Moseki�s little contribution to humanity
Lebogang Mosikare | Friday August 18, 2017 16:03
Moseki has won six asylum seekers cases that the latter instituted against the state. Various Justices of the High Court here heard the cases.
As a human rights lawyer by training, Moseki would like the law to apply to citizens of Botswana and foreigners in equal measure.
Rightly or wrongly, some people in the society are of the opinion that some lawyers put the love of money to represent their clients before other considerations.
However, the argument that lawyers are motivated by the sheer love for money to represent clients does not hold water because some lawyers represent indigent clients on a pro bono basis (without charging them for the public good).
Moseki is a good example. He said he is not in the legal industry for money, but to see to it that the Constitution of the country is respected and dispensed by various legal authorities tasked with dispensing the law to the letter and spirit of the Constitution.
He said: “I was simply motivated by the course of justice to represent the asylum seekers after I enquired about their plight during my many visits to the Francistown Centre for Illegal Immigrants (FCII) to consult with some of my clients there.”
Moseki said his undergraduate training in law in Europe involved a component of human rights, which played a part in influencing his decision to take the plight of the asylum seekers, both rejected and awaiting asylum status, to court.
“My passion for civil liberties were further reinforced when I studied for my Master's Degree in Law at the University of Cape Town. At graduate level, I wholly specialised in human rights law, especially the law relating to the rights of children.
My dissertation was about the role of Non-Governmental Organisations in International Human Rights Law. After many years of my many visits to the FCII, I became eager to know what sort of people were detained there,” he said.
In the process, Moseki said, he discovered that the government was recklessly trampling on the civil liberties of the asylum seekers with reckless abandon.
“Although the asylum seekers were not beaten, their indefinite detention by their custodians called for justice since it was illegal… It transpired when I was interviewing some refugees who were detained there that a lot of injustice was being done to them hence I ended up representing many of them,” he said reiterating that money at no point motivated him to represent the foreigners.
“I decided that the asylum seekers were vulnerable people who were abused and generally didn’t know about the laws of this republic.
I was touched by the sight of children who were in detention with their parents and I wanted to find out what was going on. The first people that I consulted at the centre were four mothers who were seeking refugee status. They were interviewed as a group and as a result their applications to be given the status were rejected,” said Moseki.
Moseki added that they were rejected for the simple reason that they did not know what the authorities were looking for when they were questioned.
“Others soon approached me to represent them after I decided to represent those women.
The point is that in my reading of the law, I discovered that a person cannot be detained indefinitely even if they were foreigners without a court order.
Secondly, I demanded to be given a warrant holding my clients but up to now, I discovered that my clients were detained without any warrant.
What this means is that their detention was unlawful as the courts had pronounced as can be attested by various judgments of the High Court after I took the matters to the High Court,” said Moseki.
In fact, Moseki said, the asylum seekers’ detentions were contrary to the very section that their jailers were using to detain them.
Moseki said he was persuaded to represent the asylum seekers because to him it does not matter where someone comes from but because they are fellow human beings crying for justice, he decided to help them.
“With the little knowledge that I am privileged to have acquired at law school, I thought that I should serve humanity. In fact, during my interactions with those people, it transpired that any human being can be so good,” he noted.
Moseki is of the view that Botswana has dismally disappointed in her handling of the asylum seekers issue.
“Botswana has disappointed a lot of people within and outside the country about the issue of these asylum seekers. I can tell you that if I did not have the guts, I would have surrendered while representing those people. I received no money while doing those cases.
I stood my ground and will continue to do so in future. I don’t think anybody can stand in my path and tell me to reconsider my position to stand for the rights of asylum seekers because for me this is my contribution to humanity,” said Moseki.
Moseki’s advice to the government is that Gaborone should redeem herself from what happened considering that we live in a volatile continent.
“We must recognise that the instability obtaining in some African countries means that we must be prepared to abide by our international obligations to the instruments we signed and or ratified.
“We cannot just ratify instruments and protocols and then pretend that we have not done so when reality comes knocking.
We need to cleanse ourselves because Botswana is known as a paragon of virtue in Africa. We need to maintain our positive status and , not deliberately tarnish our image,” Moseki said.
He said anyone in government knows that the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has since the times of Patrice Lumumba been engulfed in serious conflicts.
“This means that some parts of the DRC are still up to today under the control of some militias. Therefore, it is against the spirit of humanity for any country to want to return people from the DRC back to their country where it is common to find some war lords holding aloft pieces of human remains as trophies,” said Moseki.
He urged the government that it was not too late for them to take a different approach when dealing with refugees and asylum seekers.