Look inside freehold farms

We say this because current policies and anti-poaching efforts focus on minnows in the pond and mere spear-carriers in the meadow almost to the total exclusion of the sharks and cosa nostra whose farm houses are strategically located along Botswana’s long border with its many neighbours. While there is little disputing that the BDF’s anti-poaching unit – which, we are told, submits to the ‘civilian’ authority of Botswana Police Service – is doing a good job in national parks and other areas of wildlife conservation, we worry that after the burial of apartheid in the last decade of the 20th Century, the attention of many of the denizens of Botswana’s frontier freehold farms has shifted to theft and trafficking of wildlife.