Truth has become the first casualty in the courtroom war between Director General of the Directorate of Intelligence and Security Services Peter Magosi and his predecessor Isaac Kgosi.
Kgosi has been charged with six counts relating to unlawful possession of items including surveillance equipment, ammunition, firearms, passports, Botswana Defence Force (BDF) uniform, and armoured vests among others.
One of the hurdles the magistrate presiding over the case will have to overcome is determining who between the current DIS director general Magosi and his predecessor Kgosi is telling the truth.
For sometime it was Magosi’s word against Kgosi’s until
former President Lt Gen Ian Khama and former Permanent Secretary to the President Carter Morupisi joined the fray to fight Kgosi’s corner.
This however does not seem to help the situation much as Khama is suspected to be Kgosi’s partner in crime and former Permanent Secretary to the President Carter Morupisi is believed to have an axe to grind against the government.
In his answering affidavit Kgosi whose recent raid yielded a sizable haul: surveillance equipment, ammunition, firearms and armoured vests among others claims that he never had the opportunity to hand over the items for which he is being charged with unlawful possession because of the manner of his dismissal from office.
“My employment was terminated on abruptly by the President on 3rd May 2018. As soon as I received the letter of termination from former Permanent Secretary to the President , carter Morupisi, I was bundled out of his office by security agents from DIS, driven directly to the DIS office to collect my personal staff and driven out,” Kgosi states in court papers. He says he has never set foot in his former office since then.
“As one would have expected, I never had an opportunity to properly hand over to my successor, Mr. Magosi. On several occasions , I spoke to him to alert him of the need to properly brief him on what I had been working on and to hand over whatever property of the government had been in my possession at the time. I believed this was the proper thing to do administratively.”
Kgosi says while Magosi promised to arrange the takeover, he never followed through. The former Intelligence boss says he then asked former PSP Morupisi to intervene. “Mr. Morupisi told me that he spoke to him and Magosi assured him that he would attend to the issue. Up to now this has not happened.”
In his supporting affidavit Morupisi echoes Kgosi’s statement. “I can confirm that …Mr. Kgosi advised me that it had not been a proper handover that he still had in his possession certain property belonging to his former employer and needed to hand them over to his successor Mr. Magosi. He informed me that he had asked Mr. Magosi to collect them but he had not done so.”
Morupisi alleges that Kgosi asked him to ask Magosi to arrange for collection. “I spoke to Mr. Magosi who assured me that he would arrange for the handover,” Morupisi says in his affidavit.
But the current DIS boss Magosi rubbishes both allegations in his opposing affidavit. He says while it is true that there was never a formal handover between himself and his predecessor, it is not true that Kgosi ever spoke to him about handing over government property in his possession.
“Handovers are done at the workplace and not at a former employee’s house,” Magosi says, adding, “In fact, if I had known that the deponent (Kgosi) was in possession of government property as alleged, I would have immediately collected such property and ensured that appropriate action was taken.”
Magosi says there is nothing in the relevant Acts which permits employees of DIS to take with them the assets of the agency upon termination of their contracts of employment.
“Furthermore it is not only improbable but nonsensical that more than three years post termination of employment, the deponent could claim that he was still waiting for me to come for a handover at his house.”
Magosi also denies that any communication took place between himself and Morupisi in relation to the handover.
“As PSP at the time, Morupisi was my immediate supervisor and he could easily have given me instructions in writing to collect the property in question especially given the sensitive nature of the mandate of the Directorate.”
Magosi goes further to say it was irresponsible for the former PSP as the head of the civil service to “knowingly” let a former employee to retain state property in his possession.
“This is clearly a contrived story between a former Permanent Secretary to the President and the former Director General of the Directorate of Intelligence and Security, both of whom were dismissed from the civil service,” Magosi concludes in his affidavit. The trial has been set for December 7, 2021.
It remains to be seen who, between Morupisi and Kgos on the one hand and Magosi on the other, has committed perjury. The trio filed affidavits last week in the Director of Public Prosecutions V Isaac Kgosi bail hearing before Village Magistrate Lindiwe Makgoro.
