28 Jul 2020

The growth of private sector has seen an over- spill of businesses into residential areas, which is disrupting social ecologies across Botswana.

Urban settlements such as Mogoditshane for instance face a growing challenge as more people convert their plots for industrial use.

Mogoditshane/Thamaga physical planning committee registers on average between 100 and 150 submissions for change of use, whose intent threatens to swallow up the  residentially zoned land.   

The Director in the Department of Town and Country Planning, Ms Eunice Mmono noted in an interview recently that it was a difficult situation to protect residential areas against industrialisation as the informal sector continued to spill over into greater Gaborone.

She noted that some development pockets in urban areas were not always compliant with development control codes, leading to reduced uniformity in planned areas.

The situation has digressed social securities for ordinary Batswana who had to bear the brunt of living in close peripherals to manufacturing and process intensive businesses to the effect that some have had to sell off their homes.

However, Ms Mmono said areas such as Mogoditshane were planning areas, which continued to experience revitalisation efforts in order to comply with development codes and standards.

‘Much of the land in Botswana falls under tribal land reserve, but with time the whole country may be declared planning areas,’ she said.

The Mogoditshane/Thamaga Sub-district Council took a lead to address the challenge in 2017 when they initiated an ambitious revitalisation face lift project for Mogoditshane.

According to principal physical planner, Ms Gorata Sefawe, the project, dubbed Mogoditshane P III Road Corridor Local Area, was a land regeneration plan, which would intensify business opportunities while normalising the residentially zoned area situation for Batswana.

Ms Sefawe said the P III project was an extract from approved development plans in Mogoditshane and covered a hectarage of 354.

The P III project envisages to transform Mogoditshane into a business hub, where the Pula Spar-Gabane Junction road would be transformed into a commercial, residential and mixed use frontier.

According to Ms Sefawe, the homes surrounding a 100-metre road reserve width on each side of the corridor would be divided into nodes that would accommodate the planned development and capacitate orderly development.

She said that plot rationalisation would also be made along the 200-metre width road reserve to accommodate the P III implementation.

Although the prevailing challenge is that plot sizes along the road would be cut, Ms Sefawe noted that there were plans afoot to compensate those who would be affected by the development.

She noted that currently, 1 250 plots in different land areas around the corridor would be affected by the development, however, adding that all statutes for development planning had been taken into account.

While the Mogoditshane project presents a solution to the encroachment of business interests in residential areas, many challenges still exist in land management.

However, Ms Sefawe noted that such issues could only be addressed by the collective compliance of all involved.

She noted that with such cases as Mogoditshane, some individuals had already consulted on how best to get full value for their land. ENDS