NAIROBI – The Botswana government apologizes again to Bridgette Motsepe, the businesswoman and South African ambassador accused of involvement in a money laundering and conspiracy scandal against Gaborone in 2019. The message is identical to the one already issued by the Botswana government in 2025, when the government retracted and officially apologized to Motsepe for the “false and unscrupulous” allegations against her.
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Now it has decided to reiterate the concept from an unusual platform: a page of the Financial Times, occupied by a paid advertisement where the entire national leadership and leader Duma Boka reiterate the request for forgiveness and assure that “forgeries of this kind will never happen again.”
The legal saga and the accusations against Motsepe
Motsepe, 66, is a mining sector manager and ambassador for economic development to the Pan-African Parliament, recognized as the first black female entrepreneur to break into the mining industry after the end of apartheid. Her influence is accompanied and supported by family ties, in a web of economic and political relationships that permeate the establishment of one of the most structured economies on the Continent. Her brother is Patrice Motsepe, a billionaire in the extractive industry and president of the Confederation of African Football since 2021. Her sister is Tshepo Motsepe, a businesswoman, physician, and wife of South African President Cyril Ramaphosa. Her husband is Jeff Radebe, a politician with five ministerial experiences from the 1990s to the last Ministry of Energy between 2018 and 2019.
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Motsepe came under the spotlight of the Botswana government in 2019 with a web of accusations against her: involvement in a money laundering scheme of about 10 billion dollars of funds stolen from the Botswana central bank and intended to overthrow the Botswana government, then led by Botswana Democratic Party leader Mokgweetsi Masisi. The government had hired former South African prosecutor Gerrie Nel for the prosecution, a star in the murder trial against athlete Oscar Pistorius and a lawyer in the lobbying firm of the Afrikaner minority AfriForum. The choice was contested as “alarming” by the Law Society of Botswana, an organization that brings together Botswana lawyers, puzzled by the alliance between the government and a group accused of racist tendencies.
The affair dragged on for six years, degenerating into what Motsepe described as a “trauma” and attributed to political vendettas against her. One of the triggers, Motsepe told Africa Report, was the friendship ties between her family and former Botswana leader Seretse Ian Khama, who left office in 2018 and had conflicting relations with Masisi himself. Motsepe had received the Botswana government’s apologies in 2025 but announced her intention to seek “justice” and compensation for the image damage caused by a saga lasting over five years. Born and developed from the “inventions” condemned by the new Botswana.
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