29 Sep 2017

Minister of Nationality, Immigration and Gender Affairs, Mr Edwin Batshu says the church has an important role in government hence its presentation in important forums like Vision 2036.

Addressing a meeting of representatives from Botswana Christian Council, Evangelical Fellowship of Botswana and Organisation of Independent African Churches recently, Mr Batshu explained that the purpose of the meeting was to give feedback on progress made since the last one in 2012 as regards involving the church in the development of the country and as an advisory body to government.

A press release from the ministry says the minister shared with the representatives main issues discussed in the last meeting emphasising that the meeting was meant to get the church’s view of Botswana society and matters that affect it.

The release says issues that were agreed upon in the previous meeting included poor governance in churches, proliferation of churches, code of conduct in the church,  capacity of building of church leadership, gender equality and tax evasion, among others.

It also states that the minister said the Constitution allowed for freedom of worship hence organisations were allowed to associate freely.

Furthermore, the release says the minister also shared with the meeting the threshold for registering churches, which has been raised to 150 as per the amendment of the Act, adding that the ministry has since registered 39 churches after the implementation of the new threshold.

However, the release says areas of concern raised among others were the increasing number of disputes arising within churches, questionable financial transactions by churches and money laundering and human trafficking.

The press release says church umbrella body representatives observed that the definition of ‘freedom of worship’ and ‘tolerance’ in the Constitution may need to be revisited to make pre-marital counselling compulsory in order to curb high divorce rates. ENDS