A year before Kgosi Kgari II was installed as Bakwena traditional leader, the Regent was Kgosi Kgosikwena Sebele. Before taking up duty at the main kgotla in Molepolole, Kgosikwena had been a Botswana National Front member and once sought to unseat area MP, Daniel Kwelagobe. Over time, the political rivalry between the two men calcified into personal enmity that would overspill onto Molepolole’s main kgotla in September 2001. At the time, Kwelagobe was the Minister of Presidential Affairs and Public Administration and his portfolio responsibilities included the Botswana Police Service.
In response to escalating juvenile crime, Kgosikwena had called a kgotla meeting which resolved to constitute and mobilise a mophato (age-regiment) that would carry out night patrols. In a past when dikgosi (sing; kgosi) held sway, a mophato of abled-bodied men of the same age-group who had undergone initiation-school training together would be mobilised to execute whatever assignment the kgosi deemed necessary. Strictly speaking, Kgosikwena’s nocturnal policemen were not really a mophato because they were differently-aged and generations apart but that is what they were called.
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