A nation beset by many horrors
Lewanika Timothy | Thursday July 6, 2023 09:08
The wheel of time subjects the nation to a decay of some sort, one that has ravaged the moral stance of the nation. News headlines of passion killings, rape, and gender-based violence (GBV) have become the order of the day inimical to a nation that used to hold its morality in high regard.
The nation continues to experience an uptick in murder cases alongside a rising tide in gender-related violent crimes. As of June 2023, the Botswana Police Service reported a total of 143 murder cases citing “misunderstanding between parties” as the main cause of murder.
“We are concerned about the increasing number of murder incidents that continue to occur across the country,” a police statement reads. In 2022, cases involving threat-to-kill and attempted murder were pegged at 783 accounting only for cases launched against males.
The numbers truly communicate a spine-chilling message.
For a nation with a little less than 2.5 million, reported cases against males stood at 6,853 by 2022, making males top offenders despite women being the majority in the population. It is as if a dark cloud has beset the nation as crime experiences an uptick annually. GBV has been another peril facing the nation, with unending violence against women and girls remaining a hurdle as vulnerable groups continue to experience physical or sexual violence, mostly perpetrated by intimate partners or familial members.
The COVID-19 lockdown periods came to expose how acute gender-related crimes were, with over 24,432 GBV cases reported. The police revealed that during the lockdown period, there was an alarming spike in domestic violence as women did not have anywhere to escape from their abusers, with some family members demonstrating behaviours that their close family members were not aware of.
The menace of the social ills facing the nation proves to have stretched further beyond the realms of social dynamics, penetrating to causing problems in the economic livelihood of Batswana. Persistent threats like unemployment remain undefeated, halting the dreams of the young population and plundering the country into an economic mess.
The International Monetary Fund estimates that annually 35,000 graduates hit the job market in Botswana and creating jobs for these young men and women has, however, proved to be an uphill task for both government and the private sector. A situation which many economists have heralded as a major cause of poverty in the country, a ticking time bomb for many plausible social ills.
Natural disasters have had their share of plundering the country and causing chest pains for the locals with extended periods of heatwaves caused by El Niño affecting the local food supply.
El Niño is infamous for emptying silos kept for the country’s strategic grain reserve and, because Botswana is a net importer of most food, it raises the prices on the shelves. In Botswana, El Niño has rattled food security and increased the weight on government’s social security schemes such as poverty alleviation, destitute programmes and Ipelegeng.
The tide of economic and social ills has risen to sway the steady boat of Botswana off balance, new threats emerge daily, and the nation continues to grapple with unending problems once far from its borders.