It started when Dube, a convicted thief doing extra-mural duty at Old Naledi forcefully entered Morwaagole’s house at about 3am and stole some items. When confronted by Morwaagole, he threatened to kill him. However, Morwaagole shot dead Dube and was charged with murder. He equates his subsequent tribulations as a walk in the valley of death mentioned in Psalm 23. “Before this incident, I had a mental picture of the valley of the shadow of death, but nothing could match the profundity of the meaning of this verse than what my family and I would go through over the next four years.
“Long before I was charged with murder, my family had started suffering. My eldest son, who was obviously the most traumatised an could not even go to the toilet alone. He had seen the dead man lying on the ground, and it was not a pretty sight for a seven-year old. We had to take him for counselling,”
Morwaagole told Monitor in Gaborone. In the days that followed, life for the Morwaagoles assumed a completely different meaning.
“At home there was this pervasive fear, the fear that it could happen again. While I knew I was not criminally responsible for the guy’s death, I could feel myself faltering inside, but I knew I had to be man enough for my wife and children. And thankfully, God was there for me, and gave me the strength that I needed,” said the father of two, who is a staunch born-again Christian.
The lanky and soft-spoken Morwaagole does not mention the trauma he experienced himself. When giving testimony, his wife Maria told the judge how her husband had broken down shortly after shooting his assailant. A police officer who gave evidence narrated how he had to take Morwaagole to hospital to be treated for shock.
The trauma visited on Morwaagole and his family should have dissipated in the year following the death of Dube. No person could have been less prepared for the murder charge that Morwaagole was slapped with in December 2002 – well over a year after the shooting.
“Shortly after the shooting, I was informed by the police that they would recommend a decline of prosecution. I believed then this that meant everything was fine and that my family and I could get back to our life. How wrong I was. You would understand how shocked I was when in December 2002, I was called to the police station and was told that I was being charged with murder. I could not believe it,” he said.
In January 2003, David Morwaagole was remanded in custody at Gaborone Maximum Security Prison for 30 hours.
“Those were my 30 hours of hell. I could write a book about my experience in a maximum prison cell during those two days.”
In fact Morwaagole plans to do just that in the not too distant future. He hopes to, among other things, highlight the squalid conditions of prisons in Botswana.
Morwaagole says no one should take life at face value.
“In life, take nothing for granted. You should always expect the unexpected. But through it all, have God as your fortress. As a Christian, I believe the devil wanted to use this issue as a weapon of fear – and fear takes away your peace, but God enabled us to turn this into a weapon of faith,” he said. Today, he says, his family is even closer together than before.
“I also have a new appreciation of life. The little things that we fail to appreciate in life, the love of friends and family, life itself and our mortality all begin to make a lot of sense when you are charged with murder in a country where convicts are sentenced to death.”
But one question remains unanswered for Morwaagole.
“I had already suffered enough, why did I have to be taken through all this,” he asks in rhetoric, and adds that he wonders how many people have been put or will ever undergo a similar experience.
While he has been hailed by many as a hero who helped rid society of a troublemaker, Morwaagole does not sees himself as such.
“People need to understand that we can never rejoice at the death of a fellow human being. However, there are situations that will call for that, such as when a man has to fight for his life and that of his family,” he said.
He said he will remain the unfortunate person who had to kill a thug to save his life and protect his family and property.
“Please let Batswana know that I appreciate the support that we got from them, especially the Christian community and the communities in Bokaa and Mochudi,” he said as he walked to his car, his two boys holding his hand.
