Kgosi Mosadi Seboko of Balete is a woman of impeccable integrity.
She was not meant to become a paramount leader of her tribe.
She took it out of duty after the death of her younger brother, Kgosi Seboko II.
I remember covering her coronation in 2002.
Before that we had an interview with her wherein she told us that she does not expect any of her children to want to succeed her as Kgosi of Balete.
“Their father has not been Kgosi of this tribe. My father was,” she said at the time.
When she opened her mouth at a kgotla meeting she addressed this week she literally dragged president Mokgweetsi Masisi on red hot coal.
Bungled together with president Masisi is judiciary.
Long before she dropped the bombshell, the judiciary was already in a deep hole.
It is difficult to see how the judiciary will recover – especially without drastic changes, including the resignation of the Chief Justice.
The temptation for the government and the ruling will be to reach to their base instincts and try to discredit Kgosi Mosadi.
That much was clear in a press release from Office of the President and also in another one from attorney Basimane Bogopa – who it is not as yet clear in what capacity he attended a meeting in Ramotswa.
That will not stick.
Kgosi Mosadi quite clearly feels badly treated and badly betrayed by government.
And she is visibly hurt, even annoyed that her area Member of Parliament is so brazenly on the side of government against his own people.
Kgosi Mosadi talks about a meeting she had with the president where some bizarre things were discussed. For Kgosi Mosadi it was a difficult conversation. For her nothing seemed to make sense.
That is the world we live in today.
For some time now, this meeting between Kgosi Mosadi and the president has been known across several media houses.
It was spoken in hushed tones chiefly because Kgosi Mosadi had explicitly turned down requests by journalists for interviews on the subject.
She would only talk about it at her time of choosing, she had said.
And Wednesday was that time.
The worry for everyone now is what the implications will be for the judiciary – already on its knees following a separate round of equally damning allegations made recently by a High Court Judge against the Chief Justice.
As in many other matters, the whole mess can very easily be traced to the ongoing fight between president Mokgweetsi and his predecessor Ian Khama.
Khama has demonstrated a litigious flare and has widely used the judiciary to settle his differences with Botswana government.
For its part, Botswana government has demonstrated an unusual desire to beat Khama at every turn, especially at the highest court on the land – where it matters most.
Consequently a lot of pressure has been put on the judiciary.
It was only a matter of time before the institution started to break at the seams.
The destabilization caused by these events will not be limited to Ian Khama.
Public anxiety about the state of the judiciary is palpable.
Much anxiety stems from the fact that there might be more that is not known.
This is because once lost, it is impossible to restore the integrity and independence of the judiciary.
When the president of Botswana goes abroad to seek investors to come and put their money in Botswana, the first they check is the independence of the judiciary.
Only an independent judiciary can guarantee private property rights.
Only an independent judiciary can guarantee the rule of law.
Short of that everything else becomes tokenism. Sloganeering is more like it.
Judicial fealty to the executive has now reached unprecedented levels.
Never before have so many judges shown such a desire to coordinate with those in government.
And several lawyers I have talked to say judgements from there have been growing increasingly bizarre.
The judiciary is now broken.
It has big cracks on it. Using semantics to pamper on it all will not do much.
Tampering with the judiciary is the same as tampering with due process.
Whether it is done by a judge, a cabinet minister or a State President the effect is the same.
It defeats the ends of justice.
More tragic is the fact that there now seems to be a growing number of judges complicit in the whole enterprise.
All eyes are on the president.
He has to do something.
His rule of law mantra is now in tatters.
More and more it now sounds like fiction.
Attacking Kgosi Mosadi might be tempting.
But is not the solution. She is only a messenger, fighting to preserve a legacy created by her grandfather, which legacy now seems ever more likely to go extinct under her reign.
This is causing her pain and sleepless nights.
And it shows.
