ered stories about alleged corruption and was later locked up at Gaborone Police Station under Section 317(2) of the Penal Code of 1986, which carries a sentence of 14 years in prison. However, human rights lawyer Uyapo Ndadi says that the Act deals with receiving stolen property, not information. Ndadi said that if the information breached national security, “they would have gone for the National Security Act, which carries a jail sentence of 30 years”. Repression of journalists while in pursuit of their job remains a problem. Serite, a freelancer reporter for newspaper the Botswana Gazette, was allegedly arrested during a private meeting with a source, a Records Officer in the Office of the President. The two were arrested on a Thursday and held without bail until the following Monday. Court documents allege that Serite received the documents on March 17 “knowing that it was illegal”. The official documents belonged to Tsaone Nkarabeng, one of Khama’s personal secretaries. Serite had earlier published a series of articles in the Gazette critical of President Ian Khama’s government, including reports alleging corruption involving Botswana Railways and Transnet of South Africa, relating to the purchase of coaches from its South African counterpart. This was ten months after the detention of the Gazette’s managing editor, Shike Olsen, and a reporter at the paper, Innocent Selatlhwa, and lawyer, Joao Salbany, over 36 So This is Democracy? 2016 a corruption exposé. Salbany, who is not a Botswana citizen, later left the country when the authorities refused to renew his work permit. In protest, the Botswana Media and Allied Workers Union and the Botswana Editors Forum officially declared a media blackout on the ruling party, the Botswana Democratic Party. The union’s president, Phillimon Mmeso, said that there had been “continued arrests of journalists by state agents and we have observed that those charges will later be dropped. This means it is just their way to threaten journalists - making them fear reporting on issues of corruption that are happening within government. The ruling party have been quiet and never raised their voice on the harassment of journalists”. The ruling party responded to say it was aware of the media blackout. The party’s general secretary Botsalo Ntuane said it was “not a problem at all”, that the union could go ahead with the blackout. He said the party had received a letter in this regard, and that it would take it from there. He went on to say that the party had no problem at all in engaging with the media and the union and that it could not be accused of harassing the media. In May, on the occasion of World Press Freedom Day, reporters in Botswana called on the international community to help stop the arrests of journalists in the country. The Media Allied Workers Union said that existing laws made journalists feel threatened. Union President Phil Mmeso said the media in Botswana was under siege. In June the world was stunned by news of the so-called Panama Papers, which then provided further opportunities for the media around the world The Botswa-