A white South African convicted of murdering her best friend in a highly publicised trial was hanged secretly in Botswana.
The initial reaction yesterday of a Department of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman in Johannesburg was to deny that Mariette Bosch (50) had been hanged.
Responding to radio news reports that Bosch had been executed on Saturday, a Department spokeswoman said emphatically: "The lady has not been hanged."
She insisted that a statement in London by Botswana's President Festus Mogae, in which he said he had decided not to grant clemency to Bosch, had been misunderstood.
By late yesterday afternoon neither President Thabo Mbeki's Office nor the Department of Foreign Affairs had been informed in writing that Bosch had been executed, a Foreign Affairs spokesman, Mr Ronnie Mamoepa, said. But the Department no longer discounted reports that she had been hanged.
"The South African government reiterates its principled opposition to the death penalty as enshrined in the Constitution and upheld by the Constitution Court," Mr Mamoepa said. He was speaking after the Botswana Commissioner of Prisons had officially announced the execution.
"President Thabo had conveyed a plea on behalf of the South African government for the Botswana government to spare Mariette Bosch's life."
Botswana's Commissioner of Prisons was reported to have cited the controversy surrounding the Bosch case as the reason for secrecy. She was the first white woman to be executed in Botswana and first South African to have suffered that fate for many years.
An element of that controversy was the marriage of Bosch to her best friend's husband, Tiene Wolmarans, after shooting his first wife.
The case against Bosch, described as a "wicked and despicable woman" by the Acting President of the Botswana Appeal Court, was articulated by the Botswana Attorney General during her trial.
"She decided in advance that the deceased was an obstacle to an amorous relationship with Tienie Wolmarans . . . and would have to be got rid of," the Attorney General said.
An anguished Mr Wolmarans, who persistently proclaimed his wife's innocence and who only learned of her execution yesterday, told how he tried unsuccessfully to visit her on Friday. "I was told neither I nor the children could see her because there was an inspection going on," he said. "Now I know they were lying."
He received a phone call on Sunday and was told to be at the prison at 8 a.m. yesterday. When he arrived he was told that Bosch had been executed. "That was the first I knew about it," he said. "The note she left said they would not allow her to see me or the children on Friday. They kept the whole thing a secret from us."