The Tribal Grazing Land Policy

INTRODUCTION

This essay is about the Tribal Grazing Land Policy (TGLP), which is part of the broader land reform program that was initiated by the post-independence Botswana government to address certain land use problems such as overgrazing and land degradation, which posed a challenge to the new government in the 1970s. It is also viewed as an agrarian reform and rural development strategy of commercialisation, privatisation and modernisation through reduction in stocking in communal areas.

Botswana is a completely landlocked country located at the centre of Southern Africa, sharing borders with South Africa (East and South), Namibia (West and North), Zambia (North) and Zimbabwe (North and East) (Chipasula and Miti, 1989; IMF, 1973). It has a population of just fewer than 2 million people, mostly young and growing at about 3.5% per annum, occupying a geographical land area of 582, 000 km², almost the size of Kenya or France (Dahl, 1981) with a population density of about 3 persons per square kilometre (CSO, 2005). The population is concentrated on a 200 km-wide strip of land on the East, the most fertile or less arid land which is traversed by a single track railway line and a major road highway (called “A1” or “Ramatlabama-Ramokgwebana” Road) that connects the country to its southern (South Africa) and northern neighbours (mainly Zimbabwe). Much of the area to the West, or two-thirds of the total land area, is the Kgalagadi desert (Ochieng, 1981; IMF, 1973).

Somehow land issues have become important in development policy discourse and practice and land is a key resource in rural livelihoods. According to a UN Report 60% of the active population in Southern Africa is dependent on land for their livelihoods (UN ECA, 2003). That makes land issues of critical social significance in reducing poverty and inequality as part of any agricultural policy and rural development strategy in any country (Makgetla 2008). In the SADC region (Southern Africa) this is

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