As the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development undertakes “a valuation exercise for eligible properties outside of towns and cities, which will assist the effort to extend the rateable property base and collect appropriate rates”, prime property owned by one of Botswana’s largest companies will be exempt.
The valuation exercise was announced by the Minister of Finance and Economic Development, Dr. Thapelo Matsheka, in his 2021/22 budget speech.
In terms of Section 39(4) of the Local Government Act, land set aside under the provisions of the Tati Concessions Land Act is exempt from property tax. Section 2 of the Tati Concessions Land Act states: “The Tati Concessions, Limited, its successors and assigns, is hereby confirmed in the full, free and undisturbed possession as owners of all the land within the Tati District, the limits of which district are as follows, viz.: From the place where the Shashe River rises to its junction with the Tati and Ramokgwebana Rivers, thence along the Ramokgwebana River to where it rises and thence along the watershed of those rivers, subject to all the terms and conditions of this Act and in accordance with the laws now or hereafter in force within Botswana.”
COVID-19 has put the government in a severely compromised fiscal position. Resultantly, the government has begun taxing just about anything with and without a heartbeat. In his speech, Matsheka lamented that local authorities were underperforming in terms of revenue collection and alerted them to the fact that in the future, they “will have their subventions reduced, and will be required to raise a greater portion of their revenues locally, for instance by generating significantly more income from property taxes.”
To be clear, Section 39(4) of the Local Government Act also exempts land used for charitable causes, public burials, recreation or sport, agricultural shows, religious worship, subsistence farming and residential accommodation of clergy as well as of the needy, elderly and vulnerable from property tax. The valuation exercise that Matsheka spoke of will remove exemption for certain land holdings. It is highly likely that Tati Company will be exempted because amending the Tati Concessions Land Act will amount to disturbance that Section 2 of that Act purposefully guards against.
Going back to the administration of President Sir Seretse Khama, Tati Company has always enjoyed special treatment from the government. Anywhere else in Botswana, mineral rights belong to the state but Section 6 of the Tati Concessions Land Act says the following: “The right to all minerals and precious stones under the land in the Tati District is reserved to the Tati Concessions, Limited, and also the right of prospecting for and working the same, but no mining operations shall be carried on under any land on which buildings have been erected or improvements made unless compensation has been paid for any loss to be sustained by the owner or owners of such buildings or improvements by reason of such operations.”
Tati’s story is not told often and comprehensively enough. On the eve of independence, European settler communities in Tati, Tuli Block and Ghanzi, who had along been content with being part of the Bechuanaland Protectorate, asked to be ceded to South Africa. When that failed, they formed the Tuli Block Democratic Party to protect their commercial interests and would later recruit a group of young, western-educated blacks (among them future presidents Khama and Sir Ketumile Masire) into a political partnership that led to the formation of the Botswana Democratic Party. The “democratic party” in the Botswana Democratic Party comes from the Tuli Block Democratic Party. Some of the young, western-educated blacks whom the TBDP recruited would lead the team that negotiated independence from the British and the resulting constitution made cast-iron legal guarantees that existing property rights would not be disturbed.
At independence in 1966, Tati Company controlled 2062 square miles of land in the north. The language used in the Tati Concessions Land Act (“full, free and undisturbed possession”) was lifted whole from similar law made by the colonial government in 1911. On September 17, 1970, Khama announced an agreement between his government and Tati Company. In terms of that agreement, the company donated 115 000 acres of rural land and 2000 acres of urban land in Francistown to the government. The company also agreed to sell the government approximately 220 000 acres of rural land and 1600 acres of urban land in Francistown.
In reaction to this development, a United Kingdom publication called Venture published an article by Sandy Grant, a historian who is now a Mmegi columnist. Grant stated the agreement suggested that mineral survey work on Tati territory near Francistown had proceeded so satisfactorily that it was now in the company’s interests to remove the restrictions which it had placed on the town’s growth while at the same time ensuring for itself, a major share in the resultant profits. The company still restricts Francistown’s growth and on occasion, the government has to buy land from it at prohibitive cost. Part of the hat of Grant article’s reads: “The Tati concession in northern Botswana was an example of colonial generosity to private companies with the property of local people.”
While vast tracts of some of the land that Tati owns lie fallow, the local people are in desperate need of land upon which to live and practice agriculture. As the former Tati East MP, Guma Moyo, revealed to Sunday Standard three years ago, the situation has triggered survival instincts in some.
“People are already invading farms in Themashanga,” revealed Moyo, who then incorporated a pretty heavy Setswana word to describe the attitude of the invaders. “Ba dira ka bodipa [They do it brazenly]. They cut the fence of a nearby game farm to allow their cattle access to good pastures. Actually, the fight over land has started.”
In reverse order, some of the wild animals escape captivity into an unprotected area where they are instantly targetted for their meat by poachers.
Themashanga’s own councillor, Kudzani Tobokani, revealed another set of troubling details: that during periods of drought, residents’ cattle cross over onto nearby farms, some of which are in a very bad state of progressive disrepair. In turn, farmers impound the cattle and demand compensation of P500 per head before they could release them.
According to World Inequality Lab, a pioneering research project focussing on the study of income and wealth distribution worldwide, “high levels of inequality are found in countries that experienced white settlers’ colonization, a type of colonization that produced very high land concentration – through discriminatory laws of access to land – as well as low rural wages – through mobility restrictions.”