Foreigners will soon own Mogoditshane - Rakgare
Minister of Youth, Gender, Sport and Culture who is also Member of Parliament for Mogoditshane Tumiso Rakgare has expressed concern at the level at which his constituents continue to sell land especially to foreigners.
Mogoditshane is one of the highly-populated villages in the periphery of Gaborone and a beehive for small to medium businesses. The MP stated that it is very worrisome that people after waiting for so many years to be allocated land, they in turn sell the land. He said land is an investment that will benefit generations to come.
According to Rakgare, as things stand in no distant future, Mogoditshane will be run by foreigners as they would be the ones with vast pieces of land and property.
“We continue to enrich foreigners in our own backyard. We have sold land to foreigners who are now building and renting out their premises to Batswana. There are many people of Asian nationality who own chunks of land in Mogoditshane and this is all our doing as the people of Mogoditshane.
“Our area will soon be run by foreigners. If, you are not careful one day you are going to have a foreigner as your MP,” the minister said during a Kgotla meeting in Mogoditshane.
Rakgare challenged residents to always ask for help instead of selling the land. He said people should utilise his office and other government offices such as the land board to seek assistance regarding their land before they could opt for selling. He revealed that there are many applications at Mogoditshane Sub land board for land transfer and that most of them are from Batswana to foreigners.
“There is too much of a mess at our land board. We have people who are also conniving for the sale of the land. This is done by us and I think we should look out for each other. We have our leaders who are corrupt and are involved in maladministration.
“People have been taking our parents’ ploughing fields under false pretences under the cover of darkness. We should be concerned about such characters because they are not good for our community and the success of this village,” Rakgare warned.
The minister told the meeting that government has done well in allocating plots following the setting of the target by President Mokgweetsi Masisi. He explained by November 2022 about 33 000 plots had already been allocated against the target of 100 000. He indicated that Mogoditshane Sub Land board has promised to allocate plots by winter this year.
“We have experienced delay in allocation of land because we had wanted to have land serviced first before allocation could be done. Where our village is growing in Nkoyaphiri the land is not serviced but that is where we would like to allocate it out to people.
“It has taken some years for plots to be allocated in some of our areas because we were still servicing the land, I believe the best thing is for us to allocate land then services will come later. This is also to reduce the backlog at the land board and at the same time our people will have a place to stay,” Rakgare pointed out.