Botswana in crisis: perspective from a journalist in exile

Right now, Edgar Tsimane should be working hard at home in Gabarone to prepare for his country’s upcoming presidential elections on 24 October. There’s a lot of news around at the moment, and he’s one of the country’s top journalists, a senior reporter with the combative, privately owned Sunday Standard.

Instead, Tsimane is stuck in a flat in Centurion, the nondescript commuter town between Johannesburg and Pretoria, having been granted temporary political asylum in South Africa. Instead of conveying the news, he has become the news - forced to flee Botswana after publishing a story to which his government took exception.