Integrity of State Institutions paramount

There is a general feeling among the populace that our state institutions are weak.

They are beset with many deficiencies – be they of corporate governance, culture, financial management or in the case of our justice administration, prosecutorial capabilities!

The latter institution requires further probing given the ongoing debacle between the State and an Intelligence Officer at Directorate of Intelligence and Security Services (DISS), which case implicates the former president, the founding head of the Directorate of Intelligence and Security Services (DISS) and a prominent businesswoman in South Africa, who is also a sister-in-law to the sitting President in that country.

It beats logic how, if we are to believe recent reports, that a whole State Institution in the mould of the

Directorate of Public Prosecutions (DPP) could lodge a lawsuit alleging that billions of Pula have been laundered through the country’s central bank – when there is absolutely no modicum not even a shred of truth in such allegation.

Certainly, this speaks to the capabilities and soundness of our investigatory agencies – starting with the police, the military and police intelligence, Directorate of Corruption and Economic Crime(DCEC) as well as the Financial Intelligence Agency (FIA). One would expect that before the DPP takes up a matter of such sensitivity which implicates high-placed personages with political networks and links across the globe, these agencies would have satisfied themselves that they have a foolproof case that can stand the test in a court of law.

I am mindful that all that I am saying is speculative since the matter is still a subject of investigation by the relevant authorities, but what is really worrisome is that the implicated people have moved swiftly to discredit the evidence proffered by the Investigating Officer in the case.

Botswana has never had to deal with a scandal of this magnitude! The script couldn’t have been more perfect! It has all the trappings of an award-winning film.

A multibillion dollar heist at the country’s central bank, staged allegedly by a bitter motley-crew led by a former head of state in cahoots with powerful external business mogul the end goal being the financing of a coup de ‘tat in Botswana!

We may be taking this lightly, but it’s not a light matter by any stretch of the imagination! We are talking very influential people here, big moneys and big connections! This case certainly presents a litmus test for our national institutions of justice.

Already we are in the bad books of our biggest trading partner – European Union (EU) - allegedly over our dabbling in financing of terrorism and moneylaundering. Is there a remote possibility that this case, which implicates highly placed individuals at home and outside, could have provided the trigger for the EU blacklisting?

This is why it is very important that before we take the case to court our institutions of investigations and prosecutions must have satisfied themselves that they have a fool-proof case, a water-tight case that will not come back to impugn their integrity and also haunt the country’s avowed tenets of rule of law and its reputation as a beacon of democracy.

Yet on the flipside, there is the issue of the pending response to the request for Mutual Legal Assistance made by the Directorate of Public Prosecution (DPP) to the Department of Justice in South Africa in September 19th 2019.

Why has it taken this long for a request by a sovereign state to another sovereign state to get a response or an acknowledgement of receipt? It was this delay that ultimately led the DPP to engage a reputable attorney from a ‘repugnant’ Afrikaaner organisation – AfriForum – to assist it get a response from the Department of Justice.

And indeed the trick has worked, because hardly a month after Gerry Nel announced his association with the DPP in the case, he’s already made inroads one of which was to file a Mandamus to force South Africa to respond to the MLA, which the Minister for Justice and Correctional Services Ronald Lamola could not ignore, even if he wished.

Guns blazing, Lamola sent out a hardhitting statement last week expressing confirming receiving the Mandamus application from Afriforum, but for good measure, unambiguously stating that it was “unprecedented” for a Mutual Legal Assistance request to be made through a Non-Governmental Organisation (Afriforum)!

Yes, it is unprecedented but was the MLA request done through an NGO initially, or was the NGO engaged when there was absolutely no response forthcoming from South Africa some eight months later? Again, South Africa admits having assisted Botswana with six MLAs in the past, now why is this particular MLA causing a rift between the two sovereign states?

There is no guessing that it is because of the high-profile individuals involved and the nature of the alleged crimes – money laundering and financing of terrorism! Lamola finally admitted that because of the seriousness of the alleged crime (money laundering), they are going to have to institute criminal investigations, which could take a long time, before a response can be given.

One wonders why they did not say this from the onset once they had received the

MLA in September 2019 – why did they have to wait until almost a year later, when the implicated had already carried out their private investigation that exonerated them, to give this response.

---Meantime, I got a shock of my life last week when I learnt our Parliament does not accept newspaper reports as admissible evidence in Parliament. Members of Parliament are also not allowed to quote newspapers! I think they have shot themselves on the foot. This is a very bad precedence that they are setting for themselves.

Worse still we learnt of this shocker when the MPs were debating whether to repeal or amend the notorious Media Practitioners’ Act of 2008. If Parliament cannot quote newspapers’ reports or allow them as evidence in Motions and submissions, then Parliament has a very low opinion of the profession of journalism.

It beats logic therefore, why they want to waste their time trying to come up with a framework to regulate a profession which they despise? We can only deduce from their attitude that whatever instrument they come up with will be oppressive.

I challenge our Parliament to pluck a leaf from Thomas Jefferson’s famous quote of 1787, “Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter”.