Mass Media ‘whistleblower’ sues DIS for P12m
Innocent Selatlhwa | Monday January 15, 2024 06:00
Ralotsia laments illegal surveillance and invasion of privacy, which includes search of residence without a warrant, copying of personal files, as well as bugging his phone. He also accuses the spy agency of attempts to harm and or conspiracy to assassinate him; infringement of dignity and reputation; attempts to incriminate and discredit;
He also accuses the DIS of infiltration of his marriage, instigating feud with intent to cause irreparable harm to the marriage which led to divorce and alienation of Ralotsia from his ex-wife and children. Ralotsia also submits in his affidavit that at the moment, he still finds himself being harassed by persons associated with the DIS or sent by the DIS or working for the DIS.
He alleges that whenever he attempts to speak to his children, the persons who have bugged his phone use his children's calls to track his movements. Due to the conduct of officers of the DIS, Ralotsia says he has suffered irreparable harm in that his dignity, which harm was intentionally caused by the DIS and its agents.
Through Modimo and Associates, he wants a payment of the sum of P12 million; interest on the above amount at 10%; an order directing the defendants to immediately cease and desist from any harassment of Ralotsia or illegal surveillance of his devices or home or vehicles, or any other property belonging to him; costs of suit; further and/or alternative relief. According to Ralotsia, the DIS either vicariously or directly has flagrantly flouted the Plaintiffs right to privacy by subjecting him to surveillance by way of infiltrating his virtual and physical space outside the ambit of the law. In this regard, Ralotsia claims he suffered harm amounting to P7 million.
He further submits that the right to his dignity and reputation have also been impinged upon by the conduct of the DIS in spreading and attempting to spread malicious and disparaging misinformation about him. In this regard, he seeks P1.5 million for defamation and contumelia. Ralotsia further submits that due to the conduct of the DIS or its agents in feeding his now ex-wife damning and awful mistruths, his marriage was irreparably damaged culminating in the divorce between him and his spouse as well as the separation from his minor children. In this regard he seeks damages for loss of consortium and comfort to the tune of P1.5 Million.
Still due to the conduct of the DIS and its agents, Ralotsia states that he has suffered tremendous loss of comfort in that he cannot freely walk about and enjoy a normal life due to the ever-existent threat of being harmed by the DIS or its agents. In this regard, Ralotsia seeks damages amounting to P1 million. He further submits that due to the continued harassment by the DIS continues to engrave an indelible psychological lesion on the Plaintiff and has made him to experience nightmare and symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. In this regard, Ralotsia wants P1 million.
How trouble started
As per court documents, around the winter of 2018, Ralotsia started to suspect that there could be some unauthorised bugging or surveillance of his mobile devices by an unknown intruder. His mobile devices would show unusual download/upload activity not initiated by him or by anyone authorised by him. “The said intrusion took place against the backdrop of a senior member of the Botswana Television management, Vusa Ziga, working in cahoots with a certain employee of the DIS, Mr X, laid a complaint with the DIS alleging that the Plaintiff might be a spy for some foreign parties. Mr X is a close acquaintance of Mr Ziga.
The Plaintiff proceeded to engage the services of MCS Security Solutions (Pty) Ltd in order to conduct a digital extraction and analysis of the data that would aid in locating the source of the unauthorised intrusion. The reports attached hereto respectively, are incontrovertible evidence that indeed the Plaintiff's mobile devices were unlawfully monitored from IP addresses associated with the First Defendant,” reads the court papers. Ralotsia and his ex-wife would then start receiving calls from certain phone numbers from a mysterious caller going by the name Dineo Phelesi. The latter was in constant Communication with Ralotsia's ex-wife and his ex-mother-in-law and even agreed to meet them in person. He submits in his affidavit that inquiries from the relevant departments revealed that the only Phelesi in the government databases at the material time was an elderly woman who was aged between 70 and 80 from the North East. The seemingly fictitious Phelesi's registered number was registered under a fictitious ID which did not show through the numbers whether the holder is male or female i.e. fifth number being a ‘1’ or a ‘2’. One of the cell phone numbers belonged to a deceased former Botswana Defence Force (BDF) military intelligence officer, Wilson Mamalelala who died in 1999.
The Phelesi call records were not complete and seemingly were getting deleted continuously to ensure that no one could trace the number. Phelesi also used another number which upon investigation, Ralotsia found belonged to one Idah Shirley Ramosomane of Molepolole. He met Ramosomane and verified that indeed the number belonged to her but appeared to have been cloned because there was no connection between Ramosomane and Phelesi. About October 8, 2018, at around 9am, the Plaintiff noticed that the Central Processing Unit (CPU), belonging to the Government of Botswana had gone missing from his office.
This was the CPU he used in his office. After doing the necessary checks with the IT office who denied any knowledge regarding the whereabouts of the device, Ralotsia lodged a complaint of theft common with the Botswana Police Service office at the Gaborone West Police Station on or about October 9, 2018. Around October 20, 2018, one Marcia Setlhoka who Ralotsia gathers used to be the Presidential make-up artist, sought some information from a certain Bame at Orange. Since Bame was not present on the day, a certain Refilwe managed to get into Bame's account and sourced some information which was apparently about Ralotsia and made a printout for Setlhoka. “Still on 20 October 2018, a person who was identified as Gofaone, an employee of Standard Chartered Bank at Game City branch, acting in concert with Marcia Setlhoka handed over printouts of Ralotsia's cell phone records to a journalist from a local newspaper close to entrance number 1 of Game City Mall. Marcia Setlhoka is an employee of a company owned by Mr X and his wife,” read the court papers. At the beginning of January 2019, Ralotsia established that the persons involved in an attempt at orchestrating some sinister operation against him were central to some tender corruption that was taking place at the Mass Media Complex. Some of the tender corruption that the Plaintiff had queried are as elucidated upon infra:
There was a make-up tender for about P4.5 million which Mag and Beauty, a company owned by Maggie Otsile had been holding for over a decade without due process being followed. Maggie Otsile's husband works for the DIS. There was also a company called Five AM.
The company had won a tender which was given with procedural impropriety to supply "fly away" equipment. The company was also shortlisted to supply a vehicle worth P600, 000 for over P5 million A company known as Ranville (Pty) Ltd was engaged to relocate a generator from one part of Mass Media Complex for P10 million pula when one generator could have been bought and installed for less than P1 million. A company called Focus Electrical was engaged to do emergency electrical maintenance for about P25 million. More than half of this amount was paid to the company but the company did not do anything even after being gifted such a huge sum. “The Plaintiff also managed to establish the reasons for the disappearance of his office CPU and that the CPU was stolen by one Mr Z, an employee of the DIS. Once some individuals within the tender corruption and some within the Mass Media Complex realised that their sordid acts had been uncovered by the Plaintiff, his ordeal went from bad to worse. The operatives and their friends and agents went all out to ensure the total destruction of the Plaintiff and destabilisation of his personal life,” the court papers read.
Another reason
Another reason advanced by Ralotsia for his victimisation is that sometime in 2019, he also discovered that one Mmuso Chawilani, a convicted criminal and a person that he had known for a while prior to this ordeal, was dating the daughter of DIS Director General, Peter Magosi. “Chawilani is a known individual within Botswana's law enforcement agencies including the DIS which at one point held onto some of his vehicles for drug related offences. The Plaintiff has also become aware of the said Chawilani's drug dealing operations both domestically and in Swaziland. Furthermore, the Plaintiff became privy to the 2021 arrest of Chawilani in South Africa for trafficking drugs. Chawilani's drug related cases have all been withdrawn mysteriously as he continues to operate his drug deals without any fear. Since the Plaintiff's cover was blown, Chawilani and his girlfriend disappeared from Block 8 where they used to stay prior to the knowledge that the Plaintiff was on them,” Ralotsia submits. According to the documents, by March 2019, the Plaintiff's marriage had reached such a state of disintegration that there was no hope of salvaging it, all due to the information that the agents of the DIS were feeding to Ralotsia's wife. The agents are said to have supplied Ralotsia's wife with his call history, location and any other information that they wished her to know about him or whatever information that they could use to destroy the marriage between the two. Some of these agents were allegedly paid by Ralotsia's ex-wife. On February 14, 2020, Ralotsia met with Magosi where he narrated his ordeal including allegations of corruption against Ziga and some employees of the DIS.
“The bulk of the details are held in the files of the Directorate on Corruption and Economic Crime (DCEC). Mr Magosi promised the Plaintiff that he would assist him and would meet the Plaintiff the following week. The Plaintiff alleges that it turned out that Magosi is more involved in the ordeal the Plaintiff had been experiencing than initially thought,” reads court papers.