20 Jan 2022

Cross border crime is rampant in the southern part of the country with smallstock theft currently leading.

In an interview, Botswana Police Services’ (BPS), Assistant Commissioner Dipheko Motube indicated that cross border livestock theft occurred mostly at villages near the border.

He said police investigations showed that perpetrators from neighbouring countries and Botswana had formed syndicates to commit such crime.

Mr Motube explained that stocktheft cases were given priority, hence introduction of specialised courts to deal with them.

He further highlighted that BPS had joint border patrols with neighbouring countries and formed district anti-stock theft teams to curb that type of crime.

The assistant commissioner said they had formed farmers’ committees, adding that education seminars were also conducted to educate farmers on how to take care of their livestock.

He urged farmers to know their livestock and visit their farms or cattle posts more often since sometimes the thieves connived with their herd boys to commit crime with the knowledge that their employers were not around and did not know their livestock well.

Farmers, he said, were also encouraged to form farmers committees as that would assist them to know each other in their area. “This helps reduce crime because if farmers know each other it becomes easy to identify intruders in their area,” he added.

Mr Motube further advised farmers to always make sure that they branded their livestock in time and that they should always kraal them to avoid them going astray.

Pertaining to Kgomo Khumo project, which most Batswana believed was helpful in fighting cattle theft, Mr Motube said it was suspended due to COVID-19, noting that it would be re-instated after the situation had improved.

Leporung is mostly affected by this cross border livestock theft.

The village deputy chief, Kgosi Kgolane Raerama, indicated that almost all the farmers in his area had been affected by that kind of crime.

He highlighted that they devised different strategies in an effort to arrest the situation such as requesting government to repair the border line fence and forming a committee that worked with South African counterparts.

Mr Raerama explained that they had realised that crime was committed by some individuals from Botswana in collaboration with South Africans.

“Our children work with some criminals in S.A to commit these crimes and I have advised them that their children will one day be servants to the people they are selling our cattle to,” he added.

Mr Raerama said there were some areas along the border line, where there was no fence, which made it easier for thieves to drive animals across the border.

He explained that it was very simple in S.A to sell animals without documentation and witnesses to ascertain that they were indeed yours, hence crime was on the rise.

“Recently, one farmer lost all his goats and sheep, while the other one lost his cattle, leaving calves behind,” he said.

The only solution to the problem, he said, was for the South Africa government to tighten their laws on the processes of buying and selling animals, as well as making sure that the border fence was erected and repaired from time to time because thieves would always cut it to try their luck.

For his part, Mr Luka Tumediso highlighted that he lost more than 30 cattle to cross border theft over the years.

“Am only saying 30 because those are the ones I remember but I can only say I lost a lot of animals,” he said.

Sometimes, he said, one could see thieves on the S.A side driving away cattle but could not follow them since we are not allowed to cross the fence. “You will be expected to go and cross at the border gate and once you get to the area where you saw them, they would be long gone,” he lamented.

Mr Tumediso explained that sometime last year, he saw people driving his cattle on the side of South Africa and he rushed to the soldiers who had camped near the fence by Molopo River but they failed to assist him. ENDS