Botswana: Tshesebe Police

To address GBV within its district the Tshesebe police has exercised various interventions. One of the interventions is GBV campaigns that involve house to house visits, kgotla meetings, Primary and secondary School addresses, Couples workshops , a Football tournament and in her shoes exercise. It also carries out joint investigations with counterparts from Zimbabwe Police in cases that include Zimbabwean nationals. Their interventions are aimed at raising public awareness on the factors that lead to gender based violence, educating the public about how they can preserve evidence when one is violated. Another objective is to empower the stakeholders on how to handle victims of gender based violence without re-victimizing them. The Tshesebe Police has no gender budget but relies on donations and strategic partnerships. P 2500.00 was raised by the Tshesebe Police women’s network for the execution of project milestones and Francistown Gender Office sponsored beverages and food worth about P 10000.00 for a football tournament.To assess impact, Tshesebe police keep track and record the number of gender based violence cases reported to the station, number of gender based violence cases withdrawn by the victims and the number of cases that actually go to court. There is also the monthly analysis report of GBV cases reported to the station and officers visit the victims to check on progress made.One of the challenges faced during the campaigns is that youth did not turn up to Kgotla meetings and so a football tournament was hosted to attract them. Lack of funding was also a challenge, but it was circumvented by fund raising efforts of the Tshesebe Police Women network. The Tshesebe Police gender committee also struggled with dedicated personnel for the campaign and resolved to recruit new passionate, creative and team oriented people. The gender work in the community enlightened the team that, victims do not have the courage to report/ open up to anyone about their ordeals. They further learnt that perpetrators are sometimes products of dysfunctional families and societal taboos based on culture, age, status and beliefs perpetrate GBV.To sustain projects on GBV, resources ought to be allocated in the police station’s budget, specifically for that purpose, .The committee should constantly engage with stakeholders and for cascading purposes, organization based work groups should be set up and the gender personnel should engage in interdepartmental forums. As a recommendation going forward, the Tshesebe police suggests that the government make legislation that refrains victims of GBV from withdrawing the matters at the police, rather they should be given the option to withdraw before the courts. The Tshesebe police also suggest that the entire Botswana police service should introduce a family and special victims unit with a specialized court for the matters.