Fast path to death for white mischief

By ALEX DUVAL SMITH

GABORONE - A South African white woman found guilty of a love-triangle murder in Botswana was hanged at the weekend, the former British protectorate confirmed yesterday.

Even though more than 30 people have been executed since Botswana became independent in 1966, the case of Mariette Bosch, aged 50, attracted wide media attention because she was the first white person to go to the gallows.

The crime of which she was found guilty, killing her best friend in order to marry her husband, was dubbed the "White Mischief of Botswana," after the film about a fatal love-triangle in colonial Kenya in the 1940s.

At Bosch's unsuccessful appeal in February, she was defended by prominent British barrister Desmond de Silva.

Her hanging, which her husband was not told about until Monday, came as a surprise to many in the legal profession. There was speculation that she had been rushed to the gallows because the Botswana authorities were irritated by the high-profile involvement of British and Commonwealth legal figures.

Bosch's former lawyer, Edward Fashlole-Luke, said he was amazed at the speed of the execution.

"Other guys have been on death row for years after their appeals. Bosch was there for only two months."

Yesterday, Bosch's husband, Tienie Wolmarans, said the South African Government had failed his wife by not lobbying Botswana President Festus Mogae for clemency.

A South African consular official in the capital, Gaborone, said his embassy had not been informed of the execution at the city's Central Maximum Prison.

Wolmarans said: "I was going to take her some things on Friday. It was a scheduled visit.

"When I got to the prison I was told I and the children could not see her because there was an inspection on. Now I know they were lying."

He said the prison authorities telephoned him on Sunday and asked him to be at the prison on Monday. That was when he was told his wife had been executed and was handed a note from her.

Wolmarans said the note had been written on Saturday after the authorities read Bosch her death warrant.

"She said they would not allow her to see me or the children. They kept the whole thing a secret from us.

"When our attorney contacted the office of the President and the prison authorities, they did not tell him the warrant had been signed and the execution scheduled."

Bosch was convicted last year of the June 1996 murder of Maria "Ria" Wolmarans. She had moved to Phakalane, a suburb of Gaborone, five years earlier and become close to Ria, with whom she attended classes in painting porcelain dolls.

But in 1995, Bosch's husband, Justin, was killed in a car crash and she began an affair with Ria's husband, Tienie.

Even though Wolmarans apparently promised to divorce his wife, Bosch could not wait. On June 25, 1996, she borrowed a 9mm pistol from a friend in South Africa and shot Ria twice in the head.

Bosch married Wolmarans 14 months later but was reported to police by her sister-in-law.

At her appeal in February, Bosch claimed that she had been framed by a former boss who killed Ria Wolmarans to stop her exposing theft and fraud in the company they worked for. But a panel of Commonwealth judges dismissed the appeal, saying the evidence against her was overwhelming.

Bosch became the first woman to hang in Botswana since 1971. Her execution was the first in three years.

One of the defence lawyers said the Botswana authorities were annoyed by the way the case was being portrayed as a hangover from the days when British justice was the rule of law.

At the very last moment the two British judges, Sir John Blofeld, a High Court judge, and Lord Weir, a Scottish law lord, who had been flown out to hear the appeal, were asked to stand down.

Even though the death penalty has been retained by many countries in the region - except South Africa, which abolished it at the end of apartheid rule - it is rarely used.

- INDEPENDENT