Management, Water and Sanitation, Fawcus Mmolawa recently told Parliament that Government has allocated 19 000 plots through Landboards since March this year, from a target of 26 000 plots. Mmolawa said their target for next year is 100 000 as they improve on the turnaround time for land allocation.
Land ownership has also been plagued by gender inequality innuendos for many years, but Botswana is however making strides in promoting equal access to land, and in 2020, Government amended the 2015 Land Policy, which barred women who are married from owning land if their husbands had already been allocated land. The revised policy allows women to apply for their own land, whether married or not.
According to a government audit presented before Parliament last year, of the over 620 000 Batswana on the waiting list for land allocation, a little over 50 percent are women. The World Bank has also indicated that women are mostly faced with barriers to owning land, be it through skewed inheritance duping and restricted authority over assets premised on cultural beliefs. The revised Land Policy 2015 stipulates that everyone has an equal eligibility to a residential and/or commercial plot in a place of their choice, on both state and tribal land.