The last thing anyone wants to say publicly, especially if that person is a minister who bears ultimate responsibility for enforcing the rule of law, is that violent criminals should be killed in cold blood. That is exactly what the Minister of Justice, Defence and Security, Kagiso Mmusi, meant when he instructed senior police officers to “eliminate” violent criminals.
Mmusi was making particular reference to a gang of thugs who were caught on police CCTV breaking into cars crawling through an evening bottleneck in a notorious crime hotspot in Broadhurst, Gaborone.
He may have used words that he knew would be appreciated by his audience but in doing so, he forgot the first responsibility that is so starkly expressed by his title – justice. As Minister of Justice and one under whom the Administration of Justice (AoJ) falls, Mmusi is required to ensure that all persons, institutions, and entities are accountable to laws that are publicly promulgated, equally enforced and independently adjudicated. In terms of strict application of the “innocent until found guilty” principle, the justice minister was actually saying that police should kill innocent people in cold blood. It is going to be really awkward listening to him talk about the rule of law when he addresses the next AoJ conference.
To be clear, strong public sentiment is clearly in agreement with what Mmusi said. The motivation for such sentiment is a quite simple and pragmatism one: violent criminals threaten the life and limb of members of the public and have actually maimed and killed some. Killing them in cold blood, as Mmusi has ordered, eliminates a clear and present threat that members of the public face. All over the world and far from the madding crowd, governments engage in extra-judicial killing. That is why each has a black operation unit. The latter is a covert or clandestine operation by a government agency, a military unit or a paramilitary organization which carries out illegal activities. A hit can be put on violent criminals within the context of this arrangement but such plan can never be announced from the podium at an event attended by the press. What Mmusi should have done was invite the Commissioner of Police to his office and relay this order. This might sound sick and twisted but that is how the world works.
As problematic about what Mmusi said is who his audience was. It is no secret that some of the biggest lawbreakers in Botswana are the police themselves, at both institutional and individual level. Sunday Standard has explained how the retention of a colonial policing model (Royal Irish Constabulary) is a threat to the maintenance of law and order.
The British Parliament passed the Irish Constabulary Act (which was designed to police hostile Ireland) in 1822. The emphasis of the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) model was on “keeping the order” and “maintaining the law” largely through military means. Seven years later, Britain established a local police force through the London Metropolitan Police Act.
This model was intentionally different from the military and its mission was focused on prevention of crime rather than repression of disorder. Met or community policing became the basis for all British forces on the mainland and a major influence on the development of policing in the east coast of the United States in the 1840s. empire from the 1930s onwards. This came after the Colonial Office decreed that policing techniques and training in the British empire should be standardized. At this time, present-day Botswana (then called Bechuanaland Protectorate) was part of that empire. Many, many decades after independence, the Botswana Police Service (BPS) has retained the RIC model and its attempts at community policing have been disastrous.
The RIC model has led the police to become a law unto themselves and in virtually all cases, it is the poor who are on the receiving end. There is no law that requires people to carry national identity cards but the police typically arrest (poor black) people for not carrying them. In some cases, they pull passengers out of buses and leave them stranded in the middle of nowhere because they are not carrying identity cards. There is also no law against motorists giving pedestrians a ride but police have been known to pull people out of vehicles at road blocks.
At individual level, police officers routinely brutalise people and during the national lockdown in 2020, Sunday Standard reported an incident in Maun in which a police barged into the hut of a new mother who was in confinement and in the process, assaulted her brother. Mmusi has himself failed to rein in this lawlessness because while he promised that he would investigate cases of police brutality that happened during the lockdown, police sources say that he never followed through on such promise. Ultimately, telling notorious lawbreakers to “eliminate” criminals was the worst blunder a minister who is the custodian of law and order could make.
However, if it is to be accepted that elimination is how runaway crime should be arrested, then Mmusi should broaden his focus. In itself, violence should not be the standard for eliminating lawbreakers. That is because there is criminal conduct that doesn’t involve violence but results in death.
In the past couple of years, Botswana’s neighbourhoods have been carpeted by supermarkets whose mostly owners are basically waging chemical warfare against the nation. On “Name & Shame Them Botswana” Facebook page, one member says that he bought what he thought was fried chicken at an outlet owned by a certain supermarket chain that specialises in recycling rotten food. According to him, the chicken (such as it was) “cleaned my system real good.” Likewise and on an almost daily basis, the Consumer Watchdog Botswana page posts horror stories from people who bought expired food from these supermarkets. There is no way in the world that those who sell this food would not know that it can kill those who consume it. That is because food poisoning can kill people and it is likely that some people have died from the bad food bought at these supermarkets. Like armed robbers, those who knowingly sell food that has gone bad have murderous intent. If robbers can be eliminated, why can’t they also be eliminated because they are also a national security threat?
Mmusi is particularly suited to provide an answer because in terms of the law (the Public Health Act and the Food Control Act) the police are mandated to keep bad food out of supermarket shelves. In terms of the Public Health Act, the police are empowered to seize food that is unfit for public consumption. The Food Control Act also prohibits the sale of food that is unfit for human consumption. Such food “has in or upon it any poisonous or harmful substance, or consists in whole or in part of any filthy, dirty, tainted, putrid, rotten, decomposed, or diseased substance or foreign matter.” That description fits the food that is currently being sold at the supermarkets in question.
Corruption may also not involve violence but it can cause death. The political leaders and senior civil servants who are stealing millions of pula from state coffers precipitate a situation where vital medical supplies can’t be bought for hospitals and clinics because there is no money. In the end, some people die because the government couldn’t fund medical treatment that would otherwise have saved their lives. This establishes basis for eliminating the corrupt.
