Dead And Forgotten.

(From Mmegi / The Reporter (Botswana) - AAGM)

Byline: Mesh Moeti

"Here, the dead choke to death," says the man clearing the shoulder high grass around one grave at the old Gaborone Cemetery in Extension 14. With the grass in the cemetery growing wild, it is almost impossible to locate some graves.

For instance, though the area around the graves of the 15 members of the Botswana Defence Force who died at Lesoma is evidently recently cleared, to reach it is an ordeal. Without clear footpaths, it takes wading through bushes and trampling over other graves to reach the resting place of the fallen 15 - the first members of the BDF to die in combat. Also impenetrable is the area leading to the graves of the casualties of the South African Defence Force's June 15 raid in Gaborone.

Though the remains of Onkgopotse Tiro, killed by a letter bomb in Kgale, have been exhumed for reburial in his native South Africa, the tombstone still stands - a reminder of the irony in the life of a man who sought refuge in a foreign land, only for death …