About eight weeks ago, this paper carried an impressive article about the killing of Rene Less in the Pantamatenga area in 1975. Rene Less, a citizen of Belgium was killed for the murder of a Botswana Police Mobil Unit sergeant and also for wounding a police constable. The story was written by Richard Moleofe, the Military Veteran. I had it in my list of story ideas. So Richard Moleofe scooped me.
However, not completely beaten. I still have a way of running it because my style will completely differ from his and I will present additional or detailed facts. To begin with, the sergeant who was killed was called Felix Kgari not Phillip as reported in that story. I have no doubt about that. He was a distant relative of mine. The western corner of my grand parents’ homestead is just 100 metres away from that of his parents’ eastern corner. He was older than us but we played together. He used to send us out to the top of the nearby hills to harvest marekhu. We had Tswanalised his first name by calling him Fila. He was a member of Mochudi Rovers Football Club and so was I.
The last time I saw him was in 1970 in Francistown. At that time, I was a Form II student at Molefi Secondary School. I had been released from school activities by the headmaster David Maine to join the South Central Zonal Soccer team for the inter-zonal competitions. The games were held at the PMU grounds. That is where I last saw Felix Kgari. He was generous to our team during the games. He bought the team oranges at half-time and at the end of each game. He also provided water. For me, he extended the service to include bathing at his house every morning and evening. When the South Central team lifted the cup, he was overjoyed. He celebrated with the team carrying me shoulder high. I had scored a fantastic opener in the final game.
Moleofe’s article quotes the 1975 annual report of the Commissioner of Police as saying that, “in October near Pandamatenga a PMU patrol was investigating the activities of a Belgian national when he opened fire without warning, killing a sergeant and wounding a constable. An automatic sub-machine gun was used. After an extensive air and land search over a wide area of remote country-wide he was traced to Nxai Pan area, and killed during the ensuing engagement.” Moleofe explains in his story that the police commissioner’s report is not detailed and therefore he had to rely on information provided to him by eyewitnesses. I attended the sergeant’s funeral in Mochudi and therefore, I am better place to provide the reader additional information. I was a cub reporter for the Daily News during that time. However, a more senior reporter was assigned from Gaborone to cover that funeral. Nevertheless, I reported it on Radio Botswana’s Tatediso ya Dikgang evening programme.
The Commissioner of Police, Simon Herschefld spoke at that funeral as well as the Minister of Home Affairs, Bakwena Kgari who described the deceased as a “promising young man”. Simon Heschfeld said then that their intention was not to kill Rene Less. They had planned to capture him so that he could reveal to them his actions. After killing Felix Kgari and wounding Constable Ephraim Mokokwe, Rene Less stole their vehicle and drover it for a distance of 240 kilometres from the crime scene towards Maun. He abandoned the vehicle and walked a distance of about 16 kilometres along the Makalamabedi cordon fence. The airborne search team spotted him and the vehicle which was parked in the bush and covered with tree branches to make it difficult for people to see it. The search team alerted the ground one that they had spotted the vehicle and the fugitive was traveling to the direction of it.
Indeed Rene Less returned to the vehicle at night where the police ambushed him. He was carrying on two of his shoulders a rifle and a sub-machine gun that he had taken from the police officers he had shot when he arrived at the vehicle. In addition to that, he was carrying his own sub-machine gun which was the third fire arm in his possession. It was held in a position ready to shoot. A Daily News story of November 4th, 1975 states, “The police challenged him and after satisfying themselves that he was still dangerous and had no intention of surrendering they opened fire and killed him”. In military terms, they say shoot before the enemy shoots. This may mean that if you don’t shoot first, you may never have the chance of ever shooting. Simply put, you may be dead. The Daily News story continues,” the police then discovered that he had 100 rounds of ammunition and that both the rifle and the sub-machine guns were fully loaded. His own sub-machine gun was also loaded with 20 rounds of ammunition and was cocked ready to fire.” It seemed Rene Less did not carry a diary in his belongings. Or if he had one, he did not make entry in it showing his motive.
Was Rene Less a lone gun man or was there an accomplice somewhere? To date no answer has been provided to this question. The little that is known of him is that he had been employed by an American company contracted for the construction of the Kanzungula Road to gravel standard as its paymaster. The only document in his possession which could shed light was his travel documents. Ellias Kgari and Roney Molefi of Mochudi were stationed in Maun as police officers at that time. Rodney Molefi joined the search team. He recalls that General Mompati Merafhe was in the aerial search team. He was the deputy commissioner of police. That was before the establishment of the Botswana Defence Force (BDF).
The Police Mobil Unit was the country’s para-military force. Sergeant Felix Kgari was 29 when he was killed on the 29th day of the month. Though a paramilitary force, the PMU had to content with a very strong and well armed military force in Rhodesia. At the time of Sergeant Felix Kgari’s killing, his Francistown station had long been dealing with the Rhodesian forces. There had been several incursions into Botswana by the Rhodesians. ON 11th October shells were fired towards a PMU camp near Kazungula. Seventy shots were fired from automatic rifles and three flares from a pistol during the attack. The shots were fired from the Rhodesian direction. A patrol was sent out to search the surroundings but found nothing.
Again on 16th October 1975 PMU returned fire after they had been fired at in Kazungula. Still during the month of October, in 1975, 25 Rhodesian soldiers shot at Matsiloje. The shooting lasted 30 minutes. Six shots hit the village clinic, 12 hit the toilet and 32 hit a dairy facility. The PMU arrived when the rebel Rhodesian forces had left the area. The PMU was not called an army, but it carried out the activities of an army in defence of the country. Anything else is semantic. Felix Kgari was a soldier. He died in action. He is the first Botswana “soldier” to die at the hands of an enemy. His blood is in the Pantamatenga area while his remains are at the Mosanta Graveyard in Mochudi.
Wouldn’t it have been proper for the government to have erected a land mark of some sort at the spot where he was killed just to remember him. Having something which reads, “This is where Sergeant Felix Kgari was killed by a terrorist called Rene Less”. Alternatively, the government can honour him by naming one of BDF camps in Francistown especially the one the defence force inherited from PMU after Felix Kgari. At the level of sergeant, he was still too junior but he became the first victim of a terrorist’s bullet. Even naming a street in Francistown after him will be something. Every year on June 16, South Africans call out the name Hector Petersen so loud as if he would answer. They have erected a monument for him. They did that not because he was somebody at the top of a prestige hierarchy but because he was the first to died at the enemy’s bullet during the 1976 Soweto uprising. The Zimbabweans have called their great hospital in central Harare Samuel Parirwanyatwa Hospital.
It was named after the first Black Zimbabwean to qualify as a medical doctor. When I was studying mass communication at the Institute of Mass Communication in Harare, the name Dr Samuel Pariranyatwa was at the tip of one of our lecturer’s lips during discussions on the liberation of Zimbabwe. He and other lecturers envied him. It was clear that the Black doctor was and still is the pride of Zimbabwe. The intensity of Rhodesia’s incursion into Botswana started way back in 1975 with several kidnappings of Zimbabwean refugees staying Francistown. There were occasions when the Rhodesian forces kidnapped wrong targets such as what happened on 25th March that year. This account of events, can be found in the in the book, “Selous Scouts War” by Peter Stiff.
