Bame Piet
8 October 2008
Botswana does not own most of the land along its borders with Zimbabwe, South Africa, and Namibia, it emerged yesterday at the ongoing three-day National Security Strategy Review seminar in Gaborone.
Highly placed government officials revealed that this makes it difficult for security forces and government agencies like the immigration department to access the farms mainly owned by white Batswana of South African origin.
The farms are fenced along the borderline and this, they said, poses a security threat to the country.
The objectives of the seminar is to widen security sector reform literacy in readiness for cross government implementation of a new national strategy; to communicate the national security strategy review concept to wider critical civil society and NGO stakeholders in a way that fosters common understanding.
The other objectives are to meet Vision 2016 pillars of a safe and secure nation; and to enhance Botswana's regional profile as a potential conflict prevention actor outside its borders. Some of the issues discussed were: the nature of security; policy formulation; role of civil society in security strategy review; implementing and managing change; strategic environment: SADC region and the continent from a Botswana prospective. Addressing the seminar, Minister for Defence, Justice and Security Dikgakgamatso Seretse said that the government has ensured national security without losing sight of the country's core values of good governance, tolerance and transparency, consultation and botho.
"In the context of Botswana, security is understood to be a condition which enables citizens and residents of Botswana to live in a secure environment free from both internal and external threats, to enjoy the protection of fundamental human rights and to have access to resources and basic human needs.
It ensures the protection of socio-economic and political interests, the loss of which would threaten fundamental values and the vitality of the state," he said. Seretse said that the relative peace and stability that the SADC region has enjoyed after the liberation struggles has rendered Botswana complacent over the years and the country has never made any deliberate effort to formalise its national security strategy.
The seminar was organised by the British High Commission and Centre for Security Sector Management (CSSM) of Cranfield University. Participants were from government departments and the civil society.
It is hoped that the seminar will result in a policy framework, which will form the basis for which security organs in government and in the public domain will come up with their own security policies. The policy will ensure that operational decisions are made and implemented in accordance with national interests, as well as the short and long-term goals of national policy.
"This will effectively reduce the discrepancies, redundancies and deficiencies in our national security policy implementation process.
To this end, the security institutions will be appropriately resourced to deliver the capabilities required," Seretse said.
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