It was said when the suspicious device was found, cabinet was in a meeting. President Ian Khama meanwhile was in Australia, on official duty. It is said cabinet ministers as well as people in offices in and around the Office of the President were evacuated.

Christopher Mbulawa, spokesperson of the Botswana Police dispatched a press release on the matter, comforting, reassuring and warning at the same time. He said there had been a swift mobilisation of emergency response by police and other security stakeholders. The scene was quickly secured. The device was "safely detonated at the scene with no resulting injury".He concluded by urging Batswana to be ever vigilant, "should they see any suspicious device or circumstance".

It should have been a very serious incident indicating a lapse in the security arrangement around the building housing the most powerful office in the country. However readers of Mmegi Facebook page, not unlike many people in the streets, doubted the authenticity of the incident. An even more radical group wondered whether this incident is not a hoax.

One reader commenting online says: "Is just propaganda kante wen are u going to understand how this government operates!" Another quips: "The whole thing was stage managed to legitimise building army barracks at State House". Public trust in government has never been this low in the history of this country.

But this cynicism, this irrational mistrust of the government is really a new phenomenon, only recently becoming pronounced in the Khama presidency and even more rabid in the post-Kalafatis period. The cynical consideration of every announcement from government and its institutions is but a post-Kalafatis phenomenon - the effect of the Kalafatis incident.

In fact as recent as the winter of 2007, then President Festus Mogae could lecture an international gathering, the Global Forum, on that basic ingredient to good governance - public trust. "Building the trust of its citizens is a process no government should ignore if it wants to govern with legitimacy and to lead a harmonious society. So important is trust, that in all the cultures represented here today, it is considered a vital ingredient for matrimonial bliss!"

Many Batswana have always been suspicious of President Ian Khama, even long before he rose to power. He was seen, unfairly or otherwise, as the devil lurking in a faŤade of normality.

Khama's father and founding president Seretse Khama was perhaps the last president to lead a totally trusting populace. It is for this reason that the late opposition doyen, Kenneth Koma was considered to have lost his marbles when he complained of government agents trailing him - after all how could government do this? Some wondered if his obsession with opposition politics had not made him somewhat irrational. Batswana generally understood that government is indeed out to serve their interests, to provide for their development and their country. A glance through the praise poems of poets of the era indicate this fellowship with those in government, perhaps a product of the traditional system that was still intact even at the post-independent period. Batswana generally had faith in the agenda of those in political power.

But by the time the 1980s and 1990s corruption set-in and the subsequent fall-out, then president Ketumile Masire was in control of a very mistrusting public indeed. However even at that point, it was more mistrust in the specific sections if not individuals in government than in government itself. It was generally understood that every now and then, those in positions of influence could abuse their powers for their own narrow interests.  Therefore the founding of the Directorate of Corruption and Economic Crime (DCEC) was predicated on the idea that those rotten apples could be weeded out of an otherwise working system of government.

Festus Mogae took over on a platform of strengthening the people's belief in the government to not just work for their interests but to deal with wrongdoers equitably. In other words, Mogae, by cracking the whip without any political considerations, would further strengthen the public trust in government.

Khama took over under a certain level of suspicion. The man had been watched with much suspicion from his early days in politics when he was controversially recruited into the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) to workbehind the scenes during Mogae's term. He is largely regarded to be a man who believes in the dark arts of military strategy, more cunning and calculating than he reveals. Through his placement of close relatives to strategic positions, he has cobbled out the semblance of proper government that Mogae had left. His is now a crack team of family and friends, dedicated not so much to the real national course but the paradigm crafted by Khama.  

The public's mistrust took a turn for the worse after the murder of John Kalafatis. The Kalafatis killing and subsequent reaction from the public and government indicates that the state really under-estimated the value of attending to issues of public concern in a timely manner.

After the fatal shooting, nothing was heard from either the police or other security institutions for close to a week. The minister in charge of security, Ramadeluka Seretse and his then communication counterpart, Pelonomi Venson-Moitoi held a closed press conference for government media only. Seretse expressed concern at the way the media was reporting the incident, especially the allegations that connected Khama with the crime. In the uproar that resulted from the controversial press conference, he organised another briefing for the private media at which he announced that an inquest would be held into the Kalafatis killing.

More revelations following the Kalafatis case indicate that the killing may have had more than scant connection to the political leadership. The suspicious and even self-interested way in which government handled the crime has had serious repercussions. The Kalafatis case introduced something beyond the initial mistrust - paranoia - the irrational mistrust and worse still fear of government. In other words, Batswana do not just believe that some were abusing office but rather that government is out to catch innocent people. Furthermore the state could not be believed to deliver any iota of truth on serious matters that threatened those in political office. In the post-Kalafatis period, government cannot be trusted to tell the truth. In fact government is trusted to victimise some innocent individual to protect the narrow interests of those in political office. This is the state in which Batswana are in psychologically.

Thus the government is stuck with a nation of conspiracy theorists. It was in this context that the still puzzling Louis Nchindo death occurred. The subsequent theorising on the causes of his death further indicate how distrustful of government most Batswana are. While reporting on the Nchindo death, it was always obvious that many Batswana believe that outside forces may have been at play. Most Batswana say point blank that Nchindo may have been killed by security operatives under the orders of the 'big boys' to get rid of the truth that he was in the process of revealing.

Many indicate that Nchindo had secrets about the current government, that many wanted kept under wraps. Just before his death, it was revealed that he had facilitated a loan from De Beers to rescue a financially embarrassed Masire when he was president. This greatly damaged the reputation of Masire and caused consternation. Masire came out with a somewhat feeble explanation whose major point was the confirmation of the assistance.

From then on, it is said, Nchindo was on a collision course with the political establishment. It is said he lost the last batch of his most ardent friends at that point as he veered into direct collision with the political holy cows. Mogae divulged more - Nchindo had tried to blackmail him into using his presidential powers to stop the criminal case against him. Nchindo explained that he had not been the source of the Masire revelation, while denying Mogae's accusations.

At Nchindo's memorial service, his son Garvas did not cast aspersions or raise suspicions about what might have led to his father's demise. Furthermore he said he concurred with the initial findings of the investigations on his father's death. "On Thursday morning my father's body was recovered. My brother and I where present throughout the search and I bore witness to all the details of the investigation. Furthermore, once on site investigations were concluded, I was briefed by the police and concurred with their initial findings," he said, thanking the police and other state bodies for the investigations.

Thus Nchindo junior seemed to indicate to the public that he was not suspicious of the state in the death. But public suspicions of the government is so ingrained that, at that point, the public turned to mistrusting the Nchindos themselves.

Conspiracies flew thick and fast that perhaps the man could have faked his own death, with the assistance of government of course, so the gruesome affairs of the BDP could never reach the ears of the public.

So on Wednesday when the nation heard about the bomb scare, many though it could have been anything. It could have been that the security apparatus was just doing a bomb drill. It could be that the President wants to scare Batswana into accepting the bulging budget of the Ministry of Defence and Security, which comes before parliamentary scrutiny next week.

It could just be a diversionary tactic, to get the attention of the public away from the more important issues like the declaration of assets legislation, the bullying of Botsalo Ntuane into abandoning his constitutional review calls, or even more importantly the faking of Nchindo's death. It could be anything. That is the state the public mind is in. That is the nature of the Kalafatis effect.