The ‘fretting’ Pinny
Staff Writer | Monday March 3, 2025 10:17
It was the third time Morupisi was hauled to the State Prison with the initial period being when he served a few hours before his legal team applied for his freedom. He had departed the courtroom bound on handcuffs and leg irons in full view of Pinny and family members. It was painful to his family albeit, it was short-lived and offered the requisite relief to the worried family members. This experience was a bad omen, as Morupisi (Carter) would find himself confronted by the hostile and deplorable conditions at the State prisons that left him desperate for help.
In the second occasion, Morupisi lost his liberty for a period of about one month before the High Court reverted him to the previous suspended sentence (without the custodial sentence of seven years imposed on him by the Court of Appeal (CoA).)
Pinny is not only Carter’s wife, but also a friend and a political ally at the Botswana Patriotic Front (BPF) where the husband is also the party chairperson, rendering the latter, the party’s think tank.
When Carter failed nomination as a parliamentary candidate for the 2024 General Election because of his record as a criminal convict, Pinny threw her name into the hat and was cleared by the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) as a parliamentary candidate for Tswapong North. She would later lose the polls. She may have lost the election, but the name of the Morupisis appeared on the IEC voters roll as a parliamentary candidate.
When Carter was ordered to go to prison for the third time last Friday, it was indeed a sad moment especially after the convicted former PSP had decried the hostile and filthy state of the State prison in a letter he recently penned to the Minister of Justice and Correctional Services, Nelson Ramaotwana and the Commissioner of Prisons, Anthony Mokento.
Last Friday, watching Pinny temporarily keeping a distance when her husband fielded questions from a horde of journalists, trying to maintain her cool, she was betrayed by her demeanour. Clad in a green dress and a woolen greyish jersey, she somewhat wore a permanent smile on her face that seemingly struggled to bury frustration written all over her face. She however, comes across as a strong woman, as she never broke into tears as time ran out for her husband who was about to be whisked away to the State prisons. But, for certain, she was a woman in agony.
The bespectacled Carter wore a maroon T-shirt and a navy jacket as he fielded questions from the inquisitive journalists that raided him before he was whisked to his place of abode for the next seven years by an escort team to the State Prison at Village location. Carter's fight to quash his conviction and sentence has suffered a blow as he has started serving his sentence in earnest.
It was touching when one of his daughters stepped closer to him and whispered something to his ear and he simply nodded as a gesture that he got the message. Pinny watched this development with keen interest. And it was apparent; she kept strong in the face of adversity. Time was fast ticking away.
There was another sister (Carter’s) who had come to give the brother, father, uncle and a senior family man some support during that tough hour. The sister was kitted in a navy jacket and a complementing traditional dress commonly known as a khiba or German print bearing the national emblem. She could not step away from Carter whilst he entertained media practitioners. Seven years to her, was going to be too much, she seemed to be saying. There were other relatives, friends and BPF diehards who had come to give Carter moral support.
His attorney of record, Dr Obonye Jonas got closer to Morupisi and whispered something into his ear as well, before he let him free. Already Morupisi’s movement seemed so restricted as he could not move many steps away from the place where he entertained the journos. Even questions from journalists seemed to agitate him as at some stage he just blasted the scribes: “ Go and ask those people!” with a semblance of anger. That was just before he was whisked away.
He had now become the cynosure of all eyes as journalists tormented him with inquiries. The media inquiries seemed to harden his feelings as he wore a serious demeanour throughout the engagement.
In his prompt responses, Carter talked about the situation at the Village State Prison, which he said, was inhabitable. “The food is not right, hygiene is not right and everything is just spilling over. There is also a lot of bullying from the people inside. There is also drug abuse and I was abused verbally,” he told journalists.
He was concerned that fellow prisoners do a lot of drugs like marijuana (motokwane), for which he blamed prison warders, and some members of the intelligence community to be behind the drug cartels at the State Prisons.
“It’s their business. Those things are not prisons, they are commercial drug centres. Remember it’s (Prisons) enclosed with no access by the public but entrance is limited to the officers/intelligence,” he said. He further explained that he has since written a complaint letter about the state of prisons to Minister Ramaotwana and the Commissioner Prisons.
Carter’s troubles with the law commenced in November 2022 when a Gaborone High Court convicted him on three counts of corruption and money laundering. He was slapped with a suspended sentence and paid P130, 000 in fines.
Perhaps, as an endeavour to set himself from the burden of a conviction, Carter appealed the decision of a court a quo to the Court of Appeal, where hell would break loose ahead of the 2024 General Election. Carter wanted to clearer off the albatross of a conviction that denied him an opportunity to contest the polls as a parliamentary candidate. The IEC denied him a chance to contest.
Unfortunately for him, the CoA would later impose a custodial seven-year custodial sentence. He was slapped with 18 months imprisonment for count one, five years for count two and seven years for count three to be served concurrently.
Now, after all long legal arguments, the CoA re-imposed its decision, which was overturned by the High Court.