Gabane residents petition minister over controversial land compensation

Residents of Gabane have petitioned the Minister of Lands and Agriculture, Micus Chimbombi, to address them on the controversial land compensation.They feel that the Kweneng Land Board is being unfair to them. The residents say they have long been denied the right to use their ploughing fields under the guise that the fields will be acquired by the land board because they are within the village development expansion area.This decision according to the petition, was taken in the 1990s when the Mogoditshane Sub-Land Board was established.The exercise has been moving at a snail’pace and most of the affected ploughing fields are yet to be acquired. Therefore, they have not been able to plough their fields since then.“The extremely low government monetary compensation rates have made them unreasonably poor, coupled with extremely slow payout of compensation.“It is under these grounds that the acquisition of the fields has been slow, which ultimately led to the introduction of compensation in kind which proved to be more adequate than the monetary compensation.“This took into consideration the views of the land right holders as compared to the former”, they said in the petition.They have complained about the long waiting list for consideration and allocation of plots which dates as far back as 1993 when the Mogoditshane Sub-Land Board was established.They said this is compounded by the haphazard allocation of plots in some instances, where the waiting list is seemingly not followed.“There are missing records in the Land Boards, which results in people being denied their land rights. For instance, people who have submitted their original certificates as well as other documentation of inheritance end up disappearing in the offices of the Land Board, leaving affected parties with little to no help at all”, the petition says.According to the people of Gabane, there has been either no or slow implementation of decisions.“An example is where people have resolutions, but the implementation by the Land Board has not taken place. This negatively affects their livelihood.“The people convened at the Gabane Kgotla on 18 March 2023 to discuss the issue of land in Gabane and the surrounding ploughing fields (masimo) which belong to the people of Gabane.”This was after a kgotla meeting addressed by the Kweneng Land Board Chairperson on 09 March 2023, which touched on the following key issues: He informed attendees at the Kgotla meeting that the Mogoditshane Sub-Land board is not authorised to give compensation in kind, therefore, all the resolutions made by the Mogoditshane Sub-Land board in 2019 are null and void.“The main land board, which is Kweneng Land Board, is the only authority authorised to grant compensation in kind. That all the people who were offered were offered Resolutions by the Mogoditshane Sub-Land board as compensation in kind for ploughing fields which had been surrendered back to the Land board including residential plots which had been lawfully passed to third parties through the process of land transfer will have their resolutions revoked and subsequently given their land back.”

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Gabane residents petition minister over controversial land compensation