TGLP: Underlying Assumptions and Developmental Strategy

There is a tendency among writers on the political economy of agrarian reform and rural differentiation in Botswana simply to stress the state ideological aspects of policy formulation (e.g. it is common to find whole lists of the so-called national development objectives, national principles, national development strategies and policies etc). This approach is intellectually irresponsible not least because it relegates much needed analysis to the background but also because it reduces intellectual discourse to the level of morality stories of the failure/success, good/bad, and strong/weak types. In the analysis of agrarian policies in Botswana and their influence on social differentiation and poverty we must steadfastly avoid such a simplistic approach. We must necessarily resort to a much more sophisticated and informative approach where class orientations of various social groups are considered and, furthermore, the ideology and economic behaviour of all economic and political actors be attributed to both personal psychology and structural dependence within the post-independence political economy and the new state itself. It is this belief that actually explains the highly multidisciplinary approach so evident in this thesis.

Development strategy is one of the most misunderstood concepts. For the purposes of our analysis here we understand development strategy to mean a set of internally consistent plans deduced from a general or several part-theories given certain goals (see Hesselberg, 1985). Ideologically, livestock policy in post-independence Botswana may, if one accepts the political rhetoric of the time, have been geared towards an increase and improvement in livestock production accompanied by a preservation of the pasture. But unfortunately there is little evidence to show this, and the really sad thing is the realisation that livestock policy remained instead subsumed under the overall general development policy of the country which has given

priority to growth targets, in both livestock and mineral production, and attaches second place to goals of redistribution and social justice.

In other words in Botswana, just as elsewhere in much of Africa (Sahn and Sarris, 1994), interventionism in the rural economy was a reflection of the state's power to create transfers and rents that could be utilised by the regime to build a political base. This explains why more interventionist measures coincided with the first general elections after independence.

The rationale behind the introduction of TGLP was simple. The Government, not the people, was to identify "empty" land (initially in the western part of the country), zone it, and translate it into commercial, privatised, cattle ranches. Within this very approach one can easily see some startling, if not only absurd, assumptions. According to Government plans, commercial ranching areas were to be located primarily in the Kalahari sandveld (i.e. the western part of the country) which was largely thought to be open grasslands and uninhabited except for a few cattleposts which had mushroomed in the face of national widespread intensification of British borehole technology application during the final days of colonial rule. Communal areas would substantially coincide with the eastern hardveld area of the country where most rural Batswana and much of their livestock were located. Ironically, it was widely known and historically well-documented that most of the land earmarked for this mammoth land scheme traditionally belonged to the semi- nomadic hunter-gatherer ethnic communities of khoisan descent (Wily, 1979a). The fact that the BDP leadership of the day chose deliberately to mislead its army of western trained technical survey personnel underlines the class orientation nature of TGLP. In pursuit of vested economic interests, portfolio ministers, backbenchers, bureaucrats and party functionaries conspired to abdicate their duties and responsibilities pertaining to social justice and deliberately sponsored a vicious class project whose repercussions are still evident to date (Hitchcock, 1982). For as one contemporary observer put it:

In effect TGLP now provides a modern example of a land grab along the same lines as alienation of the Kenya Highlands by the British, the enclosure movement in England, and the privatisation of land in the Ghanzi District (Katoboro, 1980, p. 12).

The comparisons drawn may sound harsh and exaggerated, especially when one bears in mind that they are made with reference to one of the few countries in the Third World which still claims to have an unblemished record in human rights abuse, but the tragedy is that the resemblance between the observed historical experiences and TGLP is strikingly similar.

The 1975 Government White Paper recommended that tribal grazing areas be zoned into three distinctive categories.

(i) Land suitable for commercial purposes, basically cattle ranching, that would be leased to Batswana and developed on an exclusive basis, either individually or in syndicates.

(ii) Land which would remain communal in nature, save for the introduction of stock limitations.

(iii) Land set aside as reserve areas, which would be available for future generations, or for non-ranching purposes, such as mining, wildlife, and arable agriculture.

A number of words above are italicised and this calls for some explanation. Italicised words in categories (i) and (ii) are highlighted to underline our perception that post-colonial reforms of the tribal land tenure system in Botswana were influenced by existing accounts and interpretations of that very system which in essence were residual from the colonial past. At a practical level these changes were a reflection of the fact that the development of a landed aristocracy, which had been occurring with its own momentum against communalist forms of land tenure throughout the last three decades of colonial domination, was just about to be accelerated by the formal institution of legal recognition. Italics in the last category bear what we consider to be serious socio-economic and political dimensions whose repercussions almost brought civil strife to the country between 1989 and 1993 (RoB, 1992a). All these will be covered in a separate Chapter later on. It might, however, be noteworthy to draw the reader's attention to the cynical paradox inherent in the state's consideration of posterity while embarking on an enclosure movement (see category iii above).

At its conception, it would appear that the architects of TGLP wanted it to be approached in a phased manner. The initial step was to involve the zoning of the land base taking into consideration factors like water points, soil types, vegetation and range survey. The second phase, to coincide with the first, aimed at initiating a large scale consultation campaign to inform the public about the new policy (primarily through a massive radio campaign). The final phase, which anticipated a success of the former, was to be characterised by the demarcation, allocation and leasing of land to various proprietors. The TGLP was thus an extremely ambitious scheme right from the beginning. It must have been clear to its initiators that the selling of this policy package to the public and the subsequent implementation exercise, and even the possible rejection of the policy by those who could not perceive any benefits from its implementation (and they were many), would be costly. The TGLP was the first major national policy to be undertaken by the BDP leadership, and it is unlikely that the Government would have preferred anything but the success of the policy. This was important because it was introduced at a time when the Government was trying to consolidate both its political legitimacy and also demonstrate the credibility of its economic programme.

In the 1970s some social scientists were already pointing out the dilemmas confronting the post­ independence state in Botswana with regard to the widely perceived need to give substance to the concept of independence in a sub-regional context geographically, economically, and politically integrated into a sub-system dominated by the racist South African regime {Osborne, 1986). One academic struck the cord when he advocated that national debates about the "content of independence" be less concentrated on political and economic relations with other countries to the exclusion of what independence could mean in terms of a more internal directed perspective. Osborne (1986) argued that:

... since the majority of Botswana’s people are located in the rural areas... independence has also to be measured with regard to what it has meant, or could mean to, this body of people as individuals and communities. In short, the real meaning of independence lies in the possibility of an effective programme of rural development (p. 1)

Such strong arguments probably had some impact on the contemporary political leadership of Botswana but they failed to underscore the strength of prevailing features in terms of vested interests or classes within the political system which were incompatible with, and would, with the passage of time, seriously distort the future path of rural development.

The policies designed to affect the rural economy have, far from working towards the stated goal of equality as advocated by the social science of the 1970s and repeated ad nauseam in contemporary party political rhetoric, operated in exactly the opposite direction. Whilst some of the policies adopted are to blame for this, the most serious contradictions arose from the fact that the group benefiting economically from the same policies was to a considerable degree coterminous with that which was receiving greater political power and influence: Kuperis (1970) so-called "New Men" whose dominance in the rural economy is reflected in the preponderance of political forces represented by the BDP.