Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-4rdrl Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-23T17:04:32.407Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Interpreting the Exceptionality of Botswana

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Extract

Botswana has achieved rapid growth with stability since independence in 1966, largely through the supportive interrelations between an open market economy and a system of élite democracy, successfully blending ‘traditional’ and modern elements, and offering a range of fairly free and meaningful political choices. But growth, and the policies of a selectively interventionist state, have produced increasingly deep inequalities of property and incomes, posing problems for the stability of the political economy in future.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 The Tswana are ‘among the most rigidly stratified of any in southern Africa’, according to Holm, John D., ‘Botswana: a paternalistic democracy’, in Diamond, Larry, Linz, Juan J., and Lipset, Seymour Martin (eds.), Democracy in Developing Countries, Vol. 2, Africa (Boulder and London, 1988), p. 183.Google ScholarPeters, Pauline E., ‘Struggles Over Water, Struggles Over Meaning: cattle, water and the state in Botswana’, in Africa (London), 54, 3, 1984, p. 33, refers to ‘the highly centralised hierarchical’ Tswana chiefdoms.Google Scholar

2 Wilmsen, Edwin N., Land Filled with Flies: a political economy of the Kalahari (Chicago and London, 1989), p. 98.Google Scholar

3 Hitchcock, Robert K., ‘Water, Land and Livestock: the evolution of tenure and administration patterns in the grazing areas of Botswana’, in Picard, Louis A. (ed.), The Evolution of Modern Botswana (London, 1985), p. 99.Google Scholar

4 Parsons, Neil, ‘The Economic History of Khama's Country in Botswana, 1844–1930’, in Palmer, Robin and , Parsons (eds.), The Roots of Rural Poverty in Central and Southern Africa (London, 1977), pp. 119–20.Google Scholar

5 Odell, Malcolm J. describes the kgotlas as ‘an authentic and centuries old voice of the Batswana in the rural areas’; ‘Local Government: traditional and modern roles of the village kgotla’, in Picard (ed.), op. cit. p. 83Google Scholar. According to Kuper, Adam, kgotlas (with ‘chiefs of the people’) and Tswana law have formed the basis for Botswana's stable democracy since independence; interviewed in programme on ‘Democracy’, B.B.C. World Service, 14 April 1991.Google Scholar

6 Parson, Jack, Botswana: liberal democracy and the labour reserve in Southern Africa (Boulder, 1984), p. 16.Google Scholar

7 Mgadla, P. T., and Campbell, A. C., ‘Dikgotla, Dikgosi and the Protectorate Administration’, in Holm, John D. and Molutsi, Patrick (eds.), Democracy in Botswana (Gaborone, 1989), p. 49.Google Scholar

8 Kuper, Adam, Kalahari Village Politics: an African democracy (Cambridge, 1970), p. 17.Google Scholar

9 Peters, , loc. cit. pp. 44–5.Google Scholar

10 Wilmsen, op. cit. p. 98.

11 Hitchock, , loc. cit. pp. 100–1.Google Scholar

12 Ibid. pp. 103–4.

13 Cf. Picard, Louis A. and Morgan, E. Philip, ‘Policy, Implementation and Local Institutions in Botswana’, in Picard (ed.), op. cit. p. 130.Google Scholar

14 Peters, loc. cit. p. 33.

15 Colclough, Christopher and McCarthy, Stephen, The Political Economy of Botswana: a study of growth and distribution (Oxford, 1980), pp. 33 and 113.Google Scholar

16 Mudzinganyama, N. S., ‘The Articulation of the Modes of Production and the Development of a Labour Reservoir in Southern Africa, 1885–1944: the case of Bechuanaland’, in Botswana Notes and Records (Gaborone), 15, 1983, p. 53. No dates are given for the annual incomes mentioned.Google Scholar

17 Picard, Louis A., ‘From Bechuanaland to Botswana: an overview’, in Picard (ed.), op. cit. p. 14.Google Scholar

18 Hitchcock, , loc. cit. pp. 108–9.Google Scholar

19 Peters, , loc. cit. pp. 38–40. She quotes Isaac Schapera's findings in 1932 that ‘nearly one-quarter of all the cattle in the tribe were then owned by five men’: the chief had about 5,500, and his uncle Isang 2,500.Google ScholarIbid. p. 46.

20 Hitchcock, , loc. cit. pp. 112–13.Google Scholar

21 On this theme see, for example, Parson, , op. cit.Google Scholar

22 Picard, Louis A., The Politics of Development in Botswana: a model for success? (Boulder and London, 1987), pp. 138–42.Google Scholar

23 Palmer, Robin notes in ‘The Agricultural History of Rhodesia’, in Palmer and Parsons (eds.), op. cit. p. 250, that all Rhodesian Prime Ministers with the exception of the first were farmers, as well as most members of every cabinet.Google Scholar

24 Idi Amin's Uganda, Ignatius Acheampong's Ghana, and Mobutu Sese Seko's Zaïre are oftquoted examples of predatory régimes, while Kenneth Kaunda's one-party state in Zambia would typify the larger group of consumptionist, urban-biased political élites which have been uninterested in agricultural production.

25 Botswana experienced ‘the most rapid rate of growth of GNP per capita (8·3 per cent) of any country in the world’ from 1965 to 1985, according to Harvey, Charles and Lewis, Stephen R. Jr., Policy Choice and Development Performance in Botswana (London, 1990), p. 1.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

26 Ibid. p. 40.

27 Jefferies, K., ‘The Economy in 1990’, in Botswana, Barclays, Economic Review (Gaborone), 2, 1, 1991, p. 4.Google Scholar

28 Harvey, and Lewis, , op. cit. pp. 41–2.Google Scholar

29 Gulhati, Ravi, The Making of Economic Policy in Africa (Washington, D.C., 1990), pp. 33–5.Google Scholar

30 Harvey, and Lewis, , op. cit. p. 9.Google Scholar

31 Peters, Pauline, ‘Cattlemen, Borehole Syndicates and Privatization in the Kgatleng District of Botswana: an anthropological history of the transformation of a commons’, Ph.D. dissertation, Boston University, 1983, p. 31.Google Scholar

32 Gulhati, op. cit. p. 35.

33 See, for example, Good, Kenneth, ‘Zambia: back into the future’, in Third World Quarterly (London), 10, 1, 01 1988, pp. 3753,Google Scholar and ‘Debt and the One-Party State in Zambia’, in The Journal of Modern African Studies (Cambridge), 27, 2, 06 1989, pp. 297313.Google Scholar

34 Harvey, and Lewis, , op. cit. p. 7Google Scholar. Botswana ‘avoided many of the economic problems that have plagued other primary commodity exporters by adopting appropriate, stabilizing, macroeconomic policies’, according to Hill, Catherine B. and Mokgethi, D. Nelson, ‘Botswana: macroeconomic management of commodity booms, 1975–86’, in World Bank, Successful Development in Africa (Washington, D.C., 1989), p. 174.Google Scholar

35 Harvey and Lewis, op. cit. p. 8.Google Scholar

36 Parson, Jack, ‘The Trajectory of Class and State in Dependent Development: the consequences of new wealth for Botswana’, in Kasfir, Nelson (ed.), State and Class in Africa (London, 1984), pp. 46 and 52.Google Scholar

37 Harvey, and Lewis, , op. cit. pp. 6 and 8–9.Google Scholar

38 Colclough, and McCarthy, , op. cit. p. 242.Google Scholar

39 Gulhati, op. cit. p. 35.

40 Zambia has perhaps epitomised the problem of proliferating stultifying parastatals. See, for example, Good, Kenneth, ‘Systemic Agricultural Mismanagement: the 1985 “bumper” harvest in Zambia’, in The Journal of Modern African Studies, 24, 1, 03 1986, pp. 257–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

41 Gulhati, op. cit. p. 35.

42 Diamond, Larry, ‘Introduction: roots of failure, seeds of hope’, in Diamond, Linz, and Lipset (eds.), op. cit. p. 20.Google Scholar

43 Picard, , The Politics of Development in Botswana, p. 236.Google Scholar

44 Colclough, Christopher and Fallon, Peter, ‘Rural Poverty in Botswana: dimensions, causes and constraints’, in Ghai, Dharam and Radwan, Samir (eds.), Agrarian Policies and Rural Poverty in Africa (Geneva, 1983), p. 150.Google Scholar

45 Colclough, and McCarthy, , op. cit., p. 107.Google Scholar

46 Gulhati, op. cit. p. 35.

47 Colclough, and Fallon, , loc. cit. p. 151.Google Scholar

48 Bhuiyan, Muhammad N., ‘Public Finance in Botswana: a historical overview’, in Bhuiyan, (ed.), Selected Papers on the Botswana Economy (Gaborone, 1987), pp. 97–8 and 137.Google Scholar

49 Muhammad N. Bhuiyan, ‘The Economy of Botswana: an overview’, in ibid. p. 37.

50 Mogae, Honourable F. G., Budget Speech, 1991 (Gaborone, 1991), p. 15.Google Scholar

51 Hesselberg, Jan, The Third World in Transition: the case of the peasantry in Botswana (Uppsala, 1985), p. 182.Google Scholar

52 Colclough, and Fallon, , loc. cit. pp. 133–4.Google Scholar

53 Russell, Margo, ‘Slaves or Workers? Relations Between Bushmen, Tswana, and Boers in the Kalahari’, in Journal of Southern African Studies (Oxford), 2, 2, 1976, p. 195. The Pula replaced the Rand as Botswana's national currency in 1976.Google Scholar

54 Hitchcock, Robert K., ‘Sandveld Agriculture in Botswana’, in Botswana Notes and Records, 18, 1986, p. 93.Google Scholar

55 Colclough, and McCarthy, , op. cit. p. 112Google Scholar, and Hubbard, Michael, Agricultural Exports and Economic Growth: a study of the Botswana beef industry (London, 1986), p. 197.Google Scholar

56 Hesselberg, op. cit. p. 102.

57 Colclough, and McCarthy, , op. cit. pp. 127–8, 135–8, and 195.Google Scholar

58 Colclough, and Fallon, , loc. cit. pp. 133–4.Google Scholar

59 Quoted in Wily, Liz, Land Allocation and Hunter-Gatherer Land Rights in Botswana: the impact of the tribal grazing land policy (London, Anti-Slavery Society, 1980), p. 107.Google Scholar

60 Colclough, and Fallon, , loc. cit. p. 135.Google Scholar

61 Bank of Botswana, Report of the Rural Economic Survey, 1986 (Gaborone, 1987), pp. 1–3 and 33.Google Scholar

62 Republic of Botswana, Report of the Presidential Commission on the Review of the Incomes Policy (Gaborone, 10 03 1990), pp. 22–3 and 142.Google Scholar

63 The position of the top 20 per cent and of the top 10 per cent of income-earners in Botswana was second highest in comparison with ten countries of Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas, falling below only Brazil. Ibid. p. 29.

64 The words ‘Basarwa’ and, even more so, ‘Masarwa’ carry strong derogatory connotations according to Wilmsen, Edwin N., ‘The Real Bushman is the Male One: labour and power in the creation of Basarwa ethnicity’, in Botswana Notes and Records, 22, 1990, pp. 2135.Google Scholar

65 Kuper, , op. cit. pp. 19, 45, and 47.Google Scholar

66 Gadibolae, Mabunga Nlshwa, ‘Serfdom (Bolata) in the Nata Area, 1926–1960’, in Botswana Notes and Records, 17, 1985, p. 26.Google Scholar

67 Hitchcock, Robert K., Kalahari Cattle Posts (Ministry of Local Government and Lands, Gaborone, 10 1978), pp. 103 and 317.Google Scholar

68 Childers, Gary W., Report of the Survey/Investigation of the Ghanzi Farm Basarwa Situation (Ministry of Local Government and Lands, Gaborone, 09 1976), pp. 2, 45–7, and 92.Google Scholar

69 Ibid. pp. 50–1 and 86.

70 Ibid. pp. 103–4.

71 Hitchcock, , Kalahari Cattle Posts, pp. 319–20.Google Scholar

72 Kuper, op. cit. p. 47.

73 Kalahari Cattle Posts, p. 122.Google Scholar

74 Ibid. p. 318.

75 For example, Burchell [1824] found Bushmen ‘possessed of large herds of cattle’; Wilmsen, op. cit. p. 83.

76 Gadibolae, loc. cit. p. 26.

77 Wilmsen, loc. cit. p. 31.

78 Childers, , op. cit. pp. 58 and 61.Google Scholar

79 Wilmsen, loc. cit. p. 30.

80 Kuper, op. cit. p. 45.

81 Quoted in Wilmsen, , loc. cit. p. 22Google Scholar. Wily says, in op. cit. p. 76, that this judgement ‘implied that according to a strict reading of the Tribal Land Act and its regulations, hunting and gathering were not specified as customary rights, and that as a result of their nomadism, San could have no reasonable claim to customary rights within a Tribal Area’.

82 Childers, op. cit. p. 14.

83 Claimed in Hitchcock, , Kalahari Cattle Posts, p. 104.Google Scholar

84 Report of the Remote Area Development Workshop (Ministry of Local Government and Lands, Gaborone, 04 1982), pp. 147–8.Google Scholar

85 Inger, David, ‘Botswana Has No Human Rights Problem–Or Do We?’, in Gazette (Gaborone), 24 04 1991. Childers reported, in op. cit. pp. 75–6, that Basarwa were ‘often assaulted by Bangologa for no particular reason’.Google Scholar

86 Hitchcock, Robert K. and Nkwe, T., ‘Progress and Problems in Tribal Grazing Land Policy Implementation, With Special Reference to Remote Area Dwellers’, in Report of the Remote Area Development Workshop, p. 109.Google Scholar

88 Hubbard, , op. cit. p. 192Google Scholar. In the robust words of the Central District Commissioner in 1977: ‘All this discussion and planning is getting in the way of development. Bushmen, if they are in the way, should simply be gotten out of the way, so we can put up our fences.’ Quoted in Wily, op. cit. p. 83.

89 Hitchcock, and Nkwe, , loc. cit. pp. 111 and 115.Google Scholar

90 Inger, , loc. cit.Google Scholar

91 It was reported in Mmegi (Gaborone), 8 02 1991, that three farms, supposedly set aside for resettlement by Remote Area Dwellers in Ghanzi in 1989, would be taken back and sold to a syndicate which included ‘a senior cabinet minister’. In the subsequent controversy, it was claimed that no allocation had ever been made, and none would be made in future.Google ScholarIbid. 15 March and 5, 12, and 19 April 1991.

92 Pelonomi Venson, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Local Government and Lands, in ibid. 19 April 1991.

93 At the end of the 1970s it was stated in Wily, op. cit. p. 94, that much of the direction of policy making on ranching and tenure ‘does not bode well for any poor tribesman, let alone San’.

94 Picard, and Morgan, , loc. cit. p. 130.Google Scholar

95 Molokomme, Athaliah, ‘Political Rights in Botswana: regression or development’, in Holm and Molutsi (eds.), op. cit. pp. 167–70. Samu Zulu, a freelance reporter, was deported in October 1990.Google Scholar

96 City Press (Johannesburg), 9 12 1990.Google Scholar

97 See, for example, the interchange between Holm, John and Molomo, Ray of the B.D.P., in Holm and Molutsi (eds.), op. cit. pp. 154–5.Google Scholar

98 Molokomme, , loc. cit. pp. 165–6.Google Scholar

99 Ibid. p. 166.

100 Moyo, Nelson, ‘The Application of Incomes Policy in the Private Sector, with Reference to the Strike of Bank Employees in 1974’, in Harvey, Charles (ed.), Papers in the Economy of Botswana (London, 1981), pp. 196208,Google Scholar and Cooper, David, ‘The State, Mineworkers and Multinationals: the Selebi Phikwe strike, Botswana, 1975’, in Gutkind, Peter C. W. et al. (eds.), African Labor History (Beverly Hills and London, 1978), pp. 244–77.Google Scholar

101 Picard, and Morgan, , loc. cit. p. 130.Google Scholar

102 Macpherson, C. B., The Real World of Democracy (Oxford, 1966), pp. 9–1.Google Scholar

103 Ibid. p. 46.

104 Arblaster, Anthony, The Rise and Decline of Western Liberalism (Oxford, 1984), p. 87.Google Scholar

105 Macpherson, op. cit. p. 11.

106 Report to the Minister of Presidential Affairs and Public Administration on the General Election, 1989 (Gaborone, 1989), pp. 8 and 76.Google Scholar

107 Picard, Louis A., ‘Bureaucrats, Elections and Political Control’, in Picard (ed.), Evolution of Modern Botswana, pp. 189–90 and 203.Google Scholar

108 Stevens, Christopher and Speed, John, ‘Multi-partyism in Africa: the case of Botswana revisited’, in African Affairs (London), 76, 304, 07 1977, p. 387.Google Scholar

109 Picard, , The Politics of Development in Botswana, p. 146. Two pages later (p. 148) Botswana is referred to as a ‘“liberal democracy” in the usual sense of that term’.Google Scholar

110 Hubbard, op. cit. p. 172.

111 Economic Review, 1, 2, June 1990, pp. 1213Google Scholar, and Jefferies, , loc. cit. pp. 2 and 7–8.Google Scholar

112 Jefferies, ibid. pp. 3–4 and 7.

113 Report of the Presidential Commission on the Review of the Incomes Policy, p. 153.Google Scholar

114 Mmegi, 26 October 1990.Google Scholar

115 Holm, John D., ‘The State, Social Class and Rural Development in Botswana’, in Picard (ed.), op. cit. p. 162, and Derek J. Hudson, ‘The Taxation of Income from Cattle Farming’, in Harvey (ed.), op. cit. p. 68.Google Scholar

116 Hubbard, , op. cit. pp. 79 and 180–1Google Scholar, and Hudson, loc. cit. p. 76.

117 Hudson, ibid. pp. 79–80.

118 Hubbard, , op. cit. pp. 186–7Google Scholar. Also Hitchcock, and Nkwe, , loc. cit. pp. 110–11, and Bhuiyan, loc. cit. p. 141.Google Scholar

119 Report of the Presidential Commission on the Review of the Incomes Policy, and Botswana, Draft White Paper. The Revised National Policy on Incomes, Employment, Prices and Profits (Gaborone, 1990), p. 26.Google Scholar

120 Gazette, 24 October 1990.Google Scholar

121 Draft White Paper, p. 39. The Government ignored the Presidential Commission's report of a recent survey showing that workers in domestic service and agriculture received incomes ‘well below’ the minimum wage in the sectors that were covered by legislation. Furthermore, ‘over 30 per cent of the sample of agricultural workers were shown to receive a cash income of less than P30’ per month – that is, below the sum allocated in food-rations to destitutes.Google ScholarIbid.

122 Gazette, 5 September 1990.Google Scholar

123 Draft White Paper, pp. 16 and 36.Google Scholar

124 Parsons, Q. N. (Neil), ‘The Evolution of Modern Botswana: historical revisions’, in Picard (ed.), op. cit. p. 36. According to this author, it was ‘the most progressive chiefs’ under colonialism who faced ‘mass resistance’.Google Scholar

125 Peters, , ‘Struggles Over Water’, pp. 41 and 44.Google Scholar

126 Hubbard, op. cit. p. 188.

127 The rôle of the National Assembly is ‘to audit proposals made by those in authority: to approve them and occasionally reject them…This has happened two or three times in recent years, but it is not a call to the Government to resign, rather it is notice…to the Government to think through an issue again’. Colclough, and McCarthy, , op. cit. p. 46.Google Scholar

128 Picard, , op. cit. pp. 171–2Google Scholar, and Molutsi, Patrick P. and Holm, John D., ‘Developing Democracy When Civil Society Is Weak: the case of Botswana’, in African Affairs, 89, 356, 07 1990, p. 333.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

129 Economic Review, June 1990, p. 24.Google Scholar