A controversial deal that the Bechuanaland Democratic Party leaders made during the independence talks in 1965 continues to haunt Botswana and became the subject of a parliamentary debate last Thursday morning.
Dr. James Kirby, an Australian academic at La Trobe University has written that in 1963, when it had become too expensive to maintain colonies and at a time that some British people had settled in such colonies, the British government made independence conditional on a bill of rights. The bill protects property rights. Belgium’s exit from the Congo in 1960 had been accompanied by violent attacks against white residents. Determined to prevent such eventuality in its colonies, Britain decided to free colonies only on condition that property rights of British colonial settlers wouldn’t be interfered with. At this point, Bechuanaland had introduced a three-tier land tenure system tribal land, state land and freehold land which independent Botswana would retain.
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