Khama's visit has to be put in the right perspective. We have to understand that most prisoners in their lifetime have never had the ear of a senior government official, let alone the head of state. The conditions in our prisons have been reported on and it is general knowledge now that they are in a bad state. We also know that prisoners are generally ostracized members of the community so they tend to garner little sympathy from mainstream society. It is difficult for society to take notice and attend to issues that affect prisoners.
We further note that Khama made the visit unannounced for the reasons that planned meetings are seldom honest. It would have been impossible for the president to get a first hand account of the prisoners' stay in incarceration. We think it is important that the visits are unannounced and unscheduled. We hope that what the president saw is the real state of affairs inside our prisons. We further expect him to have visited the inside of the prisons, to have checked the cells as well, because ultimately that is what the Prisons Day was all about; service to the prisoners.
