How to steal a fourteen thousand (14000) hectares ranch

Stealing fourteen thousand hectares of pristine, flat, productive land may seem hard to accomplish, but not if the thief is a government, and the owner of the land is illiterate. As our country’s sixtieth Independence anniversary approaches, one family sees it as yet another milestone in their forced deprivation.

Hubona Nshakazhogwe was a peasant in colonial Bechuanaland Protectorate, who sued Chief Khama iii following the chief’s despatch of a regiment to assault, and if necessary, kill him in or around the year 1914. Hubona won the suit on appeal to the British Privy Council, and was compensated with the 14000 hectares of land. That land has now been stolen. 

To be fair to the ruling Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC) party, which came to power only in 2024 after fifty eight (58) years of rule by the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) , the UDC had nothing to do with the said theft. The theft was entirely the work of the BDP government. But conventional wisdom, and even the legal statutes in both Colonial Britain and present day Botswana hold that RECEIVING STOLEN PROPERTY (and doing nothing to restore such property to its owner) is tantamount to theft. 

Hubona Nshakazhogwe died, leaving his progeny on his land. He had waged futile battles to ward off Tshekedi Khama, the self-educated legal expert, settling squatters on his land. Hubona did not know who to appeal to for help against Tshekedi’s moves, and Tshekedi knew this. Ultimately, Tshekedi won – the squatters became a permanent feature of the land. Sadly, the British government were not aware of what Tshekedi was doing to Hubona’s land. After all they had officially delineated Hubona’s land as part of the North East district and NOT part of Bamangwato Reserve, of which Tshekedi Khama was chief. It was only in 1959 when the squatters demanded a Primary school, and Gaositwe Chiepe as Education czar recommended it, that Tshekedi Khama’s shenanigans were revealed. He opposed the building of the school on the grounds that the land on which the school was proposed to be built was private land. Karma evidently stepped in, and Tshekedi Khama died. The school was built on Hubona’s land. Hubona’s consent was neither solicited nor granted. Gaositwe Chiepe knew this. Hubona died two years later. 

Either oblivious of the recent developments in the Protectorate viz a viz Hubona’s land, or deliberately asserting the property rights of the late Hubona Nshakazhgwe, the British Survey Department descended on the land and renewed the beacons just before our Independence in 1966. As I write this, Hubona’s progeny have been pushed aside. The Government has allocated and continues to allocate Hubona’s land to squatters, all this in violation of the binding agreement that the Republic of Botswana entered into with the British Government on Botswana’s attainment of Independence. Hubona’s land now carries the names of the squatters. The squatters’ leaders have even been declared members of the House of Chiefs by the BDP government. A district boundary has been drawn through Hubona’s land/ranch, splitting the land into two neighbouring districts of Tutume and Tonota. The Botswana government has stolen Hubona Nshakazhogwe’s ranch and the British Government does not seem to be even aware of it!