It is the latter sentiment that was more pronounced, underlining the fact that mainstream Botswana remains in support of capital punishment. In between very few reserved their opinion because the death penalty naturally stokes a whole gamut of emotions. As one of those feeling contentment I had been following the long drawn out appeals process by the condemned man until all domestic avenues for reprieve were exhausted. An irony here is the desperate measures to which the murderer went to avert the terrible moment of reckoning when he never afforded the victim any compassion.
Alongside reports of the execution I was tracking a court case in a neighbouring country where a man shot and killed in front of school pupils the mother of his girlfriend. Subsequently it was discovered that four days earlier he had killed the girlfriend. In less than a week the man had for reasons known to him, but which can never be justifiable, deliberately set out to snuff out the lives of a mother and daughter.
