A church has been banned from worship and its leadership illegally lashed at night in the bush. The local fellowship of the EFB pastors have also reported that a number of their churches have also been harassed and their worship meetings disturbed. We call on the government of Botswana, the Human Rights Organisations in Botswana, the Christian and Religious Communities in this land and Batswana as a whole to take note and bear witness to our statement in solidarity.
Whereas the constitution of Botswana grants us freedom of gathering lawfully and freedom of worship to the God of choice, and in the style of choice, this right has been blatantly and forcefully infringed upon in Mochudi by regiments of the Bakgatla chieftainship, and two pastors were lashed at night in the bush after a failed attempt to seize their equipment without their consent and due process of the law. Other member churches in Mochudi have been commanded not to use their public address systems and musical instruments in their worship, while at the same time bars and other traditional churches are not hindered in the noise that they produce. These directives have ignored that legal and lawful permits issued the Kgotla and the Kgatleng District Council bye-law offices had been acquired. Such discrimination is unacceptable, and we rejected it outright. We bag to ask if there are people who are above the law of this land, who can do and act as they please with impunity, because their tribal practices and unwritten laws take precedence over the laws of the Republic of Botswana. We would like to point out that much of the conflicts in Africa are due to tribes that took it upon themselves not to be part of a national culture, who created emotive issues on the basis of cultural preservation to the detriment of national unity and development. If this is the trend, then our peace and democratic values in Botswana are, indeed, at risk.
