The 1975 Killing of Police Mobile Unit’s Sergeant Felix Kgari: A Forgotten National Hero in Botswana

Abstract

About eight weeks ago, this paper carried an impressive article about the killing of Reni Les in the
Pandamatenga area in 1975. Reni Les, a citizen of Belgium was killed for the murder of a Botswana Police
Mobile Unit (PMU) sergeant and for wounding a police constable. The story was written by Richard
Moleofe, a Botswana Defence Force (BDF) veteran. I had it in my list of stories I planned to write. So,
Richard Moleofe pipped me to the post. However, I have decided to write on the Reni Les’s saga because
my approach will completely differ from Moleofe’s, and I will present additional or detailed information. To
begin with, the sergeant who was killed by Les was called Felix Kgari not Phillip as reported in Moleofe’s
account. I have no doubt about that because he was a distant relative of mine. The western corner of my
grandparents’ homestead in Mochudi is just 100 metres away from that of his parents’ eastern corner. He
was older than me, but we played together. He used to send us out to the top of the nearby hills to harvest
marekhu (wild acacia tree gum) from the trees. We had Tswanalised his first name by calling him ‘Fila’.
We were both members of the local Mochudi Rovers Football Club.