A lost story of justice upheld and a gruesome killing

The rest of us would have stayed put to start work on income tax returns, watch TV or perhaps like me, read a book – in this instance, Jonathan Laverick’s recently published 224 page, ‘The Kalahari Killings’ which is on sale at Exclusive, Gaborone. Given its sub-title, ‘The True Story of a War Time Double Murder in Botswana. 1943’, I was not going to pass up the opportunity to discover who was  murdered, who did the murdering, why they were murdered and what connection there was with the 2nd World War?

It quickly turned out that those who were killed were two British Royal Air Force fliers, Walter Adamson and Gordon Edwards and those who were charged with their killing and tried in Lobatse were eight Basarwa, three men and five women, four being still in their teens.  There was, however, a degree of confusion about motive – the supposition that they had killed those two airmen in order to cover up their own illegal hunting of giraffes was far more likely to attract attention than divert it.