08 Jan 2020

Botswana Police Service (BPS) spokesperson, Assistant Commissioner Dipheko Motube, has condemned an incident in which a mob in Mogoditshane killed a 23-year-old man of Moshupa on Sunday.

Assistant Commissioner Motube said the deceased, who was part of a gang that terrorised members of the public, allegedly broke into a vehicle and stole some valuables.

He said the following morning, some members of the community went to the young man’s place of residence in Senthumole ward in Mogoditshane where they beat him to a pulp.

He said as much as the police appreciated help from the society, it did not condone mob justice.

“We as the police, do not adhere to the adversarial law, but a legal system, which requires that he who alleges must prove, hence the obligation to bring forth alleged criminals to account for offences they are being accused of before they could be painted guilty,” he said.

Mr Motube said no matter how fed up and angry the society could be, it did not have right to take law into own hands.

On a similar note, he said he was not pleased with the videos and pictures of the deceased, which were all over social media, even before his family could be contacted.

The incident was widely debated in the social media.  

One heated debate was between well known lawyers; Messrs Kgosietsile Ngakaagae, Uyapo Ndadi, Jabu Oteng and Busang Manewe.

Mr Ngakaagae  wrote on his Facebook page how baffled he was, having believed that the society was past that stage where it could argue on whether mob justice constituted an acceptable societal intervention against crime.

He wrote that as angry as the society might be, the judicial system was not failing them, but was rather dealing with their mess, not its own.

Mr Ngakaagae said society could not keep producing criminals and thereafter blame other people for it, urging everyone to look at themselves in the mirror, weep and fix themselves and their societies.

In support of Mr Ngakaagae, Mr Uyapo Ndadi also condemned mob justice, saying that those who had blood on their hands must face the full might of the law.

“Mob (in)justice has no place in a democratic society just as any crime, when one is under attack they can act in self defence and their conduct must reasonably be aimed at overcoming the threat and anything beyond that is a crime for which consequences must follow,” he wrote.

Mr Oteng said as much as crime had gone out of hand, there was nothing good to be gained from taking the law into one’s own hands and killing a fellow human being, except for a potential long stint in prison.

However, Mr Manewe cited instances where he was robbed of his valuables at knife and gun point. His argument was based on the ‘you will not understand it until it happens to you’ perspective.

Mr Manewe said no arrests were made in all the instances of his encounters with thieves, which was more frustrating than the pain of being robbed itself.

As a well-seasoned lawyer, he however stated that he at some point refused to represent a potential client, who had robbed and murdered someone.

Some Mogoditshane residents though, said their frustrations lied with the police since it never attended to crime incidents on time.

One Laone Tseleng alleged that  criminal activities said society was fed up since they had been robbed by this gang for so long.

“This boy was a lead gangster of this small generation that rob us of our belongings.

For a very long time we complained about him, today the police take him tomorrow he is back and does another thing,” she exclaimed. ENDS