from Mmegi March & April 2010

Khama moves to stem tidal wave

EPHRAIM KEORENG
Staff Writer
Thursday, 22 April 2010 | Issue: Vol.27 No.60
http://www.mmegi.bw/index.php?sid=1&aid=1812&dir=2010/April/Thursday22

As Barata-Phathi move to form a new party, Botswana Democratic Party president Ian Khama is making strenuous efforts to stem a feared tidal wave of defectors from joining the erstwhile faction of the ruling party.

The military strategist that he is Khama has launched a counter-offensive on Barata-Phathi to ensure the splinter group does not take any more BDP supporters with them.

The BDP head office says Khama will address BDP members throughout the country, beginning in the north, on recent developments in the party, especially registration of the vaunted new party.

This week Sidney Pilane revealed that the BDP faction was registering their party's name and would also present a constitution of the party to the Registrar of Societies. Pilane is actually expected to announce the name of the party today.

Several MPs, among them Botsalo Ntuane (Gaborone West South) and Wynter Mmolotsi (Francistown South) are expected to lead an exodus from the ruling party.

In a press release, the Executive Secretary of the BDP says Khama will address party leaders from Tswapong, Shoshong-Mahalapye (SHOMA), BOMASE (Bobirwa Mmadinare Selibe Phikwe), the North East, Central, the North West and Francistown regions in Francistown May 1. "The regions are expected to send 10 representatives.

Members of the central committee and sub-committees of the central committees are invited," says Serema's statement.

"Preparations are underway for him (Khama) to address constituencies in the South."

As Khama crisis-crosses the country in an attempt to keep the floodgates in place, the BDP secretariat and the party's Political Education and Elections Committee (PEEC) will retreat to Mahalapye to map out a strategy to weather the feared storm of defections.

"We have heard that the faction (Barata-Phathi) has been addressing people in places like Lobatse, Gantsi and Maun," Serema told Mmegi in an interview yesterday. "As a party, we can't just be quiet forever; our people need to know what we are saying as BDP."

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DIS boss pleads ignorance to abduction

MONKAGEDI GAOTLHOBOGWE
Staff Writer
Thursday, 22 April 2010 | Issue: Vol.27 No.57
http://www.mmegi.bw/index.php?sid=1&aid=1683&dir=2010/April/Friday16

Directorate of Intelligence and Security (DIS) Director Isaac Kgosi yesterday professed ignorance about the abduction of a 21-year-old man by DIS agents, who later took him to their premises at the old Radio Botswana studios. The victim later claimed to be missing P56,000.


In an interview with Mmegi, the DIS boss yesterday claimed his officers had told him that the youngster, was seen at a crime scene where a certain white man was robbed of cash by people claiming to be DIS agents that same day. " I am told some were ambushed yesterday (Wednesday) because they tried to rob a white man.

According to Kgosi, he was informed that the boy was pounced upon and searched at the scene of the crime, then released within five minutes. At least that is what one officer told Kgosi as Mmegi listened to their conversation when their call was put on hold.

This same officer informed Kgosi that they found US3, and some P285 in the pockets of the victim, Elias Ramogerika, as well as a laptop, but denied finding more cash. Ramogerika claims he lost P56,000.

When Mmegi brought it to the attention of the DIS director that the victim was not released by the officers until after 9pm, he sounded surprised.

Kgosi says his juniors told him that when the victim's colleagues arrived at the premises looking for the DIS boss, they were told to wait for him but they decided to go away before he could attend to their complaints.

However Ramogerika's colleagues, among them chief auctioneer Senki Sesinyi told Mmegi that when they tried to see the DIS boss, a certain officer by the name of Thebe was introduced to them and he behaved as if he was the boss.

Kgosi admitted that he does indeed have an officer by that name but insisted that the complainants should have been patient enough to wait for him (Kgosi).

However the DIS director promised to follow the matter up with the aggrieved parties since there are conflicting reports. " I hope like you are saying, they have reported the matter to the police so that independent investigations, if necessary, can be undertaken", Kgosi said yesterday.

Interestingly the latest report about robbery of innocent victims by the DIS comes at a time when the DIS is claiming that there are many fraudsters robbing people in the name of the DIS.

Kgosi says to date about 15 cases of that nature have been reported, with people being robbed of between P1,500-P25,000 at a time. He claimed that some of the perpetrators of this new crime are foreigners, and that six victims have been identified so far.

Kgosi also claimed that some fraudsters were apprehended on Wednesday after taking P15,000 from a factory in Gaborone, claiming to be DIS agents. He did not identify the factory in question.


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Auctioneers tell of their experience with DIS

MONKAGEDI GAOTLHOBOGWE
Staff Writer
Thursday, 22 April 2010 | Issue: Vol.27 No.57
http://www.mmegi.bw/index.php?sid=1&aid=1684&dir=2010/April/Friday16

Two auctioneers who yesterday afternoon followed up the disappearance of P56,000 from their colleague's car at the Directorate of Intelligence and Security (DIS) premises have told of their experience and the arrogance of the officers.


Senki Sesinyi, who is popularly known as Tycoon in Gaborone, was accompanied by colleague Frederick Keakile to the DIS headquarters where they were following up the disappearance of their cash from the boot of the car which was in the hands of the DIS while one of their colleagues, Elias Ramogerika was being interrogated at the torture chambers upstairs on Wednesday evening.

"Hei, ba maikgantsho batho ba le ke ba bone ka nna today (they are so arrogant those DIS agents, today I have seen for myself)."

Sesinyi who describes himself as a an ex-police officer who quit the service and is now living large tells Mmegi that the DIS officers at the premises did not deny that they had abducted their colleague.

"They were blatantly arrogant and showing off; they were coming up with threats, especially this one called Thebe; we know each other because I was a police officer and he used to be a police officer too".

Sesinyi continued: "But I know him well; in the DIS office Thebe was cajoling me and pointing fingers at me; but I was not afraid; I told him this is not your office, these are government premises and he was not going to threaten me".

"He (Thebe) was beating tables with fists trying to exert himself and laughing at us continuously in arrogance; then he declared that we could not do anything.

I told him that many have laughed like that before and lost their jobs later".

Sesinyi also talked of another boastful DIS agent called Lerumo.

Sesinyi's colleague, Keakile, told Mmegi; "Ke ntse ke e utlwalela DIS; ke e bone, ke batho ba ba dikgoka( I used to hear about this DIS, today I have seen for myself; it is a bunch of aggressive characters...I think we were lucky that when we got there, there were not so many officers; but they were now starting to arrive at the office in large numbers and they were getting more and more arrogant. I regret going there I fear that one day they will ambush us. They can be cruel those guys," said Keakile.

Sesinyi told Mmegi that he suspects the DIS were actually looking for him as well, especially after learning that his colleague was interrogated about the fancy lifestyle that they are living.

" I went to DIS with the papers from the auction so that if they had impounded my money thinking it is the proceeds of a crime I could show them item by item. I am an auctioneer myself, I used to be a police officer. When I retired from the police I had only P600 after paying my debts, then I became an auctioneer, the rest is history."

Sesinyi says he lodged a case against the DIS with the Central Police immediately after learning that his P56,000 had disappeared in DIS custody.


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Man loses P56,000 after DIS interrogation

MONKAGEDI GAOTLHOBOGWE
Staff Writer
Thursday, 22 April 2010 | Issue: Vol.27 No.57
http://www.mmegi.bw/index.php?sid=1&aid=1681&dir=2010/April/Friday16

A 21-year-old mechanical engineering student who was bundled out of his car in the middle of a traffic jam and taken to Directorate of Intelligence and Security (DIS) headquarters on Wednesday evening allegedly realised that a stash of P56,000 was missing from the boot of the car he was driving after four hours of interrogation by state security agents.


Elias Ramogerika of Broadhurst in Gaborone was among a team of five men who made P56,000 at an auction at BBS Mall earlier that day. The money was entrusted to Ramogerika by the chief auctioneer, Senki Sesinyi, to take home at the end of the auction after 3pm, while the rest of the team travelled to Mafikeng in South Africa.

Ramogerika says he then decided to go to the University of Botswana's Faculty of Engineering and Technology where he is a student to complete some assignments. He was driving home from school in a metallic blue BMW sedan, belonging to his boss Sesenyi, when the DIS agents allegedly pounced on him at approximately 5pm.

Ramogerika says he had just bought some food at the Choppies store in Maruapula when an Isuzu 4x4 double cab vehicle registered B 212 400 drove at him. "I was at the Maruapula traffic lights waiting for my turn when an Isuzu came at me at high speed," he says.

"I drove off the road to avoid it, but it kept coming at me. Four men suddenly jumped out it and came rushing at me. Without saying who they were, they handcuffed me and threw me onto the takeaway I had just bought. One of the men drove my car and took me to DIS headquarters near State House."

Upon arrival, his car was searched and things removed from it before he was taken upstairs where he was photographed from several angles. The interrogation then started. "They asked me where I got the money to buy such an expensive car," Ramogerika says. "Man, those handcuffs were hurting."

His interrogators took turns. "Sometimes they would send me out, apparently when they wanted to discuss something they did not want me to hear," he says. "They would then take me back into the office."

His cellphone was scrutinized and all the phone numbers on it copied onto another phone. "They told me that they suspected that I was stealing cars, apparently because some of my contacts had names of cars.

"I explained that we sell all types of goods and that the numbers were for certain customers who wanted certain makes of cars. They then accused me of selling stolen goods and asked if we had a licence for auctioning, which we do and I told them so."

Ramogerika says he was not tortured but it was not until around 9pm that he was set free. "They said they felt pity for me 'because you are so light-skinned, otherwise we would have you spend the night here. You may go now.'"

It was then that he made his first call since being "ambushed" at around 5pm. His elder brother Kagiso and Sesinyi came to fetch him from the Main Mall. It was then that Sesinyi, whose property the P56,000 was, realised that the money was missing.

"We immediately drove back to the DIS premises," Ramogerika says. "Twice actually that night, but they had locked their gates. Sesinyi proceeded to report the matter at Central Police Station."


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Has DIS started abductions?

LEKOPANYE MOOKETSI
Correspondent
Thursday, 22 April 2010 | Issue: Vol.26 No.15
http://www.mmegi.bw/index.php?sid=1&aid=1&dir=2009/January/Thursday29

Has the state started abducting people using the Directorate on Intelligence and Security (DIS)?. Since the inception of the DIS, there have been fears that the spy agency might be used to eliminate opponents of the government like in other countries. Usually the people who are targeted by spy agencies include opposition activists, student leaders, journalists, especially from the private media and human rights activists.


Already, the president of the University of Botswana (UB) Student Representative Council (SRC), Kagiso Thutlwa has said that he was recently abducted from the campus and dumped in the bush along the airport road. Thutlwa had assumed that the three men who abducted him were plain clothes police officers but now he has doubts.

He said that on January 15, he received a call that he was wanted at the Deputy Vice Chancellor's office. At the time, the SRC was locked in a meeting discussing the government's decision not to sponsor students who were repeating their courses.

Thutlwa said just as he was about to reach the administration block, he met three men, who told him that they wanted to ask him something. He followed the three men to the parking lot thinking they were journalists.

He said the men grabbed him and pushed him into their car, a Subaru. "As I was shocked, they asked me, do you want to be embarrassed," he said. He added that his captors never produced any identity cards. They accused him of inciting students to riot and drove him to police headquarters. Just as they were about to enter the headquarters, he said, the men ordered that they should go back to the vehicle.

On the way back, his captors repeated that they were not happy that he has been inciting students to go on strike. They also accused him of chanting anti-government slogans. Thutlwa said his tormentors took his cellphone and fiddled with it. They erased the number which they used to call him at the campus.

After leaving police headquarters, Thutlwa said they drove towards Broadhurst and then took the airport road. They took a turn into the bush opposite the Botswana Bureau of Standards (BOBS) offices.

Thutlwa said he feared for his life as the three men threatened him. "They told me that I can disappear." He said that they told him: "Do you know that you can die if you continue to influence students to revolt".

At some stage, he said they pointed at a tall tree and threatened that they could hang him and make it appear like he committed suicide.

After the interrogation, Thutlwa said his captors abandoned him and drove away.

He said he was picked up by uniformed police officers after he sent an SOS message to other students. He said the fact that he was rescued by the police shows that the people who abducted him were not police officers.

He said he was so terrified that he did not even take the plate number of the vehicle of his tormentors. However, he reported the matter to the university authorities.

During a recent meeting with the Minister of Defence, Justice and Security, Ndelu Seretse, police officers expressed concern that DIS agents were terrorising people and claiming that they were police officers. The police said they have received so many complaints from members of the public about the DIS agents.

Last year, a police officer and a soldier claimed that they were tortured by DIS agents after they were suspected to have stolen a gun from Gaborone West Police Station. The torture allegations were reported to the Central Police Station.

In Francistown, two foreign business people have taken the government to court claiming they were harrassed by DIS agents.

In some cases, members of the public said they have witnessed instances where suspected DIS agents brandished guns while arresting people. A Gaborone resident said he witnessed such an incident at a bar in Phase VI.

Another eyewitness said he saw people he suspected to be DISS agents shooting in the air before arresting suspects at a Broadhurst shebeen. He said the suspects were never armed.

An opposition activist said, even police officers and soldiers live in fear of the DISS agents. The government spokesman, Dr Jeff Ramsay recently said DISS agents are not supposed to identify themselves when they arrest suspects because they are on clandestine missions.


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DIS is a terror squad - Saleshando

BAME PIET
Staff Writer
Thursday, 22 April 2010 | Issue: Vol.26 No.182
http://www.mmegi.bw/index.php?sid=1&aid=164&dir=2009/December/Thursday3

The MP for Gaborone Central, Dumelang Saleshando has equated the Directorate of Intelligence and Security (DIS) to terror squads in dictatorships in Africa and other parts of the world.


Speaking in Parliament yesterday, he said that since the establishment of DIS last year, Batswana live in fear of their own government. He said that extra-judicial killings have become part of life in Botswana since President Ian Khama took over last year.

Saleshando said that when he opened the 10th Parliament, Khama called for a moment of silence to remember the dead. The MP wonders if those killed by state security agents were on the President's mind.

He cautioned that once the DIS realises that people are not happy with the killings, it will use other tricks such as organised fatal accidents and robberies targeting persons deemed to be anti-government. He warned that these have happened in countries where leaders do not want to hear dissenting voices. He expressed concern at the lack of an oversight institution to monitor DIS activities saying the tribunal that was set recently is a toothless body packed with ruling Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) activists.

Saleshando said that the current director-general of DIS, Colonel Isaac Kgosi cannot be entrusted with the security of the nation. He stated that Kgosi is inconsistent in the way he releases information to the public. The MP said the DIS boss does not know his jurisdiction. He accused Khama of appointing his close friends to positions of power even when they do not possess the right qualifications. He warned that nepotism will soon be the only qualification for people to be appointed to positions of power.

Saleshando accused government of trying to transfer the wealth of the nation into the hands of a few individuals, probably expatriates through privatisation. He said that many Batswana live in poverty while 20 percent of the population controls 80 percent of the economy. He stated that Parliament has not been consulted on the creation of hubs and some ministers do not know what they are about. "We just hope that the President and his Vice are taking us in the right direction," he said. He added that the recent elections have proved that the youth of the country really wanted to protect the education system from vultures who seek to enrich themselves.

Meanwhile Assistant Minister of Education, Keletso Rakhudu said that he supports a comprehensive review of the constitution. He told MPs to stop fighting among themselves over the issue, which procedurally should be done through a referendum. He said the nation should be consulted on the review because Parliament alone cannot carry out the exercise. Rakhudu said that he agrees with a call for legislation to protect people living with HIV/AIDS from discrimination.


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ANC deserves Malema, South Africa needs him

RAMPHOLO MOLEFHE
Thursday, 22 April 2010 | Issue: Vol.27 No.60
http://www.mmegi.bw/index.php?sid=10&aid=1639&dir=2010/April/Thursday22

On the surface, Julius Malema, the leader of the African National Congress Youth League, displays all the outward characteristics of a village rustic, a political Jim comes to Jo'burg, and fits the stereotype of the uncontrollable bitchy bully of a woman whose mouth always runs well ahead of her mind when she considers herself angry.


He maybe some of those but he comes just at the right time for the African National Congress and for South Africa. All too often, the aspirations of the liberation movement get lost in the intoxicating celebratory mood that ensues after the lowering of the colonial flag and the raising of the symbolic paraphernalia of the newly-born nation; the coat of arms, national anthem and flag.

And whilst the largest sections of the population feed on the promise of a new political, economic and social dispensation, a thin layer of the ruling class gets to work taking advantage of every programme that is targeted at compensating the oppressed for all the years of their suffering under apartheid and other varieties of colonialism, to enrich themselves. Before you know it, the objectives of the struggle - put that conveniently at 88 years of resistance for the ANC and painfully at 400 for the Basarwa - are consumed by the pages of official paperwork and meetings that together constitute 'government'.

The ANC became the darling of both the capitalist West and the socialist East on account, partly, of its demonstrated commitment to 'non-racialism' as expressed in the Freedom Charter that bound white, coloured, Indian and black together in a political covenant between 1955 and 1956.

The Freedom Charter deliberately stated that 'South Africa belongs to all who live in it' in order to allay white fears about the attitude of the prospective ANC government towards citizenship rights of the whites, especially that the radical crop of the Africanists led by Robert Sobukwe emphasised that 'Africa belongs to the Africans'.

The whites felt threatened by that pronouncement, believing that under that dispensation, they would be dispossessed of their land and treated as immigrants.

The objective reality was that the Land Act of the very early 1900s gave whites, making up only a quarter of the population, 87 percent of the richest soil, leaving the blacks with only 13 percent. The first democratically-elected president of the republic, Nelson Mandela, went a step further than the Freedom Charter, acceding that Afrikaners who demonstrated that they had owned their farms for 200 years would be entitled to them under any land reform programme that his government and the ANC would implement.

Clearly, that land would have been distributed under the iniquitous system that later found firmer legal authority under the Land Act, and the undertaking does very little to ameliorate the problem of landlessness among the blacks. As it turns out, the South African authorities have only had time, after 16 years of 'democratic rule' to process only a handful of applications for restoration of land to the blacks which process will affect only about three present of the contentious property.

In his last budget speech, Trevor Manuel, boastfully announced that there would be no purpose in restoring land to people who could not work it, clearly making reference to the situation in Zimbabwe where Robert Mugabe and the ZANU (PF) government, having given up on British undertakings to honour the Lancaster House agreements, took it upon themselves to repossess land from the white farmers, who in any case were dedicated to subverting the economy and the black government right from the word go. Enter, Julius Malema: "Shoot the Boer, kill the farmer". He visits Heroes Acre in Zimbabwe on the eve of Eugene Terreblanche's murder, probably on account of arrears in payment of wages and possibly because he wanted sex with one of his young male labourers. The first military action of ZANU (PF) was in fact on a farm in 1963 which placed the white farmers at the immediate receiving end of the guerrilla incursions into Ian Smith's Rhodesia.
Malema's incantations arrive as a cruel reminder to the liberation movement of the deficit in their account of the land reform that should come with the new democratic dispensation. It is implied in Manuel's statement that the land is most useful when it is in the hands of the whites, and he makes no suggestion of a development programme for potential farmers in the black community.

He makes little room for a land reform that will change the shape of land distribution, thus making nonsense of the pre-democracy agitation of the ANC and the black folk for fair and equal access to land.

The problem may be in how Malema poses the questions, but certainly not in why he does so. Before he sang that 'liberation' song, Malema raised questions about a change in the ownership structure of the mines, reminding the ANC government that the Freedom Charter promised equitable benefit from the underground wealth of the country for the blacks. His assertions attracted official disclaimers from the government and the ANC: "It is not government policy to nationalise the mines," the officials announced. Malema promises to take the issue to the ANC national congress "and it will be a major item on the agenda," he says. Why shouldn't it be? Surely, if there should be a concerted effort to broaden the community of beneficiaries of democracy beyond a handful of party functionaries and a few adventurous 'go-getters', consideration must be given to the ownership and control of the mines which employ a sizeable number of South Africans who were the victims of the worst exploitation under apartheid, the apartheid dispensation.

Is it not ironic that the purpose for which Malema called a press conference at Luthuli House was not fulfilled? Instead, it was some wandering white journalist who received the bulk of the attention because he was rudely told to leave by Malema. Rudely yes, but so what?
Who ever said that reclamation of the dignity of the black man, battered over 400 years would be smooth and easy? It took a statement from President Jacob Zuma and several ANC officials to call for calm, almost apologising in advance for the murder of Terreblanche, the arch villain of Ventersdorp who fed blacks to his dogs (and) dragging another with a rope on the back of his van.

Whereas Mandela might have employed reconciliation as an instrument for the achievement of peace and national stability, it would appear that the contemporary black elite is thoroughly intimidated by the prospect of the much-vaunted 'racial war'. Of course, now, in contrast to when they were in Lusaka, Tanzania, China and the Soviet Union, looking for AK-47s to dislodge apartheid and white privilege, they also have their teeth in the pie. They have something to protect against the latent disgruntlement of the large majority of the black population that has benefited, not an iota, from the so-called democratic dispensation.

So now, the black elite who enjoy the privileges once enjoyed by the white elite - there was an exploited white working class by the way - now admonish Malema and his rabble-rousers for singing the freedom songs that gave the fighters inspiration to fight on.

The songs will cause a racial war, they claim. Perhaps! But isn't the greater malady in the failure of the system to deliver for the blacks who, at a glance, look just as poor or poorer than they were 14 years ago? Is that not the greater tragedy? Is that not the item that reduces South Africa to the level of the rubble of 'independent' African states that nurse a dismal record of failure in delivering for the people who fought for freedom as they suffered at the hands of the colonial regimes?

It may be true that Malema also enjoys the luxuries that the rest of his ilk in the ruling class enjoys; luxury cars, exotic penthouses and a voracious appetite for publicity.

He is though, different in one way: He is still angered by the new apartheid that leaves the rest of the Africans in the squalid townships with little hope for a better future.

He probably is a little embarrassed by the discovery of his riches, though he might have acquired them in the same way as Cyril Ramaphosa and Tokyo Sexwale, who do not appear to be the least bit perturbed by the continued impoverishment of the people in whose name they claim to have fought 'the struggle'. Surely, if one among the crooks still shows signs of owning a conscience, that should serve the ANC and South Africa well.