Volume 65 December 2026-January 2026 : Social

A walk through G-west shopping mall feels is a refreshing walk – akin to a walk after rain. Noah must have felt this way when he came out of the ark after the flood to witness God`s destruction of that wicked generation of humanity.

There is something fresh about this place, but your mind refuses to register it and the words stubbornly hang at the tip of your tongue.

A Few Chinese traders and several salon girls hang lazily in front of their shops in a manner suggestive of leisure. Besides them the place is deserted and quiet.

It suddenly dawn on you. There is peace here. Not long ago, there was a fire here. It gutted a night club here and some old plastic tables and chairs used by illegal traders in the area. The cause of the fire remains a mystery, but there is no denying the fire also licked the Sodom and Gomorrah affair that formed the nucleus of activity at this mall.

Before the fire, obstinate prostitute would line the streets, even during the day, their overt makeup making them look like mannequins. Then were the criminals that robbed people under the very nose of the police, the drug dealers who arrogantly carried out their trade in the parking lot and the drunkards that peed on any wall they set their eyes.  They are all gone. What a welcome respite!

It is an open secret that several police strategies to cleanse the place were in vain, until like in the bible, fire came down to put to an end to the evils that gave the police a headache and terrified many a law abiding citizen.

Here, late night screams of women attacked by thugs, loud boom-boxes from scrappy cars that made studying impossible, the meaningless raucous laughter of drunkards and the groaning of a man stabbed with a screwdriver or an overly used Okapi knife defined Gaborone West night life.

As Gaborone West station commander, Mr Seitiketso Mpusetsang spells the evils of this place you want to imagine he is talking about hell. It was from here, he says, that brutal gangs would stalk innocent people and rob them.

He describes the stench of urine from careless drunkards who would urinate everywhere - on the walls of Choppies supermarket, on the parking lot, and even on the police fence. He talks those who would park anywhere and even block the way into the police station. But today, this police boss can recline on his chair. He hopes to savour the moment for as long as it lasts.

“Before the club burnt down, this place gave us a headache. It was the meeting place for criminals. There was littering and all sorts of crime. The people coming here out-numbered the police and they parked anyhow blocking all the entrance points into the mall. Our resources were overstretched,” he says. Sometimes good does come out of bad. The fire that nearly wiped out the city of London 500 years back also exterminated the worst killer of humanity ever – the black death.  It appears that is what happened when the fire razed the club. The fire has long gone and in its path there is peace. “The criminals are gone, the prostitutes are gone, the illegal traders in front of the club are gone and we have an opportunity to commit our resources to other things,” he says.

As Florence Osenyeng of Tonota, an illegal trader in front of the night Club tries to give her testimony of the place she talks more like a woman possessed and she speaks in tongues. She operated in this place for 10 years, selling beer and meat before the fire came and ruined her trade.  The money was good, she says, but with it came much humiliation and danger.

 “There were fights every day, at times our safety was compromised, drunk  under age boys would ran helter skelter throwing beer bottles outside the club  and grown men peered right in front us. At times some would insult us and even refuse to pay. Every day was a struggle,” she says. Since the club burnt down I have abandoned the trade. In fact everyone is gone and the few that are left will soon disappear.

Osenyeng is only representative of ordinary folks who tried to make a living out of hell.

She has since switched to selling clothes and it seems the fire that gutted down the night club brought along with it light into her life. “It is only now that I see what danger I put my life in. My customers are now good people. Although the business is slow I am optimistic that I will get by,” she says.

Woe to the place upon which the evil cloud that covered Gaborone West mall has come – we are told it has since found a new habitat somewhere in Gaborone. ENDS

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