"In my own view, it is also important that we stop romanticising these wanton acts of murder. In this respect, the continued mislabelling of them as "passion killings" only serves to further mystify their nature. Clearly, these terrible acts are devoid of any passionate quality. They are rather outpourings of hatred and rage, which may have their roots in untreated depression and or misdirected feelings of personal inadequacy,"

Mogae said in November last year. Earlier, Reverend Jim MacDonald, a Francistown-based psychologist who is a regular letter writer in the press, had suggested "murder/suicides" as a more appropriate term.

"Why does the press continue to enable the general public to try and romanticise these murders by referring to them with a title that is more gentle and soft?" MacDonald wrote in one of his letters to the editor.

Either in deference to the president or because they really held the same view, a good number of people who commented on the issue publicly, began replacing the supposedly offensive term with "murder/suicides" or prefixed it with "the so-called".

This past week President Mogae did an about-turn. Addressing his party's youth league congress over the holidays, the President used the same term that he said he found offensive last year. Speaking about the challenges that the 18-40 age group faces, the president said the following: "As if this is not enough, passion killings grimly reap their share from this age group."

Explaining this apparent change of mind, the executive secretary of the Botswana Democratic Party, Dr Comma Serema said that Mogae was using vocabulary that his audience would easily understand.

"If he had used a different word, that may have caused confusion and the message that he was trying to send to the youth of the party may have been distorted. The President wanted to send a clear message to the youth and he spoke their language. It is difficult to change a term whose use has been generally accepted," Serema said.

A source who understands the dynamics of the BDP's factional rivalry action claimed that Mogae wrote his congress speech himself. His fear was reportedly that if he delegated anyone of his party lieutenants to do it, they may have been tempted to spike the speech with barely concealed 'factionalese' that would have had the effect of widening the rift within the party. Serema would not say exactly who wrote the speech but only stated that the process is a long one that involves the party office and the president himself. He would also not say exactly whether by using "passion killings", the President was personally now more accepting of the term. He only indicated that there has been a considerable lapse of time between November last year and now. Serema said that personally he had reservations about the term for the same reasons that Mogae held last year. "In its proper sense, 'passion' means strong feelings of love but people have come to accept a different meaning and it is going to be hard to change that," he said.