The chief of police of Burbank and the mayor of Gaborone, capital and largest city of Botswana, had lunch last week at the Lakeside Country Club to talk law enforcement. The meeting was arranged by the State Department, which is taking year-old Paul Mmlotsi Rantao on a monthlong friendship tour of this country. Botswana gained independence peacefully in after 81 years as a British protectorate.
Now it carries on delicately as an economically dependent neighbor of South Africa, whose racial policies it openly abhors. Rantao, a shrewd politician with an eye for national office, has used his time in America to cultivate ideas and contacts. In Atlanta, he visited Mayor Andrew Young. His spin through Burbank on Thursday had a different purpose--to tap local officials for insights into matters such as roads, fire and police.
Bell suggested Lakeside, where he has an account. The country club is a peaceful hideaway of Spanish-mission arches and hanging floral baskets. High stone walls insulate it from the fast pace of the nearby studio district. Bell--stout shoulders, blue blazer, short silvery hair--was every bit a cop. He talked robustly and made jokes, often at his own expense. Rantao--tall and slender--carried himself lithely in a black suit with wide lapels and vertical gold stripes.
He spoke so softly, he was hard to hear. He was interested in training, hoping to upgrade his force of municipal law-enforcement officers who are overshadowed by the better-equipped federal police. Bell asked me if I had any questions, then joked at my expense.
What bothers him about journalists, he said, is all the questions they ask. Richards used the next pause to mention that Rantao had been a journalist--editor of the Botswana Daily News--before he became mayor. Rantao said it is a capital built from scratch, like Brasilia, and has grown from fewer than 20, inhabitants on independence day to , today, making it slightly larger than Burbank. People still stream in from rural Botswana, seeking work, and from South Africa, seeking asylum.
