20 May 2018

The amendment of the Penal Code to increase the age of sexual consent from 16 to 18 was necessitated by many factors among them to align it with the Children’s Act.

Addressing management and staff of Kwadiwa Ranch, Oasis Lodge, Limpopo Lipadi, Terrafou and Kwatuli Nature Reserve on May 18, Member of Parliament for Bobonong, Mr Shaw Kgathi said the age of sexual consent was raised to stop some people from engaging in sexual intercourse with children.

Mr Kgathi explained that most children aged 18 were still at school and there was a need to protect them from predating men and women.

The Children’s Act, he said, also defines a child as a person below the age of 18 years and cited that many students, especially at Matshekge Senior Secondary School and others across the country dropped out of school due to pregnancy at the hands of elderly people, hence a need to amend the Penal Code.

Mr Kgati, who is also Minister of Defence, Justice and Security explained that the country wanted to build a bright future for the children as many young girls dropped out of school largely due to pregnancy at the hands of elderly men.

The Act also has a ‘Romeo and Juliet clause’ where parents of minors who engage in sexual relations would be required to address the problem provided the other person involved in the act is not more than two years older.

He said Parliament has further explained the definition of rape, which he described as a heinous crime to remove disgracing words such as sexual gratification found in the old Act.

He also said the Penal Code was amended to make it an offence to keep human flesh due to many cases of people that have gone missing.

Another Bill that was passed into law was the Cyber and Computer Related Crime, to make it an offence to transmit derogatory and demeaning messages whenever there is a complaint, xenophobic attacks, accessing of one’s gadgets such as a cellphone without one’s consent and prohibition of pornographic materials.

The MP added that Parliament also passed the Guns and Ammunition Act to ban the use of some type of guns such as the 22 type of guns and gadgets such as silencers, which in many cases were used to commit some crimes such as poaching.

The Act requires that all types of guns must be registered even those inherited. Gunsmith,  should also be registered, he explained.

The Bill, which he said he would present after consulting was to amend the Stocktheft Act to come up with stiffer penalties to reduce high incidents of people losing their livestock.

He said the Bill was proposing the increase of mandatory sentence to 12 years imprisonment for first offenders, and 15 years for reoccurrence of the same type of the offence, the use of scientific test to establish the origin of stock in question and the burden of proof to lie with the suspect, saying in the current act, the onus lies with the prosecution to provide proof about the livestock in question.

Meanwhile, Mr Kgathi has called for good working relations between employers and employees and that Botswana laws and the Employment Act must be respected for business to prosper.

He commended investors for setting businesses in the Tuli Block area and described the area as having a big potential to grow the tourism sector that has employed a lot of people.

Mr Kevin Macfallen of Limpopo-Lipadi was concerned about the poor road condition which he said was holding back the development of the lodges. ENDS