While he has been suddenly and mysteriously keen to tell his side of the story to a national audience more than a year after the fact, Reverend Biggie Butale didn’t want to tell that story to a Botswana Patriotic Front (BPF) delegation sent by the National Executive Committee (NEC).
Butale is the still-suspended BPF president and the story that he only just started telling involves a 22-year old female student at the Botswana University of Agriculture and Natural Resources (BUAN) who alleges that he sexually assaulted her last year. Following the incident, the student reported the matter to NEC. In a written statement that Sunday Standard has had access to, the student says that Butale pinned her against the wall and missing the target, stuck his unsheathed member between her thighs. He then unleashed a series of misguided thrusts and a few short minutes later, ejaculated on the student’s thighs. Her statement says that when Butale was done, he showed her the bathroom in order that she could clean up and that when she came back into the sitting room, he gave her a bottle of mineral water.
That is what the student wrote in her statement to the NEC and repeated during a sit-down interview with the NEC delegation. Butale was given a copy of the student’s statement and naturally, the team was keen to hear his own side of the story. It is unclear how many times he postponed scheduled appointments with the delegation (a point that was raised when he finally met it) but that happened.
However, when he finally met the two-member delegation, Butale – who is a lawyer – raised technical legal points. The letter inviting him to the meeting had said that the meeting was part of an “inquest” to establish what happened between him and the BUAN student. At the very start of the meeting – which was held at Lansmore Hotel in Gaborone – Butale was told that the delegation had already interviewed the girl and that that the purpose of the meeting was to get his own side of the story.
Minutes of the meeting state the following: “Mr. Butale indicated that the letter written to him had stated that this was an ‘inquest’ and that he had requested clarification on the same. He further mentioned that if the meeting is an inquest like said in the letter, he could have been informed how it is going to be conducted or asked to bring witnesses.”
While “inquest” has a precise legal meaning, the writer, a non-lawyer, had obviously used it in an everyday sense to mean “a discussion or investigation into something that had happened, especially something undesirable.” The latter definition is from the minutes of the meeting and was the result of an online search by both Butale and a member of the delegation. The detail in the minutes is not specific enough but it would seem that when the two sides argued over the meaning of “inquest”, iPhones were whipped out and online dictionaries consulted.
The minutes say that the delegation member who had conducted the online search alongside “indicated to Mr. Butale that the meeting was simply that: a discussion to hear his side of the story and not an investigation.” She “made a humble request to Mr. Butale to allow the meeting to proceed in the best interest of all parties so that the matter can be concluded and dealt with in the soonest possible time.”
However, Butale still had an issue with the use of “inquest.” Resultantly, he proposed that the NEC delegation should write him another letter “and not mention that the meeting is an inquest because if this issue goes to court, it will not be allowed.”
Butale raised another issue: that the members of the delegation were conflicted. A month earlier, when the issue was first reported, one had suggested that Butale should be suspended for six months. The other had revealed that she had personally suffered “a negative incident.” This point doesn’t come across clearly in the minutes but context provided by BPF sources is that she had also been sexually assaulted in the past.
At this point, one member of the delegation told Butale that it was “clear” that he “did not want to give the delegation his side of the story.” In response, Butale said that “no one can force him to talk if he does not want to and that this is a democratic country. He insisted that the delegation writes him another letter and give him the report of what the complainant said for him to respond.”
This was the second time that he had raised the latter point. When he did the first time, it was pointed out to him that he had been sent such report and there is no indication of him refuting that statement. When one delegation member stated (for the second time) that it was clear that Butale didn’t want to cooperate, he is said to have “confirmed” that that was indeed the case.
The other delegate said that “it was unfortunate that Mr. Butale had been postponing meeting the delegation for so long, and that when he eventually responded to the letter requesting a meeting, he could have indicated his objections in the letter, and not waited until the meeting.” She also indicated that “it’s a pity that Mr. Butale has really wasted a lot of time on this and that Mr. Butale had failed to inform NEC in its recent past meetings, when he had the opportunity to state his objections to the NEC. She, however, pleaded with Mr. Butale to cooperate with the team to give his side of the story.”
This is where the meeting ended because soon thereafter, Butale “told the team that he is done with the meeting and that he had mentioned what he wanted to say, and that he had no interest to cooperate with the team and left the meeting.”
Ultimately, the two delegates resolved to report back to the NEC about the unproductive meeting with Butale and recommend to it that he be referred to the Disciplinary Committee.
Butale has never publicly commented on this matter until late last month when he addressed a press conference at which he denied that any impropriety happened between him and the BUAN student. His side of the story differs markedly with the student’s.
In her interview with the NEC delegation, the student said that she met Butale four times. However, when he spoke at the press conference, Butale said that he met her only once. His account is that when she came to his house, she was in a tearing hurry because she had to beat the curfew and never even got to sit down. In the brief period of time that they were together, Butale says that he gave her a consolatory “hug” when she moaned about her campaign for a position in the Student Representative Council not going well.
The matter went public last year with the release of an audio clip in which Butale asks her if she came – which most see as proof positive that hanky-panky did indeed occur. Butale’s explanation is that after the one and only meeting that he had with the student, she initiated a sex-themed conversation.
“And I, in my foolishness, responded,” he told the press conference.
To a listener’s ear, the audio clip sounds like post-mortem of a sexual encounter. Conversely, Butale contends that the clip was actually manipulated by the Directorate of Intelligence Services and Security to appear so and that such information was given to him by DISS agents themselves.
Interestingly, this is what he refused to tell to the NEC delegation at the July 6, 2021 meeting at Lansmore Hotel. Not having told the press conference about this delegation, he didn’t explain the reasons for such refusal.
