More than four weeks ago, a friend of mine posted a highly explosive report purported to be an audit of the country’s last general elections into my watsapp communication system without giving me prior notice and unsolicited. It was a “forensic report regarding alleged Botswana vote rigging”. It seems it was compiled by Forensics for Justice as it bears the company’s letter heads. It signed and thumb printed. Every page is dated. Admittedly I was excited by what was termed “final forensic report”. My expectation was that I was going to read about convincing report about what has been claimed by the opposition in Botswana as systematic election rigging by the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) for over decades in the past including the 2019 general elections. Furthermore, I thought I had the scoop of the day.
In the past the BNF claimed that the BDP rigged elections by using a substance capable of changing colours of voting discs. The BNF claimed that the substance used by the BDP changed the colour “Black” into Red colour in order to win the elections. To overcome that situation, the BNF introduced a hole on its voting disc claiming that the substance used by the BDP would caught because the substance would only temper with the colour but not the hole in the disc. However, the BDP continued winning election after election. Upon receiving the report from Forensics for Justice I remembered that piece of song by the late South African singer, Mpharanyane, which was one of popular hits in the 80s, “Ba motshwere Satane”. Even if the Satan was not in Pretoria as the song purported, I said to myself, our Satan, if any, must be in Gaborone. It was only after reading the report twice that I developed a second thought. Is this real or fake news, was one of the questions that came into my mind. It was then that I decided to hang on for a while and wait for the country’s mainstream newspapers to see if they had seen the report. After a long wait, no newspaper has ever come out with the story based on the Forensics for Justice Report. Could it be that the mainstream newspapers did not receive the report or they treated it as fake news?
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