15 Nov 2020

Maun West Member of Parliament, Mr Dumelang Saleshando has tabled a motion calling for the reversal of appointed individuals who were politically active in the five years preceding their appointment to the land boards.

Mr Saleshando highlighted that it was important for Parliament to reverse such appointments and replace the appointees with young unemployed people with tertiary qualifications.

He complained of lack of transparency in appointing board members saying the minister misused the powers vested upon him by using his discretion, which was unjustifiable.

The legislator argued that the minister on several occasions did not satisfactorily justify why he chose to appoint land board members who do not conform to requirements stated in the public communication inviting citizens to apply for land board membership.

Some appointees, he said were never shortlisted for interviews, something which he said contradicted the principles of recruitment.

Mr Saleshando also questioned the rationale for overlooking younger applicants with tertiary qualifications in favour of the older applicants with inferior qualifications or no experience in land administration.

With the unemployment rate rampant among the youth, Mr Saleshando argued that it was important for certain positions to be reserved for the youth as a way of empowering them.

He said it was disappointing to note that the appointments were not done on merit but was used to reward ruling party loyalist who were active during  the campaign leading to the general elections.

He thus said the appointment of individuals who were politically active in the five years preceding their appointment to the land board could breed corruption on land allocations as such board members could skew allocations towards members of the ruling party.

In response to the motion, Minister of land management, water and sanitation services, Mr Kefentse Mzwinila dismissed the motion, saying all the appointed land board members met the requirements of the provisions of the Tribal Land Act and its regulations.

Mr Mzwinila explained that some of the appointed land board members were not shortlisted for interviews to which he used Statutory Instrument No 29 of 2017 which allows him to appoint to the land board a person who had not been included in the list of candidates submitted by land board selection committee.

He further noted that he applied Statutory Instrument No 29 of 2017 where there was a huge difference in age, qualifications, experience, competencies or geographical representation of villages, especially within the sub-land boards.

The instrument, he said was also used to balance gender representation and to ensure inclusion of people from remote area settlements to empower them.

Minister Mzwinila indicated that only 94 youth out of which 90 had tertiary qualifications were appointed, He said  62 of them were women and 32 were men.  

He added that the implementation  of provisions of the instrument was done in consultation with the land board committee in situations where there was an imbalance of competencies.

He further noted that the contract prohibited the appointees to be active in politics while serving in the land board.

Mr Mzwinila also refuted claims that recruitment preference was partisan, highlighting that the floated advert was open to all Batswana within the age bracket of 26 to 70 years irrespective of political affiliation. Ends