TIENIE Wolmarans, husband of the South African woman sentenced to hang in Botswana for the murder of his first wife, is convinced of her innocence and is starting a hunt to find and convict the man he believes is guilty of the crime.
Wolmarans is bitter that the Botswana government seems uninterested in further investigations of the case, which has passed through all but one stage of appeal – clemency from State President Festus Mogae.
But even if Mogae saves Mariette Bosch from the gallows, she would still have a lengthy prison term before her. Wolmarans wants her free and believes he has the evidence to eventually overturn a finding by Botswana’s highest court.
“I am going to hand the killer to the government on plate. They are not interested in investigating the case, I have to find him and I have the information to bust this case wide open,” Wolmarans said after Bosch was returned to death row after the Appeal Court upheld her conviction and sentence.
Wolmarans is now looking for a private investigator to help him and fund the search. Facing legal bills of about two million Pula, (about R2,8m) Wolmarans has no money, not even to fight for his wife’s life.
“I am broke, but not broken,” he said.
He has identified the so-called date rape drug ?Rohypnol”, which he believes the real killer used to influence Bosch to bring a gun from South Africa for the murder.
He believes Bosch’s only crime was in bringing the gun, with which his wife Maria was shot, into Botswana and giving it to Hennie Coetzee, then general manager of Kwena Rocla Botswana, and who Bosch at her trial accused of killing Wolmarans’ wife.
“It was a silly thing to do,” he admits, but says Bosch acted under the influence of the drug given to her by Coetzee, as she told the trial court.
Appeal Court Judge Justice Tebbutt said the story was impossible to believe: “This bizarre and completely implausible evidence as to the casting of an hypnotic spell on her by Coetzee makes the story that she gave him the pistol impossible to believe,” he said.
Meanwhile, Bosch can expect little assistance from the South African government, who have indicated they will not be asking Botswana for clemency.
“It is not our intention to intervene in the due process of another country. If someone has been found guilty by the courts of another country we will respect that,” said Sipho Pityana, the director general of foreign affairs.
ZA*NOW
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