- majority of offences against person recorded this festive were GBV related
Community leaders, civil society groups, traditional healers and the private sector have been called upon to build community-led interventions in a concerted effort to improve the detection and prevention measures of Gender Based Violence (GBV) offences.
GBV remains a societal concern as the statistics recorded during the festive season compared to that of 2023 same period have shown a sharp increase. This was revealed by the Minister of State President Moeti Mohwasa when addressing the media this week.
Mohwasa said the joint festive operation, named Operation Pabalesego’ which covered the entire country was launched to ensure public security and safety through increased law enforcement visibility, prevention of crime, educating communities on crime preventions measures as well as enforcing the law.
According to him, the operation has decreased criminal offences by 9.8% from 735 recorded in 2023 to 663 in 2024 for the same period.
He however said offences against a person such as murder, threat to kill, rape and attempts, defilement and unlawful wounding recorded an increase during this festive period. “Of the 298 offences against a person recorded, 181 were GBV related, where women and children were mostly the victims,” he added.
He further indicated that in the cases recorded, the perpetrators were men who were close relatives, intimate partners, jilted lovers or friends of the victims.
Meanwhile, the minister lamented that some sectors of the society have developed a deep rooted culture of violence as it has reflected in the high number of unlawful wounding offences where 80% of the cases are violence by the same gender. “In this regard we implore every citizen to fully commit to peaceful conflict resolutions rather than through violence,” Mohwasa appealed.
For her part, the Botswana Police Service Commissioner Dinah Marathe also concurred that most offences committed during the operation have reduced in numbers. She however also revealed that with offences against a person like threat to kill, murder, rape and unlawful wounding there was an increase.
Marathe indicated that during the festive season in 2023, they recorded 20 murder cases and 30 in 2024 same period with 40% of them being GBV offences. She said with threat to kill offences, 46 were recorded in 2023 while 47 were recorded in 2024 adding that 20 of them are set for trial. “Rape offences were 87 in 2023 and 93 in 2024 and lastly we recorded 94 unlawful wounding cases last year as compared to the 93 recorded in 2023,” Marathe added.
The commissioner observed that the common age of murder offenders was those between 22 and 40 years old. She therefore advised that by uniting and coming up with societal strategies will help engage the youth in public education and also find ways to keep them unemployed busy, as a way of reducing GBV offences.
She further urged the society and its leaders together with the police to unite in efforts to combat GBV. Marathe highlighted the need of having community-led programs to educate the community and also school programs to educate and raise awareness about GBV.
