Botswana accident while driving alone at night”. A reporter for the paper, Edgar Tsimane obtained the information from staff members of a lodge, where the other party to the accident was staying on the night of the accident, August 23. The media witnessed a milestone in the maturing of the broadcasting sector. Shortly after publication, Mokone received a letter from the attorney-general, Athaliah Molokomme, containing details of a road accident, but these related to an entirely different incident, involving different vehicles in a different place and at a different time. Molokomme demanded that Mokone provide a written explanation for his conduct and the publication of a full retraction in the Sunday Standard. He refused to do both. Tsimane, the reporter, fled to neighbouring South Africa, where he has been living as an asylum seeker since 2014. He insists he is not afraid of facing the law, but says that he was advised to skip the country by a close contact in the intelligence service, who advised him that if he valued his life, he “should seek sanctuary beyond Botswana’s borders”. The case is being handled under sections 50 and 51 of Botswana’s Penal Code, which outlaw any “intention to bring into hatred or contempt, or to excite disaffection against the person of the president or the government of Botswana as established by law”. However, the chairperson of the Law Society of Botswana, Lawrence Lecha, said that for the offence under section 50(1) to be established prima facie, the prosecution had to show that the article incited “hatred or contempt” against Khama and questioned “whether the facts and circumstances can sustain a charge of sedition”. In December 2016, Magistrate Mokwadi Chris Gabanagae announced that he was recusing himself from the case, saying that the accused was well known to him, as they had attended school together and were from the same neighbourhood. He stated that the case had been assigned to Broadhurst Chief Magistrate Faith Ngandu to preside over on Friday December 16, 2016. At the hearing, the case against Mokone was scheduled for 2017. This is the first time a Botswana journalist has been charged with sedition, which lawyers say carries a maximum three-year jail sentence. The sedition case, together with other incidents highlighted in this report and in the preceding years, raises questions over the credibility of Botswana’s democracy. There is a growing perception especially among politicians and academia of growing authoritarian tendencies by the Botswana government. Seditious libel, in the few places where it is still on the law books, is generally viewed as having no place in a modern democracy. In 2009 the British Parliament voted to repeal the act (originally promulgated in 1661) after a long campaign by free-speech lobbyists in that country highlighting that the offence is “obsolete” and in contravention of global human rights legislation. In March freelance journalist Sonny Serite was arrested by the Directorate of Intelligence and Security Services (DISS) for obtaining documents allegedly containing “state secrets”. Serite had cov- So This is Democracy? 2016 35