Etcerera II

SANDY GRANT | Monday June 3, 2013 00:00

I hadn't the faintest idea that the country had moved into that sort of territory, that sort of place, condition, situation where ugly people place devices designed to kill.Does the government now believe that the country already faces such dangers or is it merely anticipating matters?  If at least one bomb disposal unit is in being, what other chilling counter terrorism measures are already in place? The country's age of innocence is, it seems, long past. What a remarkable coincidence it was to be asked by a London based researcher my views about the DIS and the country's security situation. How can anyone sensibly answer sensible questions on such a topic when there will be very few who have a grasp of the kinds of security threats now facing the country. My fumbling conclusion was twofold -that the extent and nature of the security threat in its widest sense, now probably universal, is new and probably multiplying and that neither you nor I are ever likely to fully comprehend it.

My second line of thought was that the DIS may now understand that to achieve better results it desperately needs public support.  Unfortunately when the draft bill to establish the DIS was rushed through the National Assembly the government professed to be concerned about peoples' concerns, doubts and reservations.It promised that a revised draft would take account of these concerns - but in the event, the bill was presented unchanged and duly approved. I imagine that at the time, the lead figures would have believed that the major measures proposed were entirely government focused and that the general public needed to be consulted only as a routine,  but without any intention that these should prompt any change. The outcome has obviously been unexpected but in retrospect must now appear unsurprising.

There is widespread fear of the DIS and a belief that it abuses its huge powers and that it has been established to protect the personal interests of establishment figures. How then can the DIS now turn matters around, and gain the public trust which, during its inception, was so disastrously felt to be irrelevant?  How can it begin to tell us about the nasty realities it is seeking to combat, human trafficking, money laundering,international criminality, the drug trade, the poaching syndicates, suicide killers, when these things were unknown to all of us who have been basking in our own innocent paradise?  It knows, but we don't. And if we don't know, it has to be patient and understanding of our collective ignorance.  This, however, may be too much to ask or expect. 

But there was also another vehicle which passed me on the way last week which caused similar surprise but of a totally different kind. How remarkably diverse is this society! This was a vehicle proclaiming itself to be an Animal Ambulance. What an amazing contrast between the two vehicles and here was me with no knowledge about either of them!  But then I have also to admit that I knew nothing about the wonderful work being done by Gaborone's Inner Wheel, once an associate of the all male Rotary but now making its own independent way.Previous ignorance was put right when I had the luck to be asked to speak at its lunch at the Gaborone Golf Club - one of the advantages of being an old Kalahari hand is of being able to learn about the truly wonderful work that people are doing to help others less fortunate than themselves. Those ladies, let's say 70 or 80 of them, are incredibly generous, kindly spirited, bonded and wonderfully interlocked with varied elements of this society. 

They have given help to the SOS village, Camphill, Naledi play school, the Diabetes Association and Dinaletsana.They have also been providing basic toiletries for women in prison who would otherwise have nothing.But altruism, giving, can sometimes be far from straightforward. Many of those ladies felt, understandably,that it was too much to ask that they should help those in prison who had perhaps been the very same people who had stolen from them - house breaking and theft being so horribly commonplace today.Can there be an easy answer to such a dilemma?  That said, it's obvious that those Inner Wheel Ladies with great hearts and in their special way, are doing wonderful and usually unacknowledged work for the community.We are blessed in so many ways, are we not?