{"id":232854,"date":"2026-05-10T04:11:28","date_gmt":"2026-05-10T02:11:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/southern-africa\/botswana\/africa-former-botswana-president-festus-mogae-dies-aged-86\/"},"modified":"2026-05-10T04:11:28","modified_gmt":"2026-05-10T02:11:28","slug":"africa-former-botswana-president-festus-mogae-dies-aged-86","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/southern-africa\/botswana\/africa-former-botswana-president-festus-mogae-dies-aged-86\/","title":{"rendered":"Africa: Former Botswana President Festus Mogae Dies Aged 86"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"19\">Botswana&#8217;s former head of state Festus Mogae has died at the age of 86, President Duma Boko has announced.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"27\">&#8220;Today Botswana mourns a distinguished statesman and patriot whose life was devoted to the service of his country,&#8221; Boko announced, adding that Mogae died early on Friday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"18\">The former president, who led Botswana from 1998 to 2008, had been in ill health for some time.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"27\">In a statement last month, the government said he was receiving medical care at a hospital in the capital, Gaborone, without&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/allafrica.com\/stories\/202605080556.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read more on AllAfrica.com<\/a><br \/>\n<br \/>South Africa Today Africa \u2013 Southern Africa <a title=\"Botswana\" href=\"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/category\/southern-africa\/botswana\/\">Botswana<\/a> News<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Botswana&#8217;s former head of state Festus Mogae has died at the age of 86, President Duma Boko has announced. &#8220;Today Botswana mourns a distinguished statesman and patriot whose life was devoted to the service of his country,&#8221; Boko announced, adding that Mogae died early on Friday. The former president, who led Botswana from 1998 to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":232855,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cdn.allafrica.com\/download\/pic\/main\/main\/csiid\/00681384:01b1da56cf4cba25d918c2ff77c20f67:arc614x376:w1200.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2461],"tags":[258,256,23230,4718,2462,6868,23469,9548,257,2450,254],"class_list":["post-232854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-botswana","tag-africa","tag-africa-news","tag-aged","tag-botswana","tag-botswana-news","tag-dies","tag-festus","tag-mogae","tag-news","tag-president","tag-south-africa-today"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cdn.allafrica.com\/download\/pic\/main\/main\/csiid\/00681384:01b1da56cf4cba25d918c2ff77c20f67:arc614x376:w1200.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232854"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232854\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/232855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}