29 Aug 2019

Judge Ookeditse Maphakwane of the Francistown High Court has reiterated that children should not be used as bargaining tools for clemency at the stage of sentencing.

Delivering the 18-year imprisonment sentence against murder convict, Motshidisi Diau of Bobonong on August 28, Judge Maphakwane said as it may be with regard to their seeming state of despair and desolate, people should act responsibly, if not for their own sakes, for that of their dependents.

This was after Diau had pleaded with the court to impose a lesser sentence against him because he had four minor children under his care before committing the crime and that the children had since lost a breadwinner.

Judge Maphakwane also ordered that the sentence be backdated to May 9, 2017, when he was first taken into incarceration, excluding the period he was on bail.

Diau had also advanced that he saved the court’s time by pleading guilty to the offence.  He also said he was a first offender and that there was a considerable degree of provocation by the deceased.

He had also submitted that the murder was not premeditated and in that context, it ought to be considered as a mitigatory element in favour of him.

Intoxication was also a mitigatory factor, saying owing to his drunken state, he lost the power of self-control and ended up committing murder.

However, Judge Maphakwane stated that all the mitigatory factors afore-stated were overshadowed by the killing of the deceased in the most senseless and brutal fashion.

“That was callous and most savagery in relation to a defenceless woman as you bludgeoned her to death,” he added.

He also reiterated that statistics of murder cases committed through the use of a knife were escalating at an alarming rate and that the prevalence of the crime of murder was a matter of public notoriety in Botswana.

“Our society is at this time totally outraged by the ubiquitous practice of lovers killing lovers. This has become a cancerous practice of which our society should be exorcized sooner than later,” he said.

Judge Maphakwane also reiterated that cases of passion killing were on the rise in the country while the women were at the receiving end, and in many cases’ die horrible deaths at the hands of persons whom they loved.

He further stated that the male members of the society needed to be told that violence was not and has never been a means to solve relational disputes and was a sign of extreme cowardice to pulverize defenceless people like women.

Judge Maphakwane further stated that the 18-year prison sentence was fit for the crime Diau committed even though the death of the deceased would haunt him and hang around his neck like an albatross for a long time to come to actuate the deserved punishment.

Diau was convicted of killing his girlfriend Kebadiretse Koometse of Bobonong in May 2017 using an Okapi knife. Ends