The year guns, explosives blazed
Ryder Gabathuse | Monday December 26, 2022 06:00
In the absence of our crime beat reporter, PINI BOTHOKO who has bereavement back home, we chose to look at few events that stood out in the crime scene. The crime beat contributed immensely in our coverage of events this year.
Crime stories usually touch the core of human lives and are therefore, very close to the people’s hearts and as they say, crime is as old as humanity itself. In my view, the crime story was given the attention it deserved in our continuous coverage in 2022.
Presiding over crime stories as authored by the prolific Bothoko, I am tempted to conclude that if there was any prestigious media award for the year 2022, it should go to the crime beat. Evidence shows that many readers mostly read crime stories.
From as far back as last year August, you will all agree that crime took an interesting twist as the country experienced a spike in armed robbery incidents particularly cash-in-transit heists and Automatic Teller Machines (ATMs) blasting where upon millions of pula were lost in the process. Incidentally, this was at a time when businesses were slowly recovering from the hardships of the scourge of COVID-19. Criminals from locally, South Africa and Zimbabwe literally camped in our shores and terrorised the business community.
The Botswana Police Service (BPSP public relations officer, Assistant Commissioner of Police Dipheko Motube indicated this week that his office could not provide statistics of armed robberies, cash-in-transit heists and the value of the loot thereon.
As a newspaper, although we often struggled to get information particularly statistics (From Botswana Police Service) that we needed to enhance our stories, it is all in the public domain after all, that armed robberies and ATM blasting at some stage reached their all time high as almost every day and at all the corners of the country were hit by the unrelenting and marauding criminals.
At least we know that about 17 ATMs were blasted in 2022 where criminals broke open the facilities using explosives and got away with large sums of money.
Whilst the police were able to quickly make arrests in some incidents, the whole thing sent chill down the spines of the banking industry as the bombings momentarily rendered the banking industry a risky business to even the insurers following incessant hits.
It has always been important to chase the crime story considering that in 2021, the country experienced an upsurge in bank robberies where in most cases there was use of firearms and thereby posing danger to lives of both members of the public and law enforcement officers.
There was a noted pattern of increase in violent crime of armed robberies and ATM blasting. The crimes had indeed reached crisis level.
The police had to bring back waning public confidence as their policing was slowly sliding out of control. With so many guns and rifles used in armed robberies, it was apparent that there was an increase in illegal possession of firearms and ammunition especially weapons of war like AK 47, pistols and others. The streets were not safe at all during the day and night. Imagine at Goodhope Police Station where thugs raided the police station and went away with AK 47 rifles, pistols and ammunition sometime in July this year. They were now armed to the teeth.
Our past coverage show that last year, the country experienced a surge of cash-in-transit heists recording 15 incidents as security vans were attacked at gun point and millions of pula stolen.
As the police and the army escorted cash-in-transit vans, ATM blasting quickly replaced cash-in-transit heists.
At some stage, the police were able to arrest few Batswana men in possession of 128 explosives gels and at least 50 metres of detonating cable. Defence and Security Minister Kagiso Mmusi at some stage when addressing a senior police officers’ conference instructed then to shoot and kill suspects and the police obeyed their master’s instruction as they never stopped since.
The police were able to shoot and kill armed robbers in heated exchange of fire that in a recent foiled armed robbery, stray bullets at the Gaborone West Sefalana Wholesalers hit and killed two by-standers.
The story of the moment was perhaps in February this year when the police successfully followed armed robbers who would later be caught in an exchange of fire with the police at Phase 2 location where they were hiding. The men had attacked and robbed a Security Systems cash-in-transit van at the Main Mall morning of February 23, 2022 of about P986,470.
Just in full glare of the public, there was exchange of fire between the police and the suspected armed robbers who were cornered into a residential house. The whole scene, to those who witnessed it, was reminiscent of a horror action movie.
Now, in one of our reports, it has since emerged that a dispute had emerged between the police and their sister security organ, the Directorate of Intelligence and Security (DIS) over six of the 10 killed alleged robbers. Whilst the police can account for only four killed men, they are distancing themselves from the other six men. The DIS officers, who reportedly ‘forced’ themselves at the scene after the police insisted that they were in control, are slow to account for their alleged damage by submitting statements to the police ahead of impending inquest proceedings to account for the six deaths.
In another painful story, a ruling party legislator Dr Thapelo Matsheka was arrested and yet to be charged allegedly in connection with the murder of a schoolboy, Tlotso Karema, whose remains would later be recovered in the outskirts of Lobatse. Many people were questioned about this incident including the deceased’s stepfather, Lovemore Sithole who is alleged to be the killer. At some stage, some concerned Lobatse residents rioted in the streets, pushing for the wheels of justice to move even faster. They had barricaded some streets in the town of Lobatse until the police intervened.
There was another murder incident in Kopong July this year, that left the nation gripped by fear after a husband Outlwile Aston (and others) allegedly murdered her wife, Barulaganye Aston, who was a school teacher in the presence of her six-year-old child. The country has recorded many murder incidents but this one in particular, set tongues wagging especially after it was found at the scene in the deceased’s bedroom, that her killer(s) had inscribed on the wall using her blood: “277 Die.”