International spotlight on Botswana and local public opinion: Race factor in the murder trials of Ompatile Tswaipe, Clement Gofhamodimo and Mariette Bosch, 1978–2001

Abstract

AbstractThis historical paper engages in a form of discourse analysis of international media reports on three murder trials in Botswana which involved a white person(s) as a victim or perpetrator. First, is the trial of Botswana Defence Force soldier, Sergeant Ompatile Tswaipe, after allegedly ordering his platoon to shoot three suspected white insurgents in the Tuli Block in 1978. Outrage and pressure from apartheid South African and British media and officialdom seems to have led to the prosecution of Tswaipe while public opinion in Botswana solidly stood behind him as a patriot. The second trial involved Clement Gofhamodimo in 1984 who had murdered and robbed a white Swiss tourist, and fled to the United States in 1978. The hierarchy at his alma mater, University of the District of Columbia, mobilized leading African‐American civil rights activists and tried to plead with President Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II to entreat President Quett Masire of Botswana for clemency. Finally, is the trial of Mariette Bosch, a South African white woman who murdered her South African lady friend in 1996 to marry her husband. While Bosch was on death row in 2001, there was a spirited campaign in some Western and South African quarters for her clemency by President Festus Mogae of Botswana while blacks on death row with her were ignored. The paper observes that the international media reports put Botswana's internationally acclaimed respect for the rule of law and observance of human rights on the spotlight which was challenged by the local public opinion.