Nearly nine years after the death of nine-year-old Metlha Sibanda, former Civil Aviation Authority of Botswana aircraft marshal Motlatsi Khoto is set to challenge his murder conviction and death sentence before the Court of Appeal on October 2, 2026. Khoto was convicted and sentenced to death by the Francistown High Court in connection with Metlha’s death. The case began in January 2018, when the child, who was the daughter of Khoto’s former girlfriend, Unami Sibanda,...

The charge sheet reads like a blueprint for looting a development agency – three loan applications, four shell-like companies, roughly 5.13 million pula, and a trail of money that, prosecutors say, never went where it was supposed to go.

The High Court of Botswana has brought a close to the protracted legal battle between Choppies co-owners Ottapathu Ramachandran, Ismail Farouk, and PricewaterhouseCoopers (Botswana), along with former lead auditor Binedel Rudi.  On September 1, 2026, Justice Tapiwa Kganyago formalized a draft consent order that ended the proceedings. The order confirms that Ramachandran and Farouk have withdrawn their claims against PwC and Rudi, effectively concluding the case. Regarding legal costs, the parties agreed to generally bear...

Botswana’s cattle population has taken a notable hit over the past decade, shrinking by 6.1 percent according to the latest Agricultural Census released for 2025. The count stood at 1,638,543 cattle, down from 1,744,166 in 2015.

They have shared a roof, a life, a future – but not a signature on a registry. And in the eyes of Botswana’s newest employment law, that omission could cost them dearly when a family crisis hits.

QUOTE – Two narratives – one of diplomatic grace, the other of judicial exoneration – collide over a Botswana woman’s release from a Bangladeshi death cell. The truth matters more than either side seems willing to admit. By the time Lesedi Molapisi walked out of a Bangladeshi prison after more than four years on death row, the story of how she got there had already been told a dozen different ways.

Prominent businessman Bakang Seretse has called for the removal of two senior judges from a Court of Appeal case involving more than P50 million in disputed interest. On August 18, 2026, Seretse, alongside Khulaco Proprietary Limited and M&B Properties, filed an urgent application requesting that Court of Appeal Judge President Tebogo Tau and Justice of Appeal Isaac Lesetedi recuse themselves from hearing the pending appeal. The applicants contend that Tau and Lesetedi should be disqualified...

The Court of Appeal has ordered the Ngwato Land Board to pay a Palapye farmer the outstanding sum of P655,407.29 for the expropriation of his farm, putting an end to a long-running legal dispute over land taken for the Morupule Coal Mine expansion. The unanimous judgment, delivered by Justice of Appeal Michael Leburu alongside Justices Leatile Dambe and Tshepho Motswagole, marks a significant win for ordinary citizens facing state-backed land acquisitions. The court emphasized that...

For three years, the body of Pitseng Gaoberekwe lay in a mortuary refrigerator, caught between the ancestral claims of his family and the legal objections of the state. When he was finally laid to rest last December on the red scrubland of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, it was not merely a burial – it was, the government now acknowledges, a turning point. In its first formal acknowledgment of the consequences of that decision, Botswana’s...

For more than a decade, the FINITE Magazine Women Appreciation Awards has handed out trophies to women across Lesotho, celebrating their contributions to business, community and profession. But Ntsepeng Tsita Tikiso, the awards’ founding architect, has grown impatient with the optics of celebration alone. “That criticism is valid when an awards programme begins and ends with presenting trophies,” she said flatly. “We have deliberately developed FWAA into a broader women’s economic empowerment platform.” Her point...