Features

'Vote to topple the butchers'

 

In recent weeks, newspapers have been awash with reports about the shooting of Costa Kalafatis, brother to John Kalafatis whose life expired prematurely in 2008 when security forces sprayed live bullets into his body.  Costa is said to be under intensive medical care and holding on bravely to life. The same newspapers suggest that Mr Kalafatis, the father, died mysteriously three or so years after the brutal execution of his son.

No one within the security forces has offered a cogent explanation to account for all three tragedies, nor has anyone offered to re-assure the country that such kinds of mysterious extra-judicial killings or shootings will not happen again under the watch of those who govern this country.  This is a sad season in the life of this nation.

In this country, much is discussed in hushed tones with the hope that the long ear of the state does not catch the conversations of the people who are afraid that one fateful night someone will knock on their door and question them for their spite for the State. They are afraid that a phone call will announce the cancellation of a government contract on which they depend for their livelihood; they are afraid that the post office will carry mail addressed to them the pages of which, in bold print, ask them to go on early retirement.

The people are afraid to jeopardise their prospects for promotion. They are afraid that when foreign investors come to Botswana, they will be told that they cannot go into partnership with those who have rubbed the ruling regime the wrong way.  Worse still, young university students are growing into young adults afraid that their dreams will come to nothing if they do not align themselves with the ruling coterie, especially young Batswana who have no one in a position to put in a good word for them. This is modern-day Botswana whose many citizens within and outside the country are at once nostalgic and in denial about the past.

This is a country in which an entire family, the Kalafatis, is under threat of extinction at the hands of the state but no one is held to account. It is a country in which you cannot ask questions about what happened to its children, for the authorities in high offices are preoccupied with other matters of state. Instead of giving a straight answer, they will feed the rumour mill, purveyed by their henchmen and henchwomen, that the Kalafatis are extremely dangerous to society and must therefore be exterminated.

The faceless malefactors who boldly justify the extrajudicial killings and shootings constitute our new judiciary with a new judicial order. They decide if state-sanctioned murder and shootings are good or bad, depending on whom it is meted against and who perpetrates it.

Those who are committed to due process are regarded as na•ve.  They are told that there are immensely horrid men out there whose crimes are unspeakable and therefore do not deserve to be tried in a proper manner. This is the tragedy about which future generations of Batswana will judge us.

In the seat of the government of Botswana is an irresponsible and callous circle of family and friends that rules over this country.  Our governors have thrown away the ideal of justice and fair play and cast into the depths of oceans.  Not one among these men - and we cannot say if there are women among them - values equity any more, hence the government has become a butcher state. 

But time has a way of repairing the wrongs of the past and revealing the truths that need to be exposed. When that time comes, and true justice prevails, they will remember that some of us lived by our duty to speak the truth. The people have it in their hands to change the course of a nation's journey. The people should see these injustices for what they are. Therefore this appeal to the people of Botswana: go out in your millions and fix your country in the next elections.  Go out to your neighbours and over tea encourage them to cast their votes. 

Go on the bus and visit your grandparents and cousins in the villages.  Tell them they are strong and that they have the power to restore justice to this land. Vote in numbers for a responsible government led by the Umbrella for Democratic Change.