Local administration in Botswana

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION AND DEVELOPMENT, VOL. 8, 183-202 (1988)

Local administration in Botswana

WILLIAM TORDOFF

University of Manchester

SUMMARY

Since Botswana became independent in 1966 a steady process of decentralization has been undertaken by a Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) government confident in its own legitimacy and committed officially to a policy of rural development. In 1978 the President appointed a Local Government Structure Commission to test the suitability of the existing structure and to advise on the relationship between the four main institutions at district level-the District Administration, the District Council, the Land Board and the Tribal Administration. In its 1979 Report the Commission recommended that each institution should retain its separate identity, with its powers balanced by those of the others. This article reviews the working of each institution, and concludes that the Commission’s recommendation was justified. It notes, however, that the balance between the four institutions has been tilted to an extent in favour of the District Administration. It shows that the District Councils have displayed an improved capacity for plan implementation, but need more skilled technical personnel and a better quality of elected councillor; that the Land Boards are no longer subordinate to the District Councils in administrative matters, but are hampered by a shortage of transport and finance; and that Tribal Administration staff still work under very poor conditions, though their salaries and pensionable status are much improved.

INTRODUCTION

Representative local government has survived for over 20 years in Botswana, and has even prospered within the country’s multi-party framework. This is no mean achievement if Botswana’s record is compared with that of the great majority of other Commonwealth African states which drew upon the English local government tradition. Thus, in Ghana before the 1966 coup, elected local authorities were subject to frequent changes in area and functions, and have had a chequered history subsequently. In Kenya the county councils were stripped of their three major functions (education, health, and roads) in January 1970, while in Sierra Leone the district councils were suspended in 1972 after being chronically sick for several years. In Tanzania the effect of the 1972 decentralization measures was to increase the power of the bureaucrats in local affairs at the expense of popular participation; features of this decentralized system were retained when local authorities were formally re-established in January 1984. Steps to revive elective local government were also taken in Nigeria: in 1975-1976 the military government initiated a process of reform that resulted in 1979 in the constitutional establishment of a third tier of government within the federation, but the results so

Professor Tordoff is in the Department of Government, University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL, U.K.

0271-2075/88/020183-20$10.00 0 1988 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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far have been disappointing; this action was taken against a 20-year record, in Nigeria’s southern states, of stagnation and corruption in local government (the North had a much better record). In Zambia rural local authorities long performed minimal functions at the cost of considerable sums of public money; since 1980 the elective principle has counted for little under a system which underpins the power of the ruling party at the local level (Tordoff, 1980; Mawhood, 1983). Zimbabwe is at present facing the uphill task of amalgamating rural councils which had serviced the needs of the white commercial farming community in the pre-independence period and the (55) district councils which were the post-1980 successors of the former (243) under-resourced African councils (Karase and Sanders, n.d.).

As I have argued elsewhere (Tordoff, 1980, p. 387), the experience in several of these Commonwealth African states at various times in their post-independence history

casts grave doubts on the suitability of English-style local government in conditions where the government, be it civilian or military, often rests on a narrow base of legitimacy and is engaged in such a constant struggle for survival that it will not risk conferring extensive autonomy on local representative bodies.

Radical departures from the English system were often considered and sometimes acted upon-Ghana, for example, implemented the recommendations of the Mills- Odoi report in 1967 that a single, integrated public service should be created. Almost everywhere, popular participation has suffered as closer fusion between central and local government has taken place, and to an extent a number of Commonwealth African states have adopted aspects of the French prefectoral model of government.

Some of these centralizing trends are to be observed in post-independence Botswana, where central government Ministries and Departments account for approximately 80 per cent of development expenditure in the districts. Neverthe- less, representative local government does survive, and the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) government is committed to its continuance. Since the ruling party’s dominance is not in question, having been attested in successive general elections that were both ‘free and fair’, the Government was able to consider on their merits proposals to reform the local government system put forward in 1979 by a Presidential Commission on Local Government Structure (LGSC). The latter was representative of central government, local government and private sector interests, and was chaired by a government Minister (the late Mr L. M. Seretse).

In a two-volume report the Commission recommended that each of the four main institutions at district level in Botswana-the District Administration, the District Council, the Land Board, and the Tribal Administration-should retain its separate identity, with its powers balanced by those of the others. The Commission and the great majority of those who submitted evidence to it were not convinced ‘that coordination will be improved by simply placing all existing local authorities into a single organisation’ (GOB-LGSC, 1979, I, p. 1); this was a reference to the suggestion, put forward especially by members of the Central District Council, that power in each district should be concentrated in the District Council as part of a major exercise in decentralization. The Commission found that the capacity of the

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District Councils was severely overstrained, and that further political devolution was out of the question at that time. This article reviews the changes in the structure and organization of each of the four district institutions in the 8-year period since the Commission reported, and asks whether the Commission’s recommendation, which was accepted by the Botswana government, that they should not be amalgamated was justified in the light of subsequent events.

THE SOCIOECONOMIC AND POLITICAL CONTEXT

Botswana is a landlocked state, bordered by Zambia, Zimbabwe, Namibia and the Republic of South Africa, with which (together with Lesotho and Swaziland) it is linked in a customs agreement; to an uncomfortable extent the country remains economically dependent on the white minority-ruled Republic, whose mines attract some 20,000 Botswana migrant workers each year. Much of Botswana’s large land area, covering 582,000 square kilometres, is desert, and three-quarters of its approximately 1 million people live in the relatively fertile eastern region straddling the north-south railway line. Rainfall is unreliable and in periods of drought, such as occurred in the late 1960s and the early 1980s, it is the rural poor who suffer most. Though urbanization is increasing rapidly-the population of Gaborone, the capital, is calculated to have jumped from 17,718 in 1971 to an estimated 96,100 in 198&-four-fifths of Batswana still live in the rural areas. Most of them aspire to own cattle, both for reasons of security and for use as draught animals for ploughing. However, the trend has been for the national cattle herd, which numbered 2.6 million in 1984, to be concentrated in the hands of fewer, bigger farmers, among whom are many of the country’s leading politicians and public servants. The distribution of cattle among the population is very uneven: in round terms, 45 per cent of all rural households own no cattle, 40 per cent own up to 50 head and are particularly vulnerable when drought or foot-and-mouth disease occurs, and 15 per cent own between them over 75 per cent of the national herd. In Kgatleng, and increasingly in the eastern region generally, the pressure on land has become intense, resulting in over-grazing and soil erosion. Fortunately, the economy has been boosted by the discovery and exploitation of diamonds at Orapa, Letlhakane and Jwaneng, and of copper and nickel at Selebi-Phikwe, and beef products have been displaced by minerals as Botswana’s major export and source of revenue (GoB-NDP, VI, 1985, chs. 1-2; Colclough and McCarthy, 1980, pp. 99-107; Reilly, 1981, pp. 31-32). A new international airport on the outskirts of the capital, an impressive and still growing university campus (also in Gaborone), bitumen roads linking Gaborone with Kanye, Jwaneng and the Republic of South Africa to the south, Molepolole to the west, and Francistown, Nata, Kasane, Zimbabwe and Zambia to the north, new and extended secondary schools and improved health facilities, including the building of a new hospital in Francistown- these are all visible signs of development. They are undertaken by a government which, within a basically capitalist system, has by and large made good use of the country’s own revenue earnings and of the grants made available to it by the Swedish International Development Authority (SIDA) and other donors, as well as loans from such external creditors as the World Bank. At the same time, as the Presidential Commission on Economic Opportunities (CEO), which, although

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chaired by the Minister of Finance and Development Planning, had a membership drawn largely from the private sector, pointed out in May 1982, ‘only one-third of Government development expenditure is taking place in the rural areas where four- fifths of Batswana live’ (GoB-CEO, 1982, p. 18). Relatively few Batswana have the capacity or specialized knowledge to benefit from the new economic opportunities being opened up to them, with the result that the assets owned by Batswana are very unequally distributed. The Commission found that few Batswana were running their own businesses of any size, though the number of trading licences of all kinds had grown rapidly since 1975 (GoB-CEO, 1982, pp. 10-12). The Government remained committed, in National Development Plan VI (1985-1991), as in NDP V (1979-1985), to the creation of productive employment opportunities, particularly in the rural areas. However, this remained an uphill task in view of the country’s shortage of citizens with business experience, and of skilled manpower generally.

The critical nature of many of the comments made by the Presidential Commission on Economic Opportunities underlines the openness of Botswana’s multi-party political system. As a result of the parliamentary elections held in September 1984 the ruling BDP secured 29 seats, the Botswana National Front (BNF) four seats, and the Botswana People’s Party (BPP) one seat; 77.6 per cent of registered voters cast their ballots in the contested constituencies (the MP for Kgalagadi constituency was returned unopposed) (GoB-General Election, 1984, Apps. D and E). Dr Quett Masire (BDP), who had succeeded Sir Seretse Khama as executive President in 1980, was returned as President; he and his advisory Cabinet operate a system of government which, in essentials, still follows closely the Westminster/Whitehall model. Key ministries concerned with rural development policy and implementation are the Ministry of Local Government and Lands (MLGL), the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning (MFDP), and the Ministry of Agriculture. The first of these (MLGL) is responsible for the four district institutions mentioned at the outset, and organizes the district planning process. Its Minister is supported politically by two Assistant Ministers and administratively by a Permanent Secretary and two Deputy Permanent Secretaries, of whom one heads a Rural and Lands Division and the other an Urban and Housing Division; the Ministry also includes a Department of Local Government Audit and the headquarters of the Unified Local Government Service (ULGS) both of which, though responsible through the Permanent Secretary to the Minister, enjoy a much higher degree of autonomy than the Ministry divisions. MFDP, which is headed by Mr Peter Mmusi, Vice-president and MP for Gaborone South, includes a Macro-Economic Planning Unit under the Director of Economic Affairs. It also houses a small Rural Development Unit which acts as a clearing house for all rural development matters at the centre, and provides the secretariat for the high-level Rural Development Council; the latter is a policy-making and coordinating body of which the Vice-president is chairman and the Minister of Local Government and Lands deputy chairman. Sectoral planning officers on the staff of the Director of Economic Affairs serve not only in MFDP but also (since 1982) in MLGL and other line Ministries. (Ministerial financial units are similarly staffed by MFDP officers.) The Ministry of Agriculture is divided into three main departments: the Department of Agricultural Field Services, the Department of Veterinary Services, and the Department of Agricultural Research. The first of

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these departments incorporates both crop production and animal production divisions, and is responsible for extension services to farmers. The country is divided into six agricultural regions, each under a Regional Agricultural Officer (RAO); the regions are divided into 22 districts and each district is headed by a District Agricultural Officer (DAO). Districts, in turn, are divided into extension areas (225 in all), each under an Agricultural Demonstrator. The Department also houses specialized technical divisions. In Agriculture, as in Education and Health, the Ministry’s regions and districts do not always coincide with existing administrative district boundaries; in April 1986 the Ministries concerned were told to correct this anomaly. Moreover, agricultural field officers, like their counterparts in most of the other Ministries and Departments working in the rural areas, retain strong vertical links with the centre, where all important (and many minor) decisions are taken. These links, and over-centralization in Gaborone, seriously impede the District Commissioner’s attempt to promote and coordinate development in his district.

DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION

The district administration has not been politicized on Tanzanian and Zambian lines but, as in Kenya, remains under the control of a civil service District Commissioner (DC); in Botswana the latter is responsible to the Minister of Local Government and Lands through the Ministry’s Permanent Secretary. As the principal agent for development in his district (there are ten administrative districts in all), the DC is chairman of the District Development Committee (DDC), joint manager (with the District Council Secretary) of the district plan, and responsible for implementing each year such particular aspects of that plan as are extracted from and embodied in an annual plan. He is an ex-officio member of the District Council and promotes the work, as member and/or adviser, of the DDC’s subcommittees, notably the Production Development Committee, the Land Use Planning Advisory Group, the District Extension Team, and the Drought and Disaster Committee. It was in recognition of the importance of these developmental duties that the Local Government Structure Commission, possibly drawing upon Tanzania’s experiment in decentralization, recommended that the DC’s non- developmental functions should be passed to other agencies, and that his office as formerly constituted should be abolished. In place of the colonial-style DC with all- embracing powers, the Commission urged that a District Development Director (DDD) of at least Under-Secretary rank should be appointed at the head of a District Development Administration responsible for district planning and the coordination and promotion of development. In its White Paper (No. 1 of 1981) the Government said that it accepted both the need to appoint a more senior officer to represent the Government at district level, and to increase that officer’s developmental role. However, it was convinced that the person overseeing development at district level must also be in overall administrative charge of the district; he should retain his title, his administrative functions and, until sufficient magistrates become available at all centres, his judicial functions. What mattered was to appoint DCs of the right calibre (GoB-LGSC, 1979, I. p. 5, and ch. 6; GoB- Govt. Paper No. 1 of 1981, pp. 4-5).

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I -- Nationol frontiers - - - - District boundaries tcc. Roilways

0 100 2 0 0 km

Figure 1. Botswana: administrative divisions. Reproduced from Reilly (1983), p. 142.

Following the issue of this White Paper, which was approved by the National Assembly in August 1981, there was no early, significant change in the sort of person who became DC. On the other hand, changes did take place in the DC's support staff as graduates (mainly in the social sciences) from the University of Botswana took up appointment as District Officer, District Officer (Development) and District Officer (Lands), though never in the numbers that were required. As far as overall district planning and development were concerned, the post of DO(D) was very important, having been filled throughout the 1970s by young expatriate volunteers who, with enthusiasm and often considerable skill, planned and coordinated district development activities, particularly as they affected central government Ministries and Departments. The DO(D) served as secretary of the DDC and was a member of most of its subcommittees. With the help of the Council Planning Officer (CPO), who was primarily concerned with the development functions for which the District Council was responsible, he undertook all the detailed work in preparing the district and annual plans and seeing to their


implementation (Reilly, 1981, 1983, pp. 169-170). By all accounts, several of the young Botswana graduates who were appointed DO(D)s a few years ago-and who have already gone, or are soon to go, to America to study for a Master’s degree in development planning and administration-have done well, showing a sense of purpose and dedication. But they are frustrated on two counts. First, like their counterparts the DO(L)s (who are also assured of graduate study in the United States), they are uncertain of the career prospects which their present job holds for them, being excluded from the professional (PR) grade of planners in MFDP and doubtful whether they can (like the administrative DOs) ever become DCs. Secondly, for much of their brief period in office they have not received the support and guidance which, as officers with virtually no practical experience, they had a right to expect from MLGL‘s planning unit. Members of this unit have been on MFDP’s establishment since 1982, and that Ministry must therefore bear prime responsibility for allowing the unit to fall seriously below strength in 1984-1985; the situation was made worse because of the extended illness of MLGL’s senior planning officer, now happily recovered.

There are additional reasons, apart from the inadequacy of MLGL’s planning unit, why a critical review of the district planning process is now required. First, because of the rather weak planning links between the districts and the centre, and the minimum impact which the choices and strategies of the districts have on the national plan, it needs to be asked whether the amount of time and effort spent on preparing very detailed district plans is still justified. In November 1984 the District Councils were told, on doubtful evidence, that the development plans which they had spent over a year preparing were ‘out of step with reality’. Moreover, their approved expenditures for NDP VI (1985-1991) were set initially by MFDP at a level (14 per cent in real terms below their actual expenditure during NDP V) which took no account of their improved implementing capacity; steps are now being taken to raise the expenditure ceilings of certain projects (Egner, 1986, pp. 94 and 97). A second question is how well the DDCs, which were set up as administrative bodies without executive authority by a presidential directive in January 1971, fulfil their intended role of coordinating development and planning activities in the districts. In some districts coordination is weak; indeed, in Kgatleng District, prior to the recent appointment of a new District Council Chairman, it was virtually non-existent. A complaint voiced by some heads of Ministries and Departments working in the districts is that many of the issues discussed in the DDC are not relevant to them; they react by not attending the (normally quarterly) DDC meetings regularly, or by keeping quiet when they do attend. Against them, on the other hand, it is alleged that the officers whom they send to represent them at DDC meetings are too junior to speak with any authority about ministerial/ departmental policy; the same complaint is lodged against departmental heads themselves in remote districts such as Ghanzi and Kgalagadi. Other complaints are that DDC secretaries and chairmen do not prepare for meetings thoroughly, and that meetings in the more populous districts have grown to an unmanageable size. The latter is a real problem in Central District, where one solution, already partially adopted, is to create a separate DDC in each of five subdistricts, each serviced (or to be serviced) by a DO(D). Another attempt to solve this problem, in the Central and other districts, has not been notably successful: it is to hold an annual district development conference representative of all the interest groups in

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the district as a means of excluding most of these groups from regular DDC meetings. This conference is the equivalent at district level of the national district development conference which is held in the capital each year, and which is especially valuable when specific issues, such as drought and unemployment in 1985, are discussed.

The above notwithstanding, the effective working of the DDC depends above all on the commitment and ability of the DC and on the DO(D)/DO(L)s who work under him. The importance of appointing DCs of proven ability was recognized by the Local Government Structure Commission in 1979, by the Government in its White Paper of August 1981, and by the Presidential Commission on Economic Opportunities in May 1982; the latter echoed earlier calls for the appointment of ‘high-ranking citizen public officers as DCs’ (GoB-CEO, 1982, p. 82). Eventually, with effect from 1 April 1986, the Government upgraded all ten DC posts, though not necessarily the present incumbents, to Superscale V (Under-Secretary), which is, probably purposely, one scale higher than that of Council chief executive officers. The MLGL Circular (No. 29 of 1986 issued by the Permanent Secretary and dated 20 May 1986) which made this announcement also required all senior government officers in charge of government departments to attend DDC meetings, and empowered the DC to take action against any public officer who, without good reason, did not comply. These were not new provisions, though the circular may have had the salutary effect of strengthening the hands of the DC in his capacity as the most senior government representative in his district and the coordinator of district development. As far as the DDCs are concerned, consideration might be given at some time in the future to converting them into executive bodies with direct control over funds and personnel. However, such a step might be resented by district councillors, and would in any case be premature until central Ministries and Departments can be persuaded to delegate more powers to their field officers than they do at present.

TRIBAL ADMINISTRATION

Since the independence of Botswana in 1966 the Tribal Administration has been stripped of the bulk of its statutory powers, including the custody of matimela cattle (i.e. stray and impounded cattle, now the subject of inquiry by a Presidential Commission), and the right to allocate tribal land, while the traditional right to regiment labour is officially frowned upon. On the other hand, it retains the important residual function of administering justice through the customary courts, and to this is to be added the hearing of land dispute cases in kgorla (the traditional gathering called by and usually presided over by the Tribal Authority or his representative), with an appeal lying to the Customary Court of Appeal; to enable him to hear such cases the Chief himself ceased to be a member of the Land Board in 1984. Moreover, Sandy Grant’s study of practice in Kgatleng District shows the inadequacy of assessing the role of the Tribal Administration through the medium of statutory and formal provisions alone. His findings are worth summarizing.

Writing in April 1981, Grant points out that Bakgatla Kgosi Linchwe I1 Kgafela makes tribal law in the kgorla, appoints representatives and headmen, uses regimental labour, directly controls a tribal police force increased in numbers and


status, invokes his traditional powers in the interests of security-thus in 1978 he called for volunteers to defend the country against Ian Smith, the Rhodesian Prime Minister, and very recently, in July 1986, required the registration of strangers visiting the district-and entertains ambassadors and other distinguished visitors to Mochudi, the district and tribal capital. Grant also maintains that the ‘new men’ in Mochudi, many of whom became elected district councillors, failed to assert themselves and thus created a power vacuum which Chief Linchwe was able to fill. In particular, the Kgatleng District Council, of which he was the elected chairman for many years, ‘cannot function adequately without the Chief‘s leadership’ (Grant, 1981, p. 99). (Today, 7 years after this article was written, Mr Grant suggests that this should perhaps be amended to read ‘cannot function adequately if the Chief opposes it’; two nominated members strongly backed by the Chief-first David Maine and more recently David Molefi-have been elevated to the Council chairmanship.) Again, Linchwe’s power derives from his access to those in higher authority in central government, and from his speeches on national issues in the House of Chiefs and, it might be added, from the role which he plays in other respects in national affairs-he was a member of the Local Government Structure Commission in 1978-1979 and is chairman of the Commission now investigating the practice of matimela. Sandy Grant concludes that ‘Linchwe’s power has been steadily increasing since independence when in theory he has been losing it’, and adds most interestingly that the disposal of development resources in Mochudi, which is in the hands of the Government and the District Council, is ‘not regarded as the key to individual authority, whether it be social or political’ (Grant, 1981,

Only detailed research into Botswana’s other traditional communities will show whether the above findings for the Bakgatla have general validity. Two points, however, appear incontestable: first that the bulk of the rural people still look to the Chief and his subordinates in the traditional hierarchy for advice and guidance on a wide range of issues, and secondly that the Tribal Administration therefore remains an influential institution in the promotion of rural development. It was in recognition of these ‘facts’ that the 1970 Local Government Study Group (LGSG) recommended that the Chief should continue to serve as an ex-officio member of the District Council, and that the Minister for Local Government should use the legal powers vested in him to nominate additional traditional members so that, with specially elected members, they constituted up to one-third of the total Council membership (GoB-LGSG, 1970, p. 40). Government accepted the first recommendation, but effectively negatived it subsequently by applying the ruling of the Mmusi Salaries Commission of 1978 that Chiefs were not entitled to allowances for attending Council (and Land Board) meetings and it rejected the second recommendation, which was based substantially upon Ghanaian experience. In some districts relations between the District Council and the Tribal Authority therefore remained strained, to the substantial disadvantage of the former. In order to overcome this problem, which threatened to impede development, the Local Government Structure Commission recommended in 1979 that the Chief should become the ceremonial President of the District Council rather than an ex-officio member; however, this proposal did not find official favour. The Commission also recommended that ‘the Tribal Administration, including its supporting staff of Secretaries, Court Clerks, Local Police and others, needs to be strengthened and

p. 94).

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provided with better facilities’, with conditions and schemes of service brought into line with those of the other local authorities and the public service; officers above TGA2 level should be recruited, appointed, promoted, transferred and disciplined by a Tribal Administration Wing of the Unified Local Government Service (ULGS) (GOB-LGSC, 1979, I , pp. 36-38). While Tribal Administration employees still work under very poor conditions, their salaries and pensionable status now equate in most cases with those of civil servants. The Government has been dragging its feet on the other issues-in relation to ULGS, partly because the Tribal Administrations have wanted to control their own staff and are afraid that, under a Unified Service, they might have to accept a non-member of the tribe as Tribal Secretary. But the Government did agree that the ULGS should provide badly needed training for Tribal Administration personnel, having given the lack of high-calibre staff to handle financial matters as the reason for not accepting the Commission’s recommendation that the Tribal Administration should have its own vote for recurrent expenditure and should administer its own development project funds. This decision on finance, coupled with the inadequate provision of transport, means that the Tribal Administration remains dependent on the District Administration; its operational autonomy is thergby undermined.

This is unfortunate since the cooperation of the Tribal Administration is essential if the rural people are to participate in development. For this purpose a key institution is, supposedly, the Village Development Committee (VDC), which was established by presidential decree in 1968. Several hundred VDCs exist on paper, but the number of committees which raise revenue through village activities and successfully provide local services and promote village development projects is quite small. While a few members serve ex-officio (the headman, local councillor and community development worker), ordinary VDC members are elected in the kgotlu, among them being usually the primary school headteacher, who is the senior public servant at village level. Among the various reasons given for the poor performance of the VDCs are disinterest on the part of many VDC members, who have pressed in vain to be given a sitting allowance, and a shortage of competent village extension staff. But, according to Dolf Noppen (1982), the prime reason is the separation between the VDC and the traditional kgotlu, and conflict between the VDC chairman and the village headman, who alone among the salaried public servants is permanently based in one particular village and is accountable to the kgotlu for his actions. Noppen points out that the VDC is no longer, as was intended, a development subcommittee of the kgotlu but a competing institution in a modern versus traditional context (Noppen, 1982, ch. 6, esp. pp. 135, 141). Another reason sometimes given for poor VDC performance is that in some of the larger villages the Council ward boundaries, upon which the VDC is based, do not coincide with the traditional kgotlu boundaries.

Thus, experience with the operation of the VDCs reinforces the conclusion that the Government has neglected the interests of the Tribal Administration to the detriment of rural development, despite the strong links which the ruling BDP, initially through the late President Sir Seretse Khama, has established with traditional leaders of the Bamangwato (easily the country’s largest tribal group and covering most of the Central District). One explanation may be the BDP’s electoral experience at Kanye, headquarters of the Southern District, where a number of its candidates (including President Quett Masire himself) have at various times been


defeated at the hands of the BNF opposition, led for many years by ex-Chief Bathoen I1 of the Bangwaketse (Mr B. S. Gaseitsiwe), and the independent and occasionally embarrassing stand adopted by Chief Linchwe of the Bakgatla. Of course, another (or additional) explanation may be the Government’s lack of confidence in mostly ill-educated traditional office holders and their poorly qualified staffs, leading to the possibility that Government’s attitude will change once these defects are remedied.

THE LAND BOARDS

Ostensibly in the interests of both efficiency and fair play, Land Boards were established in 1970 under the 1968 Tribal Land Act to take over the allocation of tribal land from the Chiefs and traditional authorities and to settle land disputes. Today there are 12 Land Boards, one for each of the main tribal areas in Botswana, and 35 Subordinate Land Boards operating in the larger and more populous districts. With the implementation of the Tribal Grazing Land Policy (TGLP) and the emergence of the Arable Land Development Policy (ALDEP), the Land Boards also became involved to a limited extent in land-use planning; they were already empowered, under the 1968 Act, to cancel land-use rights and to impose restrictions on land-use. They were given technical advice and assistance by District Officers (Lands) (DO(L)s) on the staff of the District Administration; from their creation in 1975 until Botswana graduates began to become available in 1981, DO(L) posts were mainly filled by expatriate volunteers. The DO(L) is secretary of the Land-Use Planning Advisory Group (LUPAG), which is a small group that includes technical field officers from central government departments and works to the DDC. In practice he performed (and may still perform) a key executive role in addition to his advisory brief. The Land Board also received administrative assistance from the District Council Secretary, who was officially the Board’s Secretary, and financial assistance from the Council Treasurer, who accounted for the land revenues. Though the Land Boards were therefore heavily dependent on the District Councils, they retained their semi-autonomous status and were not absorbed by the Councils as the large cattle farmers were believed to favour. This arrangement was to the liking of most of the rural people who wanted land matters to be handled by a local body independent of the District Council and not subject to political influence (Reilly, 1983, pp. 165-168).

In the latter 1970s there was widespread dissatisfaction with the way in which the Land Boards worked. It was alleged that they were grossly unfair and/or made frequent mistakes in allocating land, especially in areas, such as the Kgatleng, North-East and South-East Districts, where the pressure on land was intense; the main reason given for this was that their members were ignorant of the relevant laws and Land Board procedures, and that their staffs were incompetent. Other complaints were that the Land Boards took decisions without adequate consultation, and that delays resulted from their failure to delegate sufficient authority to the Subordinate Land Boards (GoB-LGSC, 1979, I, p. 41). In 1977 the Government therefore appointed an Interministerial Committee to enquire into the operations of the Land Boards. The Committee reported in 1978, most of its recommendations being endorsed by the Local Government Structure Commission

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the next year and accepted by the Government (GOB-ICRLBO, 1978; GOB-LGSC, 1979, I , pp. 4147) . The latter, however, preferred to move slowly in this sensitive area-as Parsons has pointed out, land is the key element in class and politics in Botswana (Parsons, 1981)-and delayed implementation in several respects until it had received, in January 1984, the report of the Presidential Commission on Land Tenure (CLT), which it had appointed in May 1983. Several changes have now been made, most of them in line with the recommendations of the Interministerial Committee.

First, in an attempt to improve the quality of Land Board members the Government has stipulated that only persons with a minimum of Standard VII education can be elected as members in the kgotla; it has also provided members with training in Land Board procedure. Attendance rules are now applied and members are paid attendance allowances equal to those of district councillors. Greater consultation with the traditional authorities is encouraged, though there is no provision requiring members elected in the kgotla to report back to it. Secondly, steps have been taken to strengthen the technical and organizational capacity of the Boards, mainly through staff recruitment and training; these functions are undertaken by the ULGS, to which Land Board personnel continue to belong. Thirdly, the autonomy of the Land Boards has been strengthened by discontinuing (in 1986) the former practice whereby the District Council Secretary served as Land Board Secretary and the District Council Treasurer provided expert assistance with Land Board accounts. Each Land Board now has its own independent secretary and continues to be responsible for revenue collection; it has a budget separate from that of the Council, does its own book-keeping, and is separately audited. In the fourth place, another change occurred with the removal of the Chief from the Land Board in 1984, thus enabling customary land disputes to be transferred from the Land Boards to the customary courts (the Chiefmribal Authority is gazetted Customary Court President); appeals are to lie in the first instance to a Customary Court of Appeal rather than to the Minister of Local Government and Lands, and from there to a specially constituted division of the High Court. These changes were to take effect later in 1986. Finally, attention has been given to strengthening the Subordinate Land Boards in staffing, membership and organization in order that additional powers can be delegated to them (GOB-ICRLBO, 1978; GOB-CLT, 1984; GOB-Govt. Paper No. 1 of 1985; Egner, 1986).

In addition to the improvements which have been made on the above lines, capable and experienced members have been appointed to some of the Land Boards; the Ngwato Land Board in the Central District, for example, has a former Deputy Permanent Secretary as its chairman and an ex-senior DC and a former Chairman (and current Deputy Chairman) of the District Council among its members. Nevertheless, the operation of the Land Boards remains subject to several defects. The quality of Land Board members generally is still not good enough-after all, Standard VII represents a low level of formal educational attainment. The quality of staff, especially on the technical side, is inadequate and most Land Boards are therefore deficient in basic surveying, map-making and record-keeping. The position in the Subordinate Land Boards is predictably worse, and members at this level frequently show both a lack of knowledge of the law and of competence in implementing it. While the training of Land Board personnel has helped to improve the situation, the frequent transfer of staff who have been


trained only serves to exacerbate it. Shortage of transport and finance also reduces the effectiveness of both Land Boards and Subordinate Land Boards.

There are also wider problems relating to policy formulation; these often have a political connotation and are therefore mostly outside the control of the Land Boards themselves. As we have seen, the Land Board has a role in land-use planning but, as a primarily administrative body, it is committed to implementing central government and District Council policy. In April 1985, in its White Paper on Land Tenure, the Government accepted for ‘immediate implementation’ the Presidential Commission’s report on Land Tenure, subject to some modifications. It admitted that the implementation of the Conservation Act had been ‘problem- atic’, and recognized the need for developing better ways of enforcing the Act and related policies (GOB-Govt. Paper No. 1 of 1985, pp. 11 and 13). In the meantime, despite the government pledge of ‘immediate implementation’, serious problems of overstocking and overgrazing remain; they are not susceptible of easy solution because of the strong vested interests involved. Among the main explanations for the present difficulties are that there was not as much vacant land available as the TGLP had originally envisaged, and that this policy has tended to favour the large cattle-owners, among whom are leading politicians and public servants, at the expense of those with few or no cattle. Though TGLP ranch-holders have made an important contribution to the meat-processing industry, they have failed to confine their herds to their ranches and have encroached on the communal grazing areas. The Government is committed to making it easier for and/or encouraging ordinary Batswana to acquire land (and houses) and to ensuring the ‘rigorous enforcement of the Conservation Act in all grazing areas . . . in order to curb the general misuse of grazing land by cattle owners’ (GOB-Govt. Paper No. 1 of 1985, p. 7). The reference to the ‘misuse’ of land is appropriate, since the carrying capacity of the land could probably be increased if better management practices were adopted. However, the Land Boards are only likely to impose meaningful restrictions on land-use and take other essential management measures when central government Ministries and Departments provide a firm lead.

DISTRICT COUNCILS

As Table 1 shows, the nine district councils, which were established under the Local Government (District Councils) Act, No. 35 of 1965, vary enormously in area, population and the resources at their disposal. Like the five urban authorities-Francistown, Gaborone (created a city in 1986), Jwaneng, Lobatse and Selebi-Phikwe-they are popularly elected bodies, with a generous sprinkling of nominated members. Their statutory responsibilities include primary education, primary health care, ungazetted roads, and water supplies; in 1976 responsibility for paying teachers’ salaries was assumed by central government. The Councils have played a major part in enabling Botswana to achieve what is claimed to be ‘the best rural health record in Africa’ (Egner, 1986, p. 110), and in 1986 they were given control of Regional Health Teams; they are also being made responsible for trade and liquor licensing. They are expected to raise their own recurrent revenues; the main source is the local government tax, which is a regressive tax on income and is estimated to yield P4.12 million in 1986-1987 (the actual yield in 1983-1984 was

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P3,161,927, of which P1,185,944-27 per cent-was collected by the Central District Council (GOB-NDP VI, p. 91, Table 4.8). In fact, as Table 1 shows, recurrent expenditure far exceeds the amounts that the Councils are able to raise themselves, and the size of the annual deficit grant made available to the Councils by the central government has increased sharply in recent years; it is expected to top over 80 per cent of total recurrent expenditure in 19861987. The present system of resource allocation is somewhat haphazard, and results in the uneven provision of local government services in different parts of Botswana (Egner, 1986, pp. 24 and 118). For their capital development expenditure the councils rely on domestic development funds for nearly half the total, and on funds from SIDA and other donors, as well as borrowing from the World Bank, for the remainder.

District Councils failed to meet their NDP V development targets and achieved only a 55 per cent implementation rate in 1979-1985, though a more encouraging picture emerges if expenditure on primary schools and labour-based drought relief measures are excluded from calculation. There were organizational problems within central government which accounted for Councils not receiving the planning and administrative support which they needed at the national level. Another explanation for this underspending was the considerable diversion of effort into drought relief work during this Plan period. A further factor may have been the Councils’ shortage of well-qualified technical manpower-while the quantity of District Council staff has increased substantially since 1979, the quality has not shown a corresponding improvement. However, on the basis of careful study, Brian Egner finds this to be a doubtful explanation: ‘Although it is known that there are still serious gaps in key technical management posts in councils, there is no evidence that any part of the capital expenditure shortfall in 1979/85 was due to a general lack of implementing capacity or organisational skills in the councils’ (Egner, 1986, p. 88).

District Council treasurers are more competent than formerly, and this has helped the staff of the Local Government Audit Department to clear most of the backlog of work which had accumulated in 1979 and which forced the Government to engage private auditors. By July 1985 the Department had audited the 1984- 1985 accounts of all the District Councils except Central, and was working on the 1985-1986 accounts. It was concerned about the financial position of the Central, Kgalagadi and North East District Councils, four out of the five Town Councils (the exception was Lobatse), and the Tawana and Tati Land Boards. In its Annual Report on the Audits of the Accounts of Local Authorities for the year ended 31 March 1984, the Audit Department noted that the Central District was well in arrears in producing its final accounts, and that a number of members of the Council’s Revenue Office had been found guilty of misappropriation. To fulfil its auditing role the Department has an establishment of 28, including three expatriates and six administrativeklerical staff. This establishment is much smaller than it was in 1978-1979, when it numbered 41 (22 posts were vacant), though it is still considerably in excess of the size judged to be necessary in 1979 by the Local Government Structure Commission which took expert advice on this matter (Egner, 1986, p. 29; GOB-LGSC, 1979, I , p. 108; 11, p. 85) but this may be justified by the increased expenditure of District and Town Councils and the creation of additional subdistricts. The Department operates as an autonomous unit within the MLGL; it has no executive authority but submits its advisory reports to the

198 W. Tordoff

Minister. Its Director and staff resist as inappropriate the recommendation of the 1979 Local Government Structure Commission that the Audit Department should be placed under the Auditor-General’s office and thus become independent of ministerial influence. The Commission also recommended the establishment of a national Local Government Public Accounts Committee, the effect of which would be to make Council officers, and the elected councillors to whom they report, responsible for Council finances (GoB-LGSC, 1979, I , pp. 107-9; 11, pp. 91 and 94). This recommendation was accepted by the Government in 1982, but has not yet been implemented.

The recruitment, posting, transfer, promotion and discipline of local authority (and Land Board) staff other than industrial-class employees is the responsibility of the centrally directed Unified Local Government Service (ULGS), which was formed in 1974. This department is headed by an Establishment Secretary of Under- secretary rank. The present incumbent has Land Board experience, but most of the ULGS’s headquarters staff have not worked in the field and are strongly criticized by the District Councils for not being sufficiently aware of their problems or sufficiently responsive to their needs. While theie is no case for reverting to the pre-1974 situation whereby all staff responsibilities were delegated to the local authorities-an arrangement which worked to the detriment of the smaller Councils and was open to nepotism and other abuses-greater consultation with the District Councils, for example over the transfer of officers, is certainly called for. Perhaps, too, the widespread, though not universal, practice of posting officers outside their home districts has been carried too far for good administration. In 1979 the Local Government Structure Commission responded to the very strong criticism lodged by the local authorities against ULGS headquarters by recom- mending that the Local Government Service Commission should take on a new and enlarged role with revised powers, functions and membership; the Service Commission would delegate many of its day-to-day responsibilities to the Establishment Secretary of ULGS in respect of middle-to-senior-level staff and to the local authorities, which would retain responsibility for recruiting and controlling industrial-class employees, in respect of junior staff (GoB-LGSC, 1979, I , pp. 80-81). This has not happened, and the ULGS remains a department of MLGL-a less than satisfactory arrangement which to an extent undermines operational autonomy and makes difficult the appointment of senior officers of Permanent Secretary and Deputy Permanent Secretary rank to head a Service which in April 1986 handled an estimated 2332 members of staff, including 14 superscale officers. Moreover, nothing has yet come of the recommendation made by the Local Government Structure Commission in 1979, and accepted by the central government two years later, that the Establishment Secretary and all members of her staff (who numbered 38 in 1986) should themselves be members of ULGS rather than civil servants (Egner, 1986, p. 43, Table 3, and p. 55).

District Councils are in the process of assuming responsibility for trade and liquor licensing, as recommended by the 1979 Local Government Structure Commission. However, they do not at present have the staff of the right calibre or the financial resources to justify conferring on them additional statutory functions, with the possible exception of tourist development. Since independence the central government has taken the lion’s share of available qualified manpower, to the detriment of both the private sector and the local government service. During the


latter part of NDP V it did allocate a further 12 citizen graduates to ULGS for deployment to the local authorities, but it was unwilling to accept without qualification the recommendation of the 1982 Presidential Commission on Economic Opportunities that able and experienced Botswana public officers should be allocated to ULGS-it agreed that ULGS should be strengthened, though ‘not at the cost of “delocalising” Central Government policy-level posts’. The Government has not provided a systematic graduate training programme for ULGS officers, and this may be one reason why ULGS has been unable to retain the services of most of the university graduates allocated to it in the 1982-1986 period. It has also failed to act on a further recommendation of the Commission that incompetent or irresponsible personnel (including expatriates) should be weeded out of the public (including local government) service. Moreover, it has failed to fill many vacant established ULGS (District Council and Land Board) staff posts; 17.6 per cent of such posts were vacant in April 1986. The higher vacancy rates occur in the fast-growing technical cadres, with the result that, despite a considerable improvement in the technical capacity of District Councils in the 1978-1986 period, certain technical sections (such as building) in some Councils are still seriously under-manned. Thirty-four senior-level District Council technical posts were vacant (and 83 were filled) in April 1986. The Government has placed its main emphasis on stepping up the training of officers who are judged to be capable of benefiting from it (Egner, 1986, pp. 42-55).

Since 1982 systematic training has been provided for ULGS staff on the lines laid down in the comprehensive ULGS Manpower and Training Plan, 1982-92, with most of the funding provided by SIDA (Picard and Endresen, 1982). Institutional training for middle-level general administrative staff has been provided by the Institute of Development Management, for senior clerical/executive (including Treasury) staff by the Botswana Institute of Administration and Commerce, and for junior technicians by the Botswana Polytechnic. In all, i.e. including also the training provided at the National Health Institute, the University of Botswana and other institutions, 383 ULGS personnel underwent 12,228 weeks of institutional training in 1985-1986. In an attempt to improve the training capacity of the local authorities themselves, SIDA also met the costs of an in-house (on-the-job) decentralized training project, under which a new cadre of Council personnel/ training officers received a rigorous 9-month training course before being posted to Councils from October 1983. Subsequently, another dimension has been added to Council training with the formation, under World Bank auspices, of a centrally directed Mobile Training Unit (MTU), comprising training experts recruited by the London-based Organisation for Rehabilitation through Training (ORT) (Egner, 1986, pp. 60-80). (This is not an entirely new dimension since an unsuccessful experiment in mobile training was made in 1979-1981; the idea was revived in 1982 because Council personnel/training officers needed help with on-the-job training.) Appraisal of the pilot MTU project, which operated in the areas of the Francistown and Selebi-Phikwe Town Councils and the Central and North East District Councils from March 1985 to March 1986, varied considerably. The predominant view was that the administrative and financial training was good, but that training on the technical and community development sides was deficient. In view of this mixed assessment, and of the high cost of this centralized training system, it is important that the ensuing 2-year nationwide MTU programme should be closely

200 W. Tordoff

monitored (perhaps by MLGL’s Staff Development and Training Officer) throughout its operation, though the absence of quantified targets makes evaluation extremely difficult.

In the financial sphere an official committee is now undertaking a review of the financing of local government in order both to find new sources of finance for Town and District Councils and to determine which resources might be transferred from the centre. The difficulties to be surmounted are very considerable: central government Ministries will resist any substantial transfer of funds that may be proposed, while the large farmers, though relatively few in number, have sufficient political clout to defeat measures to introduce a more effective and equitable method of taxing the cattle industry.

There is another obstacle to the assumption by District Councils of additional responsibilities, and that is the calibre of the district councillors themselves. Of the councillors who took office in 1984, 71 were nominated by the Minister for Local Government and Lands, while the rest were chosen by adult citizens in local government elections that were held concurrently with the parliamentary elections in September of that year. As a result of the local government elections two Town Councils (Gaborone and Francistown) and one District Council (the North East) were controlled by one or another of the country’s opposition parties; subsequent elections to the newly created JwanengJown Council also resulted in a majority for the (BNF) opposition. In two of the three most populous District Council areas (Central and Kweneng) the ruling BDP won easily, but scraped home by the narrowest of margins in Southern (18 BDP to 17 BNF). Overall, 173 elected district councillors belonged to the BDP, 22 to the BNF, 11 to the BPP, and 5 to other opposition parties. (The BDP won 22 Town Council wards as against 14 for the BNF and 7 for the BPP; see GOB-General Election, 1984, App. F.) A majority of the elected councillors had no more than primary education and had often only limited understanding of the issues which they were called upon to discuss. (The nominated councillors, some of whom were former civil servants, were mostly of better quality.) The onus is on the political parties to put forward able and well- educated candidates; predictably, however, they will advance those candidates who are most likely to be successful at the polls (Egner, 1986, p. 21).

CONCLUSION

Subsequent events have justified the recommendation of the Local Government Structure Commission in 1979 that the four institutions operating at district level should be kept separate rather than amalgamated under the jurisdiction of the District Council. Even the Central District Council is not strong enough, in membership, staffing and resources, to become the main focus of development in the large and populous Central District. The survival of representative local government in Botswana has not therefore been at the expense of the other local institutions. It has not, however, prevented the extension of central government control. For example: though the formation of a single, integrated public service has never been seriously considered-it was seen by the Local Government Study Group in 1970 as a possible way of solving the country’s acute manpower problem (GOB-LGSG, 1970, p. 30)-the district authorities have substantially lost control


over their own staff to a centrally directed ULGS. Again, Town and District Councils enjoy a measure of operational autonomy but remain financially dependent upon the central government and are subject always to fairly tight central scrutiny. Moreover, as we also saw above, central government Ministries and Departments account for approximately 80 per cent of development expenditure in the districts. Partly because of this, steps have been taken to increase the status and authority of the District Commissioner, and to an extent the balance between the four institutions at district level has been tilted in favour of the District Administration. Nevertheless, the BDP government is not only content to allow representative local government to continue, but is sufficiently confident in its own legitimacy at least to consider the case for further decentralization as presented, for example, by the Local Government Structure Commission in 1979 and the Commission on Economic Opportunities in 1982. Though the Govern- ment’s response is slow, many of the recommendations of the 1979 Commission have now been implemented. As Wyn Reilly has written: ‘Decentralization in Botswana is not a myth. Since independence in 1966 there has been more transfer of power and authority and responsibilities to the local authorities, especially the district and town councils, on a consistent basis than in most African countries’ (Reilly, 1983, p. 171). Brian Egner’s valuable study of The District Councils and Decentralisation, 1978-1 986 may result in further changes.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The research for this article was undertaken in July 1986, and was made possible by a University of Manchester Staff Travel Grant. I am grateful to the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Local Government and Lands, for giving me access to selected Ministry documents and to him, other officials and politicians in Gaborone and the outlying districts for discussing with me a wide range of issues; Mr Chris Sharpe of the Ministry of Health and Mr Sandy Grant of Mochudi deserve special mention. My greatest debt is to Mr Brian Egner of Economic Consultancies (Pty) Ltd, Gaborone, for making available to me the first and final drafts of his informed and penetrating Report to the Swedish International Development Authority (SIDA) on The District Councils and Decentralisation, 1978-1986, and for sharing with me on several occasions opinions that were always stimulating and sometimes iconoclastic. Both he and Mr Grant provided helpful comments on the draft of this article. I am indebted also to John Wiley and Sons Ltd for allowing me to reproduce the map on Botswana which appeared in W. Reilly, ‘Decentralization in Botswana-myth or reality?’ in P. Mawhood (ed.), Local Government in the Third World. The Experience of Tropical Africa (1983), p. 142.

REFERENCES

Colclough, C. and McCarthy, S. (1980). The Political Economy of Botswana: A Study of

Egner, B. (November 1986). The District Councils and Decentralisation, 1978-1 986. Report Growth and Distribution. Oxford University Press, London.

to SIDA (revised draft final), Gaborone, mimeo, 1-133.

202 W. Tordoff

Government of Botswana (GOB) publications: (1970). Report of the Local Government Study Group (LGSG), mimeo, Gaborone. (1978). Interministerial Committee Report on Land Board Operations, (ICRLBO), MLGL,

Government Printer, Gaborone. (1979). Report of the Presidential Commission on Local Government Structure in Botswana

(LGSC), Vols. 1 and 2, Government Printer, Gaborone. (1981). Government Paper No. 1 of 1981: Local Government Structure in Botswana,

Government Printer, Gaborone. (1982). Report of the Presidential Commission on Economic Opportunities (CEO),

Government Printer, Gaborone. (1982). Government Paper No. 2 of 1982: National Policy on Economic Opportunities,

Government Printer, Gaborone. (1984). Report of the Presidential Commission on Land Tenure (CLT), Government

Printer, Gaborone. (1985). Annual Report on the Audits of the Accounts of Local Authorities in Botswana for

the Year ended 31st March 1984, Dept. of Local Government Audit, MLGL, Gaborone.

(1985). Government Paper No. 1 of 1985: National Policy on Land Tenure, Government Printer, Gaborone.

(1985). National Development Plan, 1985-91 (NDP VIJ, MFDP, Government Printer, Gaborone.

(1986). MLGL Circular No. 29 of 1986 issued by the Permanent Secretary MLGL and dated 20 May 1986, Gaborone.

(n.d.). Report to the Minister of Public Service and Information on the General Election, 1984, Government Printer, Gaborone.

(n.d.). Recurrent Budget, 1986-87, MLGL, Part I: District Councils Estimates of Expenditure and Income, Government Printer, Gaborone.

Grant, S. (1981). ‘Reduced almost to nothing? Chieftaincy and a traditional town. The case of Linchwe I1 Kgafela and Mochudi’, Botswana Notes and Records, 12, 89-100.

Karase, C. G. and Sanders, D. (n.d.). ‘The amalgamation of rural and district councils. Some issues and problems’, The District Council Journal, second issue. Association of District Councils of Zimbabwe, 8 and 11-13.

Mawhood, P. (ed.), (1983). Local Government in the Third World. The Experience of Tropical Africa. Wiley, Chichester.

Noppen, D. (1982). Consultation and Non-Commitment: Planning with the People in Botswana. Research Report No. 13/1982; Leiden, African Studies Centre, mimeo.

Parsons, J. (1981). ‘Cattle, class and the rural state in Botswana’, Journal of South African Studies, 7(2), 236-255.

Picard, L. A. with Endresen K. (1981). A Study of the Manpower and Training Needs of the Unified Local Government Service, 1982-1992, Vols 1 and 2. Government Printer, Gaborone.

Reilly, W. A. P. (1981). ‘District development planning in Botswana’, Issue No. 3: Studies in Decentralisation, Manchester Papers on Development. Department of Administrative Studies, University of Manchester, pp. 28-69.

Reilly, W. A. P. (1983). ‘Decentralization in Botswana-myth or reality?’. In Mawhood, P. (ed.), Local Government in the Third World. The Experience of Tropical Africa. Wiley, Chichester, pp. 141-176.

Tordoff, W. (1980), ‘Ghana’. In Rowat, D. C. (ed.), International Handbook on Local Government Reorganization. Greenwood Press, Westport, pp. 379-392.

Documents

Local administration in Botswana