3RDi

Soundproofing police station

One of the oldest police stations in not just Gaborone (Central Police Station) is currently being refurbished. Resultantly, trucks carrying construction materials come and go on an almost daily basis. One that came to the construction site last week is of particular interest.

This truck was carrying what looked like and was almost certainly white soundproof foam panels. Stern disciplinary action should be taken against the officer chiefly responsible for liaising with the contractor because he is revealing official secrets. We all know (but have no proof) that on occasion, police officers have to use physical means to extract information from suspects. Doing so on an otherwise non-violent suspect who unloaded on arresting officers at the scene of the crime is criminal and shouldn’t be condoned.

However, it would make perfect sense to use such means on a Gaborone drug peddler who doesn’t want to reveal who his drug lord is. (As regards the latter, we would recommend a combination of information-extraction methods used by North Korea and Robert Mugabe’s spy agency because drugs are destroying Botswana’s future.) Resultantly, there are cases when it is necessary for the police to communicate physically with some suspects. However, this method of communication is unlawful and for that reason, always happens far from the madding crowd.

Even within the police station itself, it happens in the semi-darkness of a hard-to-access back room. Part of ensuring that what happens in that backroom stays in that backroom is not leaving any evidence – which explains the soundproof foam panels and why it is never a good idea to entrust this delicate task to special constables because their training at the police college skipped the relevant module. Having a construction truck deliver the panels to the construction site at noon on a weekday was grossly irresponsible on the part of the officer who is liaising with the contractor.

Some of the people milling about the Main Mall are materials engineers and not only could they identify the foam and determine what their function is, they relayed that information to the uninitiated. When the construction is over and the police station has been reoccupied, it is likely that the lawyer of a suspect claiming to have been tortured at CPS will ask why a truck was seen delivering soundproof foam panels during the refurbishment in August 2022.

Watering AFCON stadia grass

At this point, we have been given all details about Botswana’s bid to host AFCON 2027 - except one. The organisers hope that the windfall that the nation will make from the tournament will be compensation for the severe whipping that its national football team will be subjected to.

That might sound unpatriotic but after 53 years, let’s drop all pretence that the Zebras will perform any miracles in the next four years. We have suggested that on occasion, the Botswana Football Association should try a performance improvement strategy that one of Muammar Gaddafi’s sons tried with the Libyan football team: after each loss, team members were jailed and the son would motivate each one of the players with a couple of slaps across the face on a daily basis for the duration of the imprisonment. BFA has yet to do as we suggested.

The one detail that has been left about Botswana’s bid is where the water for the grass of the stadiums that will be constructed will come from. As most SADC countries, Botswana is a water-stressed country and it would be the height of absurdity to water the grass with potable water when some villages go without water for days on end. Using dirty water from household toilets, washbasins and kitchen sinks would have been an option but that water has a special purpose: it waters the vegetables whose cultivation the government is eager to promote, which vegetable we eat. So, the question remains: where will the water to water the grass of the stadiums come from?

Botswana may have lost AFCON bid

The people in charge of the AFCON bid don’t seem to know how Africa (and sport in general) works. Beyond being professionals, the inspectors engaged by CAF are also human beings with psychology that operates predictably. When they visited Botswana, they were flown around in an uncomfortable, mosquito-sized airplane that the writer has had the misfortune to fly in from Gaborone to Kasane and back.

Countries that are serious about AFCON fly inspection teams in executive jets. Given that Botswana has only one real executive jet (OK 1) and that a certain gentleman seems to have clinical attachment to it (“fly machine e monate!”), the country is never going to be able to give the inspectors star treatment that may help it win the bid.

Zim right to ban VOA

The Voice of America, a United States propaganda outfit, is up in arms after Zimbabwe barred its journalists from covering a referendum that the country held on Wednesday. Granted, the Zim government gets a lot of things wrong but it was right to ban VOA and indeed all other journalists who wanted to cover a “general election.” Going back to the days of Robert Mugabe (the first name is pronounced “raw butt” in Zimbabwean), the country has always held a referendum on ZANU-PF rule every five years. A general election can change a government but a referendum doesn’t. The Wednesday exercise was a referendum - not the phantom general election VOA wanted to cover. Had VOA gone ahead with its planned assignment unimpeded, the result would have been fake news about 'rigged elections' when there had actually been no elections but a referendum.