Local Level Dispute Processes in Botswana: The Yeyi Moot Encapsulated

This paper aims to describe dispute settlement processes among Yeyi, a Bantu-speaking people living in the Okavango Delta, North West Botswana. The account is contemporary and focuses on a single neighbourhood, North Valley, which lies in the floodplains in the northern half of the Delta. North Valley is a small egalitarian community which is encapsulated within a larger administrative and economic order. As part of this larger order, it is subject to a plurality of influences which intrude on it from the outside. Its population is well aware of this larger order and strives to maintain a fair measure of independence from it, particularly from Riverside, the local administrative centre. I aim to show how North Valley people actively negotiate their autonomy in a specific institutional context, that of the neighbourhood moot. I describe how they do this, by borrowing and inverting the formal legal procedures and language of the dominant Tswana culture in an effort to preserve and protect local Yeyi values and interests. Their model for Tswana legal procedures is taken mainly from Riverside where, tempered by modern influences, the local government court operates along traditional Tswana lines. With the aid of case material, I illustrate how North Valley elders adapt Tswana idioms, symbols and legal procedures to suit their local circumstances.