Cowboys plead to be allowed to stop Thamaga menace Related news When all else fails, call the cowboys to come sweep the ‘trash’ out of the village. Donning their trademark all black leather collection of skinny pants, cowboy boots, hats accessorised with toy guns, Okapi knives, whips and handcuffs - a group of rockers caused a stir Saturday when they waltzed into a Kgotla meeting and offered their “unconventional” service to “once and for all take care” of the youthful gangsters terrorising Thamaga. The village has been under siege due to an increasing corruption and gang violence that recently claimed a 62-year-old woman’s life after she was attacked by a 40-plus group of boys in her home. The group which calls itself Botswana Rock Stars/Cowboys declared that all the villagers and Kgosi need do is give them permission and the nightmare will be over, so to speak. “We are not going to laugh with these kids the way the police have been doing. Just give us permission, one week and a chopper and gumbagumba (truck used to load foreigners for deportation), all this nonsense will be over,” said the group leader, Mpho ‘Rams’ Ramotswakwa, to the ululation of desperate elderly women. As for the parents who help their children to play hide and seek with law enforcement, Ramotswakwa had a stern warning: “Re tsile go dira tshenyo e e maswe, re le kopanya le bana ba lona.”The Cowboys efforts would be welcome, says Police District Officer Commanding, Senior Superintendent Kevin Mookodi. “We need all the help we can get,” stressed Mookodi. He says although the Cowboys’ demands (referring to the chopper and gumbaguba) are “a bit unreasonable”, if they want to join hands with the police in patrolling the village, “we can accommodate them, but we definitely cannot give them our resources.” The group whose members come from different parts of the country, some of them civil servants, insisted they were not attention seekers. They said they were instead just citizens concerned at how the problem has been allowed to escalate to the level it has and assured the crowd that given a chance they would put a stop to it.
Posted on: Fri, 05 Dec 2014 14:39:07 +0000