8 January 2009
editorial
The festive season is officially over and most people are back at work after a period of merrymaking and cooling off.
National crime statistics from the Botswana Police, and indeed even our casual observations, indicate that crime over the festive season was generally low. Perhaps, with the exception of rape, which is one of the heinous crimes that seems to be on the surge, other criminal activities such as robbery and house-breaking are on the decline.
This is a major turn around given that in the past, the festive season was a time when criminals ruled the roost, making life miserable for helpless Batswana who lost a lot of their goods to the criminals.
For a long time it appeared that we were fighting a losing battle to robbers and criminals, but for a change, it now appears that we are reclaiming our streets and the fight against criminals seems to be bearing fruit.
We must thank the police for their relentless efforts in fighting crime. This season we witnessed the strong presence of the police and the army on our streets. They flushed out criminals and brought a sense of security to many of our homes. In urban areas, the message of 'neighbourhood watch' seems to be holding out and that is partly why crime levels have gone down.
We hope this security vigilance will not be a one-off occurrence because crime in Botswana is not seasonal. It lives with us on a daily basis and it cannot be defeated by the occasional operation.
This time around, even the carnage on our roads has gone down considerably, we still need to do more to save more lives.
The combination of the police and the army doing policing on our streets was never going to be easy given the sensitivity of community policing.
Despite the challenges of armed soldiers doing policing on our streets, it is heartening that so far there have not been major problems of human rights abuses, reckless shooting and other violations of people's rights.
This delicate balance is not easy to maintain and we hope that this challenge will be safely navigated.
In one incident in which a suspected robber was shot and killed in Maun, the police have been proactive and they have since instituted a commission to investigate the incident.
This act to demonstrate transparency is highly commendable on the part of our police and it will serve to bolster confidence in the belief that our forces are not just trigger happy, but that the police are committed to apprehending wrongdoers who should face the full might of the law.
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