Bomb scare: Was it a hoax?

| Friday March 5, 2010 00:00

Only someone from the lunatic fringe could dare do such a thing in our country. Who would want to harm innocent people at a parking lot? Why was this device left near Office of the President at a time when a Cabinet meeting was in progress? We could ask many questions,  but before we begin to do that we need to assess the alternative view.

There are people who find it difficult to swallow this story. To them the bomb scare could have been a drill by security officers meant to justify their presence at a time when people are questioning the millions of Pulas spent on the army at the expense of critical areas whose budgets have been slashed. Such hoaxes have happened elsewhere. We know of security organs that have blown buildings up and made it look like the work of the enemy while the aim was to sufficiently scare politicians into accepting that there is a security risk, which needs to be financially supported. We also know of the American security alerts post September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre and Pentagon that were unfortunately used to scare and control the minds of the American people.

No one would argue that security is a priority, but the Botswana government should be aware that the credibility of its agents has been so eroded that it is difficult not to attribute Wednesday's bomb scare to them. Far fetched as it might seem, they could have engineered a hoax, arranged television shots, feed the public with their diet of what happened to induce sympathy and support.

We are saying this because the killing of John Kalafatis is still fresh in the minds of most people. Kalafatis was killed in a hail of bullets and up to now, no one has owned up and it is taking long for investigations to be completed. Few other people have been killed and no one is taking responsibility.

Former Debswana kingpin Louis Goodwill Nchindo died after making some damning allegations and no one is  saying anything. If it were suicide why is it taking too long to say, sorry, the man took his life? Given the vast sums of money that have already been spent on our security agents how is it possible that someone could leave a bomb or explosives not far from President Khama's office window without being detected?

Until we know what really happened, God forbid we will have to get the information from the same security operatives, we will be restrained from making some calls for more money to be thrown into our security.  Meanwhile, we will call on the Botswana police to get to the heart of the matter and inform the public about their findings.

                                                                                          Today's thought

                            'Make the lie big,make it simple,keep saying it,and eventually they will believe it.'

                                                                                         - Adolph Hitler