Apart from the jokes about stereotypical spies who in their restlessness and eagerness to use their funky gadgets and power get up to no good, many observers insist that a proper legislative mechanism has to be set up to make sure that the intelligence and security apparatus serve a national good. Legislation such as the Botswana's envisaged Security and Intelligence Act and South Africa's National Strategic Intelligence Act and other related pieces of legislation have a major objective of not only facilitating the exercising of that power but also setting the limits to which that power can be exercised. Lest the intelligence officers find themselves stuck with those gadgets and all that power and "get up to no good".
Botswana gained independence in the early 60s so it always had a system to ensure national security was protected. The country survived the turbulent 60s, 70s and 80s when the sub-continent was engaged in liberation struggles with a very basic security and intelligence system. Most of the intelligence work, atleast the military form, has been done by the Military Intelligence, and to some extent most of the criminal intelligence was conducted by the Security Intelligence Service and anything in between was shared among the various law enforcement agencies. Economic intelligence was not really explicitly provided for. This means, according to those within the government, that the intelligence regime has been in place and functional but without a proper and enough legislative provisions for a coordinated approach to address security, economic, and other intelligence needs.
