But as fate would have it, the security dictates of the times left Seretse with no choice but to succumb to the idea of an army formation. The honour and responsibility of creating the Botswana Defence Force (BDF) in 1977 fell on Merafhe's shoulders.
The then young rising star in the police service, whose hard work and sheer brilliance had seen him catapulted from an ordinary rank to a deputy police commissioner. Unlike his counterparts elsewhere in Africa, Merafhe found himself in the unique position of starting an army from scratch, having inherited no military hardware from the British. The worsening security situation in the northern part of the country caused by trigger-happy Rhodesian forces posed an immediate challenge to the leadership of Merafhe and his infant army. Merafhe daringly accepted the new army assignment, forgoing the comfort zone of working in a well-established police unit, fully alive to the fact that the military playing field in the region was certainly not level. The prospect and reality of having a young inexperienced BDF facing hardcore and resourced Rhodesian combatants could have easily cowed some weak-hearted general into submission, but the audacious Merafhe took the bull by the horns to safeguard the country's territorial integrity and its fledgling independence. Even when early in its formative stage the BDF suffered a setback in 1978 in Leshoma, when the Rhodesian terrorists ambushed and killed 15 soldiers, Merafhe continued to show character and unwavering commitment to the safety of the nation.
