Towards a Safe and Secure Nation: The First Consultative Conference on Firearm Control, Ownership and Administration in Botswana, 13-15 May, 2003

The role of Civil Society by SaferAfrica - Ms Virginia Gamba

I am sure that at this point in time, our civil society participants to this First Consultative Conference on the issue of Firearms must be wondering how they are impacted on by all this information on the commitments and needs to participate in the control of illicit small arms and light weapons in Botswana and the Southern African region.

In many ways, Botswana is blessed with peace and stability; so it might be difficult to see the priority and the urgency of improving the prevention, management and resolution of the small arms problem over other priority areas of sociey. The question here is that you are not putting the combatting of small arms above your other needs: you are making it a comprehensive part of your daily activity. What is important is for you to see the links between your everyday life and work and the need to sustain national action against violence of every kind.

To do this, you must understand how our activities of every day are affected by violence. This is not hard: for those of you who are parents, you will know that your life is dominated by three concerns: making sure you can provide for your children so that they can grow healthy, have an education and earn a living. But what good is a healthy child that knows how to read and write, if he falls into bad company and gets involved in committing a crime? What good is a healthy child that is educated, if he is the victim of a crime that can maim him or kill him? What good is a healthy child if he turns to drugs or he becomes an abuser of the weak?

To avoid these types of futures, a parent has certain tools at his or her disposal: we can love a child, teach him discipline to control his temper and look after himself, and we can educate him to be a good person. We can also work on providing that child with a healthy and secure environment, so that he cannot easily fall into bad company nor can he be an easy victim to violence. Finally, we can also work as a community to try to improve the expectations of the young so that they will find decent employment and support their communities in their turn. To achieve all this, it is possible to say that education and family practices are the prevention tools that society has to form the young; that our responsible management of existing resources can generate a fit environment for the child to grow up in; and that our hard work and cooperation practices can ensure that the child has honest economic alternatives when he grows up.

Community conflict attempting to minimize the dangers of the world and isolating our dear ones from negative things. Moreover, some of us, like organized civil society such as church groups, professional associations, community developers, health workers, teachers and trainers, academics, businessmen and advocacy groups, take direct action in the improvement of our immediate circumstances and the prevention of disaster in the future and we do this beyond our immediate family circle. This is the nature of organized society.

I often say that it is important to define civil society before we engage in a debate about what it can or should do. A minister of the state or a policeman when they attend a parents evening at school, are they officials or are they civil society? When a director general of foreign affairs attends a church practice, is he a member of civil society or a member of government? The truth is that both government officials and people not employed in government are part of one broad society that needs to help itself to improve their communal future. In helping each other, they help themselves.

Therefore, the prevention, management and resolution of small arms proliferation and the armed violence that it generates, is and should not only be the responsibility of the state. A small arm or firearm is a system: a micro-universe that has three sides to it: the arm, the ammunition for the arm, and the user of the arm. To control an arm so that it does not cause wanton violence and death, you must be able to ensure that all three elements are managed responsibly and are accounted for. The responsibility to ensure that this happensn rests on the government to ensure that weapons in its possession are handled carefully as indicated by the law.

The responsibility of educating our children to respect human life and to avoid violence rests with all of society.

Violence and the avoidance of violence has three pillars: controlling the impulse to do violence - the motive and committing of violence; controlling the tools used violently so as to inflict serious harm to others; and removing the reasons why people would resort to armed violence in pursuit of alternatives.

All of us here today have the power to stop violence just like you all have the power to assist in preventing, managing and resolving small arms proliferation. Prevention might mean for some of you the education of young people as to the dangers posed by arms; for others, it might mean educating weapons users in either wildlife activities or in the possession of the state that they have a serious responsibility that cannot and must not be abused. Prevention might also mean community monitoring to ensure that arms are not smuggled across borders and sold to criminals to cause violence in our land or in the lands of our neighbors.

Management is all about keeping records and gathering information. It is about enforcing the law to ensure that nothing slips past it that can generate a violent situation. It is about trust-building so that people will not resort to arms in self defense and will trust the state to be fair under the shade of the tree of the law and the absolute certainty that the law will triumph over evil, including corruption and crime.

Resolution is about working together in a peaceful environment to generate investment and create work so that our people have an alternative to criminal activities and to the illicit trade, manufacture or use of arms and ammunition. Business thrives in a peaceful and secure environment so it makes economic sense to control armed violence and to improve trust between officials and the people. It is about stopping all nature of violence so that conflict resolution will be peaceful and not escalate to the use of force: this means not only controlling tempers but also customs that lead to abuse of the more vulnerable members of our society such as children, women, the sick and the old. A healthy community finds a place for all alike and all contribute to a common good.

In helping raise awareness about the evils of uncontrolled and proliferating arms at community level, we are helping the State to prevent, control and resolve the problem. In ensuring the responsible management and use of state-owned arms and those in private hands, we are helping society to develop in harmony and we are building trust that is fundamental to the generation of prosperity.

What is the role of civil society on the issue of small arms control in Botswana? It is for teachers to teach about violence and the abuse of arms; it is for businessmen to assist in the fight against crime and to assist in the generation of alternatives to the economics of arms; it is for church leaders to teach about tolerance and honest work; it is for arms holders and users to remember that they too are civil society and that they are accountable to the people on the manner in which they use these weapons; it is for health officials and advocacy groups to alert the groups they work with to the dangers of armed violence and to provide alternative means of conflict resolution to communities; it is for academics and researchers to study the dynamics of violence and the patterns of small arms proliferation in Botswana so that this information can be fed back into the prevention, management and resolution of the problem; finally it is for all traditional leaders and family heads to lead by example and demonstrate that authority is not the result of might but the offspring of wisdom.

Arms might not be a vital problem in Botswana today but that might not last. We are part of a global context - we are not an island. Others do not care about the effect that their arms and their violence has in our society. We alone can determine how free our country is from violence and from strife. One way to do that is to control the movement and use of the tools of violence while we work hard at reducing the demand for the tools of violence.

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