Katlholo in embarrassing exit
Ryder Gabathuse | Monday June 12, 2023 06:00
This was indeed a loaded statement that unfortunately, Katlholo never had a jiffy to break down so that he could be duly comprehended as that would somehow determine his future at the corruption busting agency.
But the tone of his message was simply that he was not going to allow anyone to dictate to him how to go about his work at the DCEC. The big question is, did he really succeed in that endeavour? A lot has, however, happened in his journey that found the man pitted against the Office of the President, which raises doubts about Katlholo’s success rate.
The intelligence sleuths seem to have given Katlholo a torrid time during his tenure. From a distance, they simply looked like sister organisations, albeit they had a problem with the work done by Katlholo at the DCEC.
Nonetheless, the man who still holds a reputation of the country’s crack detective, from his days as the head of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), pledged to improve good governance in the country at the end of his three-year tenure at the helm of the DCEC. His wish was that legislation should come handy and aid the DCEC to deliver satisfactorily. It, however, becomes difficult to gauge if he really lived up to his expectation or he failed where he had promised.
Katlholo’s name is recorded in the country’s historical records as a detective that led a team of crack detectives that successfully busted corruption at the Botswana Housing Corporation (BHC) in the early 1990s before the DCEC was birthed four years later. A number of convictions were made whilst some people accused of corruption at the BHC escaped to the neighbouring South Africa.
Katlholo joined the DCEC as a deputy director and rose to the top seat about three years later. In 2009 upon his retirement, Katlholo was approached by the Benin government during the State visit to Botswana by the Benin president to go and assist to establish an anti corruption unit.
Now, Katlholo was worried that he returned to the DCEC only to find that corruption in Botswana had risen both in sophistication and complexity indicating that his focus would be to combat it in all its forms. In his early years in the DCEC, the highest amount of money obtained through corrupt means was about P500,000 and now in the year 2020, he found that things had changed as today they chase millions and billions of pula obtained corruptly. The past immediate DCEC DG had raised transparency and accountability as key in the fight against corruption. His take is that decisions taken should be based on the law. His emphasis was that lack of transparency and accountability promotes the culture of impunity, which would encourage corruption to go out of control. An interesting question that Omphile Sehurutshe once asked Katlholo in a Btv interview on ‘The Eye’ programme was, what did Katlholo see in the DCEC during his period of retirement? “Somewhere, there has been interference with the work of the DCEC and if we can correct that, it will duly help us combat corruption as a country,” he had declared. Katlholo is the only DG who previously served 10 uninterrupted years in office and he was worried about the turnover of DCEC DGs, which he said was killing public trust which he emphasises is key in the work of the DCEC.
In the past, he spoke about security of tenure and he emphasised that he was still talking about it in an endeavour for the DCEC to gain public confidence anywhere in the world. Just recently, Katlholo’s work contract as the DCEC DG was terminated three months before it expires. He joins other DGs whose contracts were disrupted. Rose Seretse, Bruno Paledi and Joseph Mathambo were unexplainably transferred out of their office before the end of their terms. Katlholo was steadfast that the DCEC is not an island as it plays its part of investigations and pass their dockets to the prosecution authority, the Directorate of Public Prosecutions and then the courts will play their relevant part. He added that the value chain is very important in combating corruption. As a result of the good work, in the past, countries used to come to Botswana to benchmark on how things are done here. Benin, the African Union (AU) and the UN amongst others recognised Botswana’s efforts in combating corruption. In 1998, the US government invited Botswana to go and be part of the panel showing how the country combated corruption and economic crime effectively because of the country’s good track record then. Katlholo is of the view that as a nation, we chose to look the other way whilst corruption was happening just under the noses of some people. He said people with responsibility just ignored their responsibility. One of the key things that he noted affected the country’s global rating on transparency and accountability is that the country has laws, which affect the ability to combat corruption. “We have laws that are not enforced or some of the laws are weak in nature. For instance, we came with the law of asset forfeiture or civil forfeiture,” he said. He conceded that the DCEC has 13 lawyers, some engineers and skilled investigators amongst others who are able to properly guide their investigations appropriately. The nation is waiting with bated breath to hear from Katlholo what he has achieved or failed, because he has been shown the door after his officers launched investigations against the Director General of the Directorate of Intelligence and Security (DIS), Peter Magosi and some of the DIS officers on allegations of corruption. For some time, there was a scuffle at Katlholo’s office, after he found his office sealed upon his return from an external trip. He was prevented from accessing his own office as the DCEC DG by a DG of a sister security organ (DIS) which was under investigation by the DCEC. Some files of cases still under investigation were taken from Katlholo’s office and that of his staff officer without proper handing over. The turf war between the DCEC and the DIS culminated with the suspension of Katlholo for a period of a year and ultimately his term of office was terminated three months before time. Katlholo and his staff officer have since taken the State to court in an endeavour to compel Magosi and his officers to explain their interests in the cases that his office investigated. The Katlholo case will go a long way into resolving the tug-of-war relationship between the DIS and the DCEC when the two offices are expected to be enjoying a cordial relationship as they serve the public and their functions are somewhat related.