OWN CORRESPONDENT, Gaborone | Monday
SOUTH African convicted murderer Mariette Bosch has been hanged in Botswana, Deputy Commissioner of Prisons Herman Kau told AFP in Gaborone on Monday.
“Mariette Bosch was hanged Saturday morning,” Kau said.
Joseph Molebatsi, police commissioner in the Botswanan president’s office, confirmed she was executed in the early hours of Saturday morning.
An earlier report released by the South African media had said Bosch, 50, was hanged on Monday morning.
Meanwhile, the SA government said on Monday afternoon it has yet to receive confirmation in writing from Botswana that Bosch was executed at the weekend.
“The South African government … is waiting for written confirmation from Botswana’s authorities to this effect,” Foreign Affairs ministry representative Ronnie Mamoepa said.
Bosch’s husband was also only informed on Monday.
“The South African government reiterates its principled opposition to the death penalty as enshrined in the national Constitution and upheld by the Constitutional Court. President Thabo Mbeki has conveyed the plea on behalf of the South African government for the Botswanan government to spare Mariette Bosch’s life,” Mamoepa said.
However, Botswana was a sovereign state which reserved the right to take the final decision on the matter.
Mamoepa was unable to say why the South African government or Bosch’s family were not informed in advance of the execution. Bosch was sentenced to death last year for shooting dead her best friend Maria Magdalene Wolmarans, a fellow South African, in 1996, so that she could marry her husband.
Bosch married Wolmarans’ husband, Tienie, several months after the murder. Wolmarans has denied cheating on his first wife or conspiring to murder her.
But Botswana Judge Isaac Aboagye said: “I find the accused and Tienie were seriously in love before the death of the deceased and that they wanted the deceased out of Tienie’s way for them to get married.”
The murder trial was dubbed the ‘White Mischief’ case as the three South Africans in the love triangle were part of a tightly knit expatriate community.
Bosch maintained her innocence throughout her trial, maintaining the real killer was the general manager of a company where Maria Wolmarans was employed.
She was the fourth woman to be sentenced to death since Botswana’s independence from Britain in 1966.
Botswana President Festus Mogae, a supporter of the death penalty, refused Bosch clemency. Mogoe represented her only hope of a reprieve, after the Botswana Court of Appeal in January turned down her appeal against her conviction and sentence.
The South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) described as shocking Bosch’s execution.
“We are saddened by this turn of events as the SAHRC … (but) we tried our best to do whatever we could to prevent it,” said representative Phumla Mthala.
“Whenever a death penalty is carried out, it is a setback for the advancement of the culture of human rights,” she said.
In February the SAHRC requested President Thabo Mbeki to intervene to stop the hanging as South Africa scrapped the death penalty after the country became a democracy in 1994.
“It is a matter of principle. In our view it the duty of government to protect the rights of South African citizens, wherever they are … had the crime been committed in South Africa, Bosch would not have been sentenced to hang,” Pityana said.
A total of 34 people have been executed in Botswana since independence. The last before Bosch’s hanging was in January 1998. – AFP
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