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Botswana: Disappearances Worry Police Chief
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Mmegi/The Reporter (Gaborone)
28 March 2008
Posted to the web 31 March 2008
Gale Ngakane
Gaborone
Letlhakane police station commander says he is worried that they do not seem to be doing enough to sensitise residents about people who mysteriously disappear in his area of jurisdiction.
"I should be conducting meetings at schools and the Dikgotla to let people know what they should do in the event they get lost or how they could prevent such an occurrence in the first place," Superintendent Solomon Sedumedi said in a phone interview from Letlhakane yesterday.
Sedumedi's introspection comes at a time his police officers have combined forces with Mosu villagers to look for an eight-year-old Mosarwa child who got lost last month. The police and the villagers have since the beginning of the month been combing the Mosu countryside searching for the boy.
Information about his disappearance is sketchy, but Sedumedi discloses that the boy was a Standard One pupil at Mosu Primary School and that he resided at the Rural Area Dwellers (RADs) hostel in the village. He is not sure as to what actually happened, but it has come to his notice that RAD children have a penchant of playing truant when they are supposed to be in school. "Whenever they disappear, school authorities would presume that the children have returned to their parents, and the parents would similarly think the children are at school," says Sedumedi.
The police chief says he addressed a joint meeting of pupils and elders in Mosu that they should take the issue of disappearances seriously. "The thing is whenever a person disappears, we are forced to use a considerable amount of resources in locating them. "It is a situation akin to a serious crime because the police come out in force to look for the person. We also use helicopters in such searches."
Sedumedi remembers two incidents, the first involving a young boy who they found after three days in an advanced state of dehydration. The other one involved a woman who was still fit as fiddle when they found her because she had a bottle of water with her.
"She galloped away when we approached and it took us some time before we could apprehend her. As for the boy, he was hungry and thirsty he ferociously attacked the food and drink we gave him," says Sedumedi. There was another incident in which a crawling toddler disappeared as the mother dozed nearby. He says the trail for the child has gone cold, though it disappeared more than four years ago.
"What people should be aware of is that getting lost can happen to anyone. Even if you are familiar with a territory, you can still get lost. People must know what to do when they get into such situations. This is the message that we should be relaying to people," says Sedumedi. One thing that gives him sleepless nights is the fact that on many occasions, it usually rains after a person gets lost and this he thinks could be a planned disappearance, perhaps perpetrated by ritual murderers.
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"There have been these instances where immediately a person gets lost, it rains. In such instances, we cannot rule out ritual murders. In fact, it is a well known fact that ritual murders do exist in Botswana. We cannot wish away that threat," he says.
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