Emerging state terrorism in Botswana
Correspondent | Friday December 20, 2013 15:42
Incidents of public shootings stood at twelve by 2010. In prior years such incidents were rare and occasionally carried out against armed suspects following extensive intelligence exercises. This changed with the advent of the DIS. Shooting suspects and wanted criminals in public became conspicuous. Two of the cases were mistaken identities. A man suspected of stealing a mobile phone was shot in front of his family in Maun. The deceased turned out to have been preparing to leave for another city the next day. Another man on the police’s wanted list was shot in front of his father in Molepolole.
A Zimbabwean national suspected of armed robbery and also on police wanted list was shot by security agents and left for dead. Not only was this a rapid pace of killings, but never before had suspects been shot in public in this manner. The most virulent of these acts was the extra-judicial killing of one John Kalafatis on the night of March 12, 2009. The shooting occurred at the Extension 12 Mall, in Gaborone. Until then Kalafatis was an unpopular petty criminal. Days before the shooting, John Kalafatis was implicated in a robbery at Phakalane Estates (the plushest suburb of Gaborone).
The victim was allegedly a friend of President Khama’s. Following a joint manhunt by agents of the directorate, police and a commando unit of the BDF, Kalafatis was shot in public view at the aforementioned venue which is a well frequented pub. Posthumous ballistics analysis confirmed that he was shot using armour-piercing bullets. Current judicial testimony point exonerates the police from the killings, thus liability falls on the soldiers and intelligence agents. Only one military intelligence official appeared before court. The four were convicted and sentenced to 11 years imprisonment and the military intelligence officer sentenced to four.
Another court case involves police intelligence officers are facing criminal charges following a drive and shoot along the A1 Highway. The security agents claimed that the suspects were implicated in an attempted robbery. Court proceedings would later reveal that some white residents around Ruretse (a farm owned by the Khama family) had reported a suspicious vehicle moving in their neighbourhood. The state agents chased and shot at the suspects in broad daylight. This was not a clandestine operation. There was not even an attempt to follow these suspects to a less populated area. The agents rather jeopardised the lives of civilians by shooting at unarmed suspects. They explicitly disturbed public order. These activities may be clandestine, their increasing statistics before the courts of laws have drawn the attention of the public.
Incidents of torture at the hands of the DIS became were increasingly reported in the media. The Serious Crimes Unit (police intelligence) is also implicated on increased used of torture. One of the cases before the courts, features tortured female suspects who were not subsequently taken to hospital (“Five CID officers charged”, 2009). In another case the DIS tortured soldiers over a missing gun which was later found in the armoury.
Disregard for human life is a key indicator of state terrorism. It is paradoxical that Ian Khama became president he promised that one of the pillars of government would be dignity. Alas his key security project, the DIS, has done everything to frustrate dignity.
Where is dignity of suspects when they are shot to death in public? Where is the dignity [of the public] when public order is disturbed by trigger-happy security agents? In the pre-Khama years, public shootings were unheard of. Paramilitary units used force when necessary. In some cases the Special Support Group (SSG)-a police paramilitary unit-used arms in order to incapacitate violent and/or armed criminals. This use of force was never deliberately lethal.
The society was engulfed in fear following the public execution of John Kalafatis. The public now fears both the DIS and criminals. Moreover, this trend is likely to incite even the pettiest of criminals to start to arm themselves. This boomerang will make Botswana unliveable, perhaps proving too difficult for the state to control security.
Botswana is experiencing a new surge of state terrorism. The intelligence community, through the aegis of the DIS is the main source of terror. This stands in contrast to the existence of similar establishment in the ‘disciplined forces’, vis-à-vis Botswana Defence Force and the Botswana Police Service. This stands in contrast to four decades of peace and tranquillity in the democratic state. In this new era the DIS has instigated various acts of terror against members of the public.
These include extra judicial killings, most of which are public; torture of suspects in order extract confessions, even for minor crimes; communication surveillance against people with dissenting views; and open intimidation in a bid of intellectual repression. These acts of terror by the state are intended to instil fear in the public. It is a misfire to assume that the DIS acts in isolation. It is part of the state and their actions are not reprimanded by other arms of government. This terror is not in the interest of the public, but against the public. This emerging state terrorism sees Botswana gravitating towards the grotesque legacies such witnessed elsewhere. State terrorism has been sufficiently practiced and the horrors thereof documented in Congo, Uganda, Libya, Nigeria and Zimbabwe. This is the direction in which Botswana is headed. It matters less whether this has happened elsewhere in Africa. Botswana has managed to differentiate itself as a model state in Africa over the years.
This paper proffers several suggestions on how intelligence unit can be utilised in Botswana. First, the DIS should make itself useful economically. In the post- cold war era most intelligence agencies have turned their efforts to economic espionage . The world of international relations is a place where each nature strives for influence and power.
It is not an easy world. The DIS should indulge in economic espionage in order to improve economic development.
Second, they should seek to counter espionage within the border. Pateman discusses the extent to which Western intelligence communities, as well as Israel’s Mossad, and Chinese intelligence are loosely infiltrating Africa. There is hardly an African country without a clique of agents infiltrating and frustrating the plans of the sitting government.
As much as the current President [Ian Khama] departed from the non- interference foreign policy, he is set on antagonizing fellow African states; the DIS must be ready to tackle the concomitant ramifications.
Finally, the state (through arms not complicit in the acts of terror) should gravitate towards entrenching a purely democratic and non-partisan oversight of the DIS.
The DIS, in an apolitical context, might be useful to Botswana. However, in order to make it a sustainable organisation there should be credible oversight that survives the Khama presidency. What if Khama’s successor becomes tyrannical? What if the current (Kgosi) leadership of the DIS is eventually assumed [years later] by eccentric, paranoid half-brained quarks? This oversight must also be entrenched in law. Most importantly this oversight mechanism should make the DIS accountable to a wide range of policymakers, including those that do not have a sentimental attachment to the presidency.
In the event that the above recommendations fail, it is sufficient to invoke a pre-emptory and dismissive suggestion made in the run-up to the legalisation of the intelligence act. During a public debate Minister Phandu Skelemani asked,“What country can exist for forty years without an intelligence agency?”
Dr. Elmon Tafa responded by stating that Botswana has effectively survived for forty years without a “civil” intelligence agency. If oversight of the DIS fails, Botswana is better off without the DIS. If the DIS does not desist from its terrorist acts, with other arms of the state unwilling to placate this state terrorism, then it should be dismantled and redirect the billions of dollars spent on the DIS to infrastructural development, urbanisation and economic diversification.
This is an excerpt from the paper Intelligence operations as terrorism: Emerging state terrorism in Botswana
Published in the Journal of African Studies and Development Vol. 3(9), pp. 176-186, September, 2011