The Pan Afrikanist Watchman

The University of Botswana through the Department of Law is today (Thursday, April 7, 2022) hosting a colloquium at the UB Conference Centre to deliberate on its contribution to the discussion pertaining to the review of the Constitution of Botswana.

As a premier tertiary institution in Botswana, the University of Botswana bears a significant national responsibility to contribute to the discussion pertaining to the review of the Constitution of Botswana.

The need to take part in this exercise also derives from the university’s vision to be a leading centre of academic excellence in Africa and the world as well as its mission to improve economic and social conditions for Batswana while advancing itself as a distinctively African university with a regional and international outlook.

Therefore, this makes the University of Botswana’s participation in the constitutional review exercise more imperative. It is in this context that the Department of Law is hosting this colloquium whose outcome will be the submission of a position paper on the University of Botswana’s contribution to the constitutional review process.

The colloquium will entail the presentation of synopses and will be held in a
conversational style. Areas or issues of the constitution that will be interrogated by such synopses include the constitutional making process, fundamental rights and freedoms of the individual, citizenship, the Executive, Parliament as well as Ntlo Ya Dikgosi.

Discussions will further centre around issues pertaining to councils and local governance, the Judiciary, institutions supporting democracy,
the electoral process, the constitutional amendment process, the public service and finance.

In participating in the constitutional review exercise, the University of Botswana notes that constitutional reviews are not unique to Botswana. Such reviews are undertaken to make the constitution the supreme law of the country to keep pace with constitutional developments that
were not anticipated at the time of adoption.

This is because every society is in a state of flux hence its laws must, therefore, adapt themselves to meet the exigencies of the ever-changing developmental imperatives of society.

Consequently, as a premier tertiary institution in Botswana, the University of Botswana bears a significant national responsibility to contribute to the discussion pertaining to the review of the Constitution of
Botswana.

The Presidential Commission on the Review of the Botswana Constitution has since it was appointed by President DrMokgweetsi Eric Masisi, been crisscrossing the country consulting Batswana and taking their views on what they want to be included in the new constitution.

Known as the Dibitelo Commission (after its Chairman and former Chief Justice, Maruping Dibotelo), the committee has been dogged in controversy, not of its making, but being pressure from especially opposition political parties, who have since boycotted any participation in it, as well as segments of the civil society, who decry inadequate consultation leading to the commission’s appointment.