29 Nov 2018

The Land Tribunal has put in place initiatives aimed at enhancing and improving service delivery to deal with challenges such as backlog of appeals, says deputy permanent secretary in the Ministry of Land Management, Water and Sanitation Services, Mr Tshepo Mophuting.

In an effort to address the backlog, he said the ministry had three adhoc courts, two in Gaborone and the other at Palapye which were all inundated with appeal cases.

Officiating at a Land Tribunal stakeholder consultative workshop in Mahalapye recently, Mr Mophuting said the delay in attending to land case appeals was due to capacity constraints.   

“The ministry is delighted to report that to date, the three courts completed a total of 332 cases out of the 428 allocated cases,” he said, adding that the move had led to a significant reduction on the backlog.

Mr Mophuting said while the ministry appreciated that they would always be appeals for as long as the right to appeal existed, all concerned stakeholders should strive towards minimising incidences of appeals and costly litigation.

Mr Mophuting said the other aspect of transformation in terms of the Land Tribunal Act, was the broadening of the tribunal mandate from handling just tribal land cases to include planning appeals.

“In 2016/17 and 2017/8, we have received 65 planning appeals and 1 010 land appeals,” he said.

He said in urban areas, planning appeals were mostly on change of land use from residential to civic and community uses, while in non-urban areas there was increased litigation around change of land use from masimo/fields to non-agricultural.”

Based on the current situation, Mr Mophuting said the stakeholder consultative workshop was intended at providing an overview and stimulating discussions on how to accelerate land dispute resolutions for socio-economic development. Ends