24 Mar 2022

The law should compel government to avail its attorneys to merafe to help them fight for their assets to avert the high cost of litigation. 

Making submissions before the Presidential Commission of Inquiry on the Review of the Constitution Thursday, Kachikau residents said merafe at times got robbed of their assets and their quest to fight for those often got stalled by lack of financial muscle.

In light of this, Kgosi Mmualefe Mmualefe of Kachikau contended that it was disheartening that dikgosi often watched helplessly as their tribes got disenfranchised.

A resident, Ms Polly Maome reiterated Kgosi Mmualefe’s call, and said it was not right for tribes to often be constrained by financial limitations to protect their assets.

Another speaker Ms Dorcus Radikatse requested for the law to make provision for the repatriation of foreign spouses to their countries of origin when circumstances were no longer favourable to their continued stay in Botswana. 

Ms Radikatse alleged that there were some women whose marriages had ended either due to divorce or the death of their spouses whose plight had taken a turn for the worst and were as a result contending with a life fraught with untold suffering.

“Molao-motheo a o sekaseke kgang e ya gore bomme ba, fa e le gore o tlhadilwe kana botshelo bo padile ka kwano le rre wa gagwe, a go lekwe gore a busediwe kwa legaeng la ga bone kwa a nang le ba ga bone teng, kwa a nang le botshelo teng,” she said.

Such people, Ms Radikatse said, should be facilitated to return to their countries of origin so as to be in a position to turn a new leaf in their lives and also give their children a better chance at faring well in life.

One Mr Jimmy Mokoti appealed for the re-introduction of tribal regiments and their entrenchment in the constitution.

The mephato, he alluded, would provide a vehicle for the resuscitation of volunteerism in communities, a virtue that he said had had immeasurable contribution in the building of local communities and the nation in whole.

Mr Mokoti, who was speaking on behalf of the Kachikau community, also asked that applications for land allocation be inheritable. 

Further, he requested that land management and administration be made the responsibility of dikgosi, and suggested that technical officers from the land boards should support the former in this work.

Regarding the death penalty, he proposed that the punishment be imposed with no regard to the existence of any extenuating circumstances that may have surrounded the commission of the offence.

Mr Darkie Setlhare on the one hand contested the call for dikgosi to administer land, saying as things were, there was no fault in land being administered by the land boards.

He said in the past when dikgosi administered land, they were often biased in discharging that responsibility, often allocating themselves and their loved ones chunks of land to the exclusion of the rest of the members of their communities. 

“Kabo-ditsha bagaetsho re tsamaya sentle re gata sentle, se neeleng dikgosi. Fa o ka lebelela dikgosi tsa maloba bana ba bone ba nale lefatshe gongwe le gongwe le kwa bo Shakawe, ba ne ba ikabela fela,” he said.

The resident moreover proposed that capital punishment be retained, and in the same vein hailed the availing by the state of legal representation for accused persons who were financially constrained to engage attorneys to advance their defence in murder cases.

That, he opined afforded those on trial a shot at escaping the hangman’s noose, as well as comfort that they had been afforded a fair hearing in the event that they were sent to the gallows. 

“The process that we are following at the moment is okay. An attorney should be engaged to fight from the accused’s corner and possibly secure a lesser punishment for them because I doubt anyone in their right mind would kill another person without reason,” he said, indicating that at times the accused would have acted in defence to a threat posed on their person by the deceased.

Mr Setlhare also asked that the law should allow for stringent measures to be taken against judicial officers who exhibited unethical conduct.

He argued that some judicial officers were becoming increasingly biased in the discharge of their duties, an ill that he proposed should be nipped in the bud before it became deeply rooted in the judiciary. BOPA