Over the weekend President Festus Mogae’s daughter, Chedza, attracted the attention of revellers in Gaborone West when she stabbed a man with a knife after a brawl at a night-club in the early mornings of Sunday. Chedza who seemed to be infuriated by the man slapped him in front of police officers inside the night club. Possibly aware that she is not just an ordinary mortal, the police were reluctant to restrain her. She accused the man of having bitten her fingers.
After the police succeeded in taking the two to the station, Chezda who was boiling in anger or enjoying the spectacle kept on shouting and at one point, one police officer had to call her to order.
“Do you want us just to listen to you alone,” he admonished her.
A startled police officer was heard asking a colleague if Chedza was really the President’s daughter.
He must have been told that indeed she was the President’s daughter as she was heard muttering: “Then why does she behave in this manner”.
Another police officer who was drawn to the scene said if he was handling her case, he could have locked her up. “I would rather suffer the consequences,” he said.
At the police station, it emerged that Chedza went berserk after a man allegedly touched her female friend. The President’s daughter later complained to the police that the man had indecently handled her friend. Pandemonium broke lose at the nightclub’s fast food outlet where Chedza was with her friend. When they were allegedly mobbed by a group of people,she took out a knife and stabbed one man on the thigh.
Chedza injured a security guard who was trying to wrestle the knife from her. She later apologised to the security guard at the police station and gave him P20 “to go to the hospital”.
Earlier outside the nightclub, Chedza was also engaged in an altercation with a man on account of his ethnicity - apparently the man is a Mosarwa. She shouted at the man that he was a Mosarwa.
“When she was shouting at me, I thought she was joking. In any case, I did not mind because I am proud of being a Mosarwa. But then I saw that she wanted to poke my eyes and that’s when I bit her finger,” said the unnamed man.
But at the police station, Chedza told the police that the man was referring to her as an ‘American’. “I asked him how he would feel if I called him a Mokgalagadi or a Mosarwa,” she said.
The man who was stabbed by Chedza, Ontibile Boang has laid charges against her. He said he would proceed with the charges against Chedza, adding that he was not taking the matter lightly. He said she tried to apologise to him but he was not prepared to listen to her because she was arrogant. “She told me that she could pay for my medical expenses.”
Boang said he was surprised because the police also wanted to charge him when he is the one who reported the case. The police took a statement from him who said he was assaulted by the employees of the nightclub.
A police officer said Mogae and Boang would be charged with affray. Police spokesman, Solomon Mantswe confirmed that a case was being investigated against the President’s daughter.
Mogae spent hours at the station as the police attended her case. When she came back from the police station, she told her friends that: “I have not stabbed him hard”. She was also worried that her parents would not be impressed to hear that she had stabbed somebody. It was an exceptionally busy morning for the police and children of prominent people at the nighclub .
In another unrelated incident, Chaha Skelemani, the son of the Minister of Presidential Affairs and Public Administration, Phandu Skelemani, was also beaten up at the same nightclub.
The young Skelemani invited trouble for himself when he jokingly asked another man “why do you look so depressed”. The man then brutally head butted him until security guards came to his rescue. The junior Skelemani was later summoned to the police office. However, he did not lay any charges.
