IN the labyrinthine halls of Botswana’s government, Carter Morupisi once strode with imperious confidence, his tailored suits and polished shoes a testament to a life of unquestioned power. The former Permanent Secretary to the President was a man who had believed himself untouchable, a master of the bureaucratic universe who could weave through corruption’s shadowy corridors with impunity.
But on that fateful day in Gaborone, the towering edifice of his hubris came crashing down with the thunderous pronouncement of the Court of Appeal. Three judges – Justices T Tau, LS Walia, and B E Nkabinde – delivered a judgment that would transform Morupisi’s calculated gamble into a spectacular downfall.
What had begun as a calculated attempt to clear his name and potentially resurrect his political aspirations had metamorphosed into a legal nightmare. Morupisi, who had initially received a suspended sentence, had foolishly appealed, believing he could charm the court with tales of his advanced age and lost reputation. Instead, he had opened a Pandora’s box of judicial scrutiny.
The charges were stark and damning: corruption involving a luxurious Toyota Land Cruiser and a staggering P500 million contract between the Botswana Public Officers Pension Fund and Capital Management Botswana. What was meant to be a strategic legal manoeuvre had become a catastrophic miscalculation.
“No redeeming features whatsoever,” the judges declared, their words slicing through Morupisi’s desperate narrative like a surgical blade. Where he had hoped for mercy, he found instead a seven-year prison sentence – each year a monument to his betrayal of public trust. The only mercy the judges showed to him was that they did not hand him the maximum sentence as prescribed by the law.
The courtroom was a theatre of judicial reckoning. Morupisi, once the most powerful civil servant in Botswana, now sat diminished, his expensive suit suddenly looking like a costume of a fallen actor. The very system he had manipulated for years had turned upon him with a cold, precise vengeance.
As he was led away, the irony was not lost on those present. His attempt to clear his name before the 2024 General Election had not only destroyed his political aspirations but sealed his fate in a prison cell. The vehicle he had corruptly acquired, now forfeited to the state and displayed outside the court during the trial, was a mere symbol of his comprehensive downfall.
And lurking in the shadows of this drama was his alleged corruptor Tim Marsland – a South African businessman currently fighting extradition, knowing that Morupisi’s conviction might well be the first domino in a cascading investigation that could lead straight to his own cell.
The corridors of power in Botswana would whisper about Carter Morupisi for years to come – a cautionary tale of how corruption, no matter how cleverly disguised, eventually finds its day of reckoning.
