Any assertion that Lyndon Mothusi was living large prior to May 2008 would certainly be untrue. He was living larger.
His “renowned and highly acclaimed law practice with insurmountable high-profile achievements” in Botswana’s second city was rolling in big bucks. Other than practising law, Mothusi & Company Associates was also an employer that supported multiple families. At the end of a long day, the managing partner would get behind the wheel of a Range Rover and begin the late-afternoon commute. (One has this mental image of Mothusi snapping on a pair of the latest designer shades on a lazy Saturday morning and digging the scene with a gangster lean around town. For some reason, this calibre of luxury car induces a majority of its male urban drivers to strike that particular pose.)
Mothusi would cruise homeward to what from the description of a June 26, 2017 filing notice sounds like a well-appointed double-storey house in Block 4. The house was enclosed by wall-fence topped off with an electric fence and for the Rover to roll onto the front yard, he would press a remote control button that caused the motor gate to slide to the side. Around the house was a servants’ quarters, gazebo and an in-ground swimming pool. Mothusi’s other car was a Dodge Caliber 1.6. In the small village of Borolong, some 10 kilometres west of the city, Mothusi owned an undeveloped residential plot and in Shashe, a ploughing field that also lay fallow. Interest in livestock had inspired him to keep a herd of 20 cattle as well as a flock of 30 goats and 30 sheep. His work at the law firm meant that he could only be a weekend farmer and so he hired a herdboy. Naturally, the Range Rover and Dodge couldn’t negotiate the rough terrain of country roads. And so, when he went to the cattlepost (especially at monthend to pay the herdboy) Mothusi used a Nissan Hardbody 2.4 truck. Life was capital-G good ÔÇô until it wasn’t.
Disaster struck on a fateful day in 2008 when a Directorate on Corruption and Economic Crime officer directed Kutlwano Police Station officers to arrest Mothusi. Thereafter, law enforcement officers took all his worldly possessions: the house, the vehicles, the residential plot and the ploughing field. But the officers not only confiscated the milk, they also took away the milch cow by way of shutting down the offices of his law firm. Out at the cattlepost, the herdboy quit when his monthly payment stopped coming. Unattended, the livestock went “astray.”
This was not the first time that the state had confiscated Mothusi’s property. The same thing had happened in February 2004 when his Mercedes Benz was confiscated. The second confiscation was more punitive.
Beyond shutting down the law firm, the officers froze its bank accounts at both Stanbic Bank and First National Bank, then charged the firm with criminal wrongdoing. At a subsequent trial, the firm was found guilty but the Court of Appeal overturned that verdict.
Mothusi was personally tried alongside another lawyer, Herbert Sikhakhane, but oddly, the outcome was different. After their conviction, Sikhakhane successfully appealed the sentence three months later but Mothusi’s own appeal for the same offence and same set of circumstances failed. After serving out his sentence, Mothusi took the matter up with the Court of appeal which quashed the conviction.
In terms of these findings, Mothusi and his company did nothing wrong. Now he wants compensation of P34 391 500 for both himself and his law firm. The sum covers loss of personal and business property as well as goodwill and business, special damages for violation of privacy and wrongful termination of the lease agreement for the Francistown office. He wants quantifications of the award “to show the courts disdain” for the actions of [DCEC’s] officials who led the investigation against him and his law firm.
The Attorney General, DCEC and the Botswana Police Service are cited as respondents and in terms of High Court rules, have 30 days within which to respond. The filing notice details a “genealogy of mala fides from the loudspeaker of the defendants’ footsteps.” With precise regard to the closure of the law firm, Mothusi contends that “it was calculated to injure the plaintiff’s company and goodwill, as all it had amassed tangibly and inferentially was lost in the blink of an eye because of the malicious imputed inability of servicing its financial obligations, lock, stock and barrel if not hook, line and sinker.” He argues that the winding up and “primitive sequestration” of his law firm resulted in the loss of all relevant accounting documents which he lists as trust ledger, client ledger, client list, debtors list, creditors list, bank statements and other records which he says have never been handed over to the law firm or the Law Society of Botswana. Apparently, Mothusi is not the only one who has suffered. He says that ever since the closure of the law firm, its employees “have been in the wilderness” and that this descent into reduced circumstances has badly affected the welfare of their families, including children.
Mothusi’s trial was conducted over a protracted period of time and in his view, “this is titrated maliciously to the locking of the wheels of justice.” Personally, he says he went to considerable expense “through payment of legal fees and commensurate travel costs for travel from the station of operation, Francistown.” He believes that from the get-go, he was a “clear target” as “tabloid publication and attention was centred on plaintiff as opposed to the other co-accused. This was at the special instance of [DCEC’s] officials who had a parallel inquisition of theft charges simultaneously before the High Court, fatally denting credibility to enhance maliciousness.”
There was one very important document that the state could not confiscate ÔÇô Mothusi’s LLB certificate from the University of Botswana. However, having been struck off the roll, he couldn’t practice law, rendering such certificate useless. He was readmitted in November 2015 and his law firm has resumed operations in Gaborone. With the state not having returned his files and with clients having decamped to other law firms, Mothusi is starting from the proverbial square one.
