Killing of Segametsi Mogomotsi

Segametsi Mogomotsi was a 14-year-old schoolgirl in Mochudi, Botswana. She went missing at some point on 5 November 1994, and the following morning, 6 November 1994, her body was found in an open space, unclothed and mutilated. Accounts recorded by researchers say she had been selling oranges to raise money for a school trip when she disappeared.

The killing was widely understood in the area as a dipheko, or medicine murder, in which body parts are taken to make muti (medicine) believed to bring wealth or success. Scholars writing about Botswana note that such ritual killings had been documented in the territory since at least the 1930s and that children, especially promising students, were regarded as targets. An account gathered in 1996 by anthropologist Charlanne Burke described men restraining Segametsi and taking her to a house away from the town.

Segametsi's stepfather was arrested after giving a confession that implicated himself and local businessmen, but he retracted it, saying it had been a second-hand account. The businessmen who had been named were arrested and then released, which caused lasting controversy in Mochudi. No one was formally charged with the killing. The government of Botswana brought in detectives from Scotland Yard, and an official police report was compiled, but as of 2012 its findings had not been released. In 2008, Sekobye Mokgalo, one of the men who had been named, sought compensation from the government, and in 2009 he was awarded damages.

The case prompted sustained protest. In January 1995, students at Radikolo Community Junior Secondary School, which Segametsi had attended, marched on the District Commissioner's office in Mochudi over perceived official tolerance of witchcraft; the march escalated into rioting, and a suspect's house was burned. Unrest spread to the capital, Gaborone, from 16 February 1995. The Special Services Group, the riot police of the Botswana Defence Force, used tear gas in the central business district, and students at the University of Botswana disrupted a sitting of the National Assembly. President Quett Masire said the government would not tolerate lawlessness and had instructed the police and army to restore order. Both protesters and police were injured: more than fifteen people were treated for rubber-bullet wounds, a young boy was killed, and a bystander was paralysed.

The case has been discussed in academic writing on ritual murder and the politics of knowledge in Botswana, and it influenced fiction including Unity Dow's The Screaming of the Innocent, Michael Stanley's Deadly Harvest, and Alexander McCall Smith's The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. The killing remains unsolved.