An affidavit deposed to by a Botswana Police Service Computer Forensic Examiner reveals unusually shocking statements that former president, Ian Khama, made about his successor, President Mokgweetsi Masisi.“The story is that Sisiboy told DIS to eliminate me, Kgosi, Bridgette and Malcolm X over the Butterfly issue,” Khama wrote in a WhatsApp message to Justice Motlhabani.That is one too many characters there and a plot exposition is absolutely necessary to explain who is who and how they all relate to each other.
“Sisiboy” is President Masisi’s pet name and comes from his family name; DIS is the abbreviation for the Directorate of Intelligence Services – formally the Directorate of Intelligence Services and Security but the proper abbreviation form (DISS) is rarely used; Kgosi is Isaac Kgosi, DIS’ founding Director-General; Bridgette’s surname is Motsepe and on account of her marriage to Jeff Radebe, a South African cabinet minister and liberation-struggle stalwart, her full name is Bridgette Motsepe-Radebe; Malcolm X is a South African businessman and fixer of some sort; Butterfly is the code name for a DIS agent whose official names are Wilheminah Maswabi; Motlhabani is the spokesman for the Botswana Patriotic Front, a political party that Khama founded after leaving the ruling Botswana Democratic Party last year; and the Computer Forensic Examiner’s names are given as Morwakena Tlhobolo.
Masisi and Khama had an ugly public spat after the latter left office in 2018. He would be associated with a faction called New Jerusalem while Masisi was said to lead one called Cava. A year later, Khama left BDP to found BPF. At this point, Khama had been associated with Motsepe-Radebe and Malcolm X and there would be press reports about Khama conniving with Motsepe-Radebe to unseat Masisi. Both denied the allegations. Kgosi was Masisi’s first high profile firing and arriving back home in 2019, was arrested at the Sir Seretse Khama International Airport in a DIS operation that was led by his successor, Peter Magosi. Both men have a BDF past and during this arrest, Kgosi kept referring to Magosi by a middle name (Fana) he would have learnt at the Mogoditshane barracks.
As this rivalry played itself out in public, Maswabi was arrested on allegations of having facilitated theft of P100 billion of public funds by Khama and Kgosi – which money was allegedly laundered into a bank account owned by Motsepe-Radebe. The validity of these allegations has yet to be proven and the alleged culprits are now suing the state.Down the road, Motlhabani entered the scene and fray as BPF spokesperson and would periodically communicate with Khama via WhatsApp. At least according to its inventors, this platform is end-to-end encrypted, meaning that its messages cannot be intercepted.
That would be what lulled the former president and former Big Brother Africa contestant into a sense of false security – or at least the messages they exchanged suggest so. Individually, Motlhabani would spawn his own drama when he was later charged with “publishing statements with intention to deceive persons about the COVID-19 infection”, and “use of offensive electronic communication.” The police confiscated his smart phones and as part of the investigations, handed them over to the Digital Forensics Laboratory at the BPS headquarters in Gaborone.
Explaining the wizardry of his craft in his affidavit, Tlhobolo states that he used a computer mobile and forensics method that enabled him to make a complete and qualified forensic duplicate of the computer/mobile equipment involved. ‘This forensic duplicate represents a copy of the entire hard disk/computer/digital device storage of the suspect/victim,” states Tlhobolo, who obtained a Bachelor of Information Systems from the University of Botswana in 2007 and has attended cyber-crime courses in countries such as Japan, Hungary and Nigeria.
“The examination and analysis involves working on a forensic duplicate to recover any evidence and digital artefacts of a given case.” At the precise time that DIS’s boss, Magosi, was publicly stating that there was a plot to assassinate Masisi, another protectee of his, had also received intelligence that the same DIS was planning to assassinate him as well – please refer to Paragraph 2 in this article. The rest of the message is actually much more dramatic: “He [Masisi] does not want the truth to come out due to the embarrassment it will cause him. He got this from a very reliable source in Botswana. Bridgette and he are supposed to be killed in what is supposed to look like a hijacking in their country. He reports that they have both noticed that they are being followed wherever they go. They don’t know about how they will deal with Kgosi and I because if anything happens to us too, DIS will be the prime suspects.”
It would seem that the second and third “he” (“he got this from” and “Bridgette and he”) refer to Malcolm X because no other “he” on the list of characters fits that description. Khama’s message to Motlhabani continues: “Separately from his [Malcolm X’s] info, I heard that they want to know all my engagements and where I go hence why Masisi directly appointed recently a private secretary and insisted on it who will report to them about me. He, I believe, is not aware for what purpose but will be used to inform them so they can plan something.” The unnamed private secretary (who couldn’t be) is Loeto Porati who, at the time of his ill-fated appointment, was Acting Director of Tribal Administration in the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Administration and substantively, Masunga District Commissioner. Khama refused to take Porati and someone in his circle alleged to Sunday Standard that Porati had connections to BDP’s “Cava” faction. If it will be any consolation to Porati, Khama’s statement at least clears Porati of any connivance.
The part of that statement about Khama’s movements being monitored has a November 2020 resonance. This is how: on November 5 (this past Thursday), Khama was in Serowe and had planned to visit one of his farms. He cancelled the trip on the back of an intelligence claim, relayed to Sunday Standard, that “DIS have been told to monitor my movements with some intention to try something.” He had just left Serowe with his security detail, he said, and had spotted a DIS vehicle whose occupants were watching his convoy. “I have been warned not to proceed with this trip because they are up to something,” he alleged.And what could that “something” be. By his account, it is a new DIS “trick” through which the spy agency misleads the police by providing false intelligence that links “Masisi’s opponents” to armed robberies.
They lie to the police about an “armed and dangerous” fugitive driving a certain vehicle with a certain registration number, with the expectation that the police reaction unit “will, on seeing the vehicle, open fire killing the occupant and then realising their mistake but by then it will be too late.” The former president alleges that “this was actually attempted recently but fortunately the police recognised the occupant as someone innocent.”
