Peter Mahowe, the man whose wife Gloria was nine years ago murdered by the condemned prisoner, Benson Keganne, is now battling to save his property from the hammer.
This follows after his P4.5 million law suit against the government was dismissed with costs by Lobatse High Court justice, David Newman.
Mahowe sued the government following his arrest on 11 March 2001 on suspicion that he had murdered his wife.
In his law suit, handled by Hebert Sikhakhane, recently struck of the roll, he maintained that his arrest was wrongful and malicious. He was humiliated, he claimed.
He said the police arrested him and incarcerated without a warrant.
In prison he was accused of killing his wife. He was mocked and humiliated by the police, he said.
When he was released four days after his arrest he was warned that he was still under investigation and that he might be arrested again in the future. He was told a long four months after his initial arrest that he was no longer suspected of murdering his wife.
Mahowe claims that he spent P3,500 on lawyers and his character ,health, self esteem, feelings and reputation were damaged in addition to deprivation of freedom. He was also exposed to hardship and the humiliation of staying in a police cell.
Mahowe was only relieved after Keganne and two others were found guilty of the murder of his wife though his relatives still believe that he murdered his daughter. His life is a perpetual nightmare, he confesses.
Keganne and two South African citizens were saved from the gallows by their age at the time of the crime. They are currently serving long sentences for the murder that raised controversy in South Africa where the government believed they were smuggled out of that country without proper extradition agreements with Botswana.
The Botswana government initially maintained that they were arrested in Botswana and not South Africa but finally sent the culprits back where the courts ruled that they could be extradited to face murder charges in Botswana on condition that even if they were sentenced to death the government would not authorise their execution.
It is now rumoured that the government intends to bypass the agreement and execute the condemned prisoner if the Court of Appeal upholds their sentence.
