When truth becomes a casualty

GOTHATAONE MOENG
Staff Writer | Friday May 27, 2011 00:00

For many years, it has been a legitimate and accurate image, a fact from which many Batswana took pride.However, recent years have gradually built up a sense of paranoia for many in Botswana.  Recent happenings, such as the ongoing public service strike have contributed to whipping up more suspicion and fear. 

This fear has unleashed a torrent of news and rumours that in the new information age is, at the click of a button, dispersed from Gaborone to as far as China and United Kingdom.

Take this scene for example: over a week ago, a mix-up about the venue for a press conference called by the opposition party youth leagues found three journalists, in their relentless search for news, gathered around the University of Botswana Student Representative Council (UB SRC) president.  Khumoekae Richard has during the course of the strike, endeared himself to many striking public service workers with his fiery rhetoric calling for the government to grant them their request for the 16 percent salary increment.

On this day, to his audience of three journalists standing at the fringes of the bigger gathering at the Gaborone Secondary School (GSS) recreational grounds, Richard lambasted President Ian Khama and demanded that he be held accountable for the number of people who have died as a result of the students' riots.

'Do you have the number of people who have died?' a journalist asked.'I know about the teacher in G-West,' was Richard's prompt response. When all three journalists told him that the police have denied that a teacher had been killed by students, he recovered quickly and said, 'I know about the police officer who died in Molepolole.' Again the journalists told him that a statement from the police has stated that neither a teacher nor a police officer had died during the students' riots. Last Monday morning, it was widely believed that a group of students at a Gaborone West primary school had attacked and killed an on-duty teacher, late afternoon of the same day, talk was that an on-duty police officer, attempting to calm students down, had detonated teargas on himself and had died as a result. The sources of this news are still unclear, and in a murky situation, such as has been sparked by the ongoing public service workers strike, the news travelled fast. 

Phone calls, text messages, Twitter and Facebook, were all used to spread the shocking news around the country.  One private radio station also reportedly announced the 'news' as part of its news bulletin.

Heard the one about TB Joshua?  About how the charismatic Nigerian prophet had predicted, before the strike, that there would be a strike? 

The story also goes that he predicted civil war in the country and an ousting of the president before the 2014 general elections.

This rumour, source unknown has also fuelled paranoia and fear in a lot of people.  The rumour was so widespread that it prompted the Botswana branch of the Synagogue Church of all Nations in Botswana to issue a press release quashing it.

'Such a rumour is false and is intended to mislead and create confusion among peace-loving Batswana,' the press release said.

One can hardly blame the public for dispersing rumors in this way.  On the one hand, the strike, which has been ongoing for a full month now, has spiralled to a level nobody ever imagined.  It has brought action unprecedented in Botswana- students rioting, students looting from shops, students jeering at a minister who had come to address them, police officers firing tear gas and rubber bullets at students and students detained in police cells.The facts of the strike and its after-effects change so often that at every opportunity, concerned public members are ferreting out scraps of new information.

On the other hand, we live in an information-based society, which has seen the rise of citizen-reporting: news has become more accessible to everybody at any time of day, and everybody is capable, through the use of social media to disperse news as far as they want.But it is not just the public that is caught in the whirlwind of news;

journalists too have been swept along in the search for breaking news and scoops.  Further, all parties involved in the strike know the value of the media, every so often concerned public service workers are trickling into media offices or calling with tip-offs, the union leaders call with stories, and government officials are, at best, cagey with information.  The situation is further exacerbated by the distrust that people have acquired for state media, which has at times completely ignored the strike, and at times concentrated on propaganda. In the tussle for power between government and unions, it is obvious the truth has become a casualty.