botswana: a minimalist democracy

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Botswana: A MinimalistDemocracyKenneth Good & Ian TaylorPublished online: 21 Jul 2008.

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Botswana: A Minimalist Democracy

KENNETH GOOD and IAN TAYLOR

Against all odds, Botswana was able to construct an electoral democracy, following a devianttransition. How and why Botswana made a transition to democracy and consolidated thesystem, as well as the limitations of the Botswana case in terms of accountability and demo-cratic consolidation, is discussed in this article. The article argues that although the countryposseses a functioning electoral democracy, it is marked by illiberal authoritarianism and pre-sidentialism characterized by elitist top-down structures. This fits with what O’Donnell hasdescribed as enduring features of oligarchies, namely clientelism, particularism, and executivedominance. In Botswana these all serve to destabilize not only horizontal liabilities betweenand among state institutions but also to undermine a prescribed competitive spirit supposedlyintrinsic to democracy.

In light of the democratization of Namibia and South Africa, as well as across the southernAfrican region more generally, Botswana’s exceptionality has actually become less remark-able, opening up greater space for a closer engagement with the realities of Botswana’s demo-cratic credentials. This is important given the usual celebratory rhetoric around the country.Although the country’s transition to democracy was deviant given the circumstances at inde-pendence, its consolidation has been marked by an elitism that undermines the rhetoricusually associated with Botswana, namely that of the ‘African Miracle’.

Key words: Botswana; consolidation; elitism; deviant democracy

Introduction

At independence in 1966, Botswana was caught within perhaps the ultimate

unfavourable structural setting for democratization, not only in geographic, but

also in economic and political terms. Geographically, the new country was almost

completely surrounded by the hostile minority-controlled governments of apartheid

South Africa, South-West Africa (Namibia), and Rhodesia, with Portuguese-controlled

Angola and Mozambique in the immediate vicinity. Only a border at Kazangula with

Zambia, a few hundred metres long, connected Botswana with the rest of independent

Black Africa. None of Botswana’s neighbours at independence could be construed as

democracies and the overall climate at the time was hostile to the notion of an

independent Botswana. After all, when the Union of South Africa was formed in

1910, the Bechuanaland Protectorate had (along with Basutoland, now Lesotho,

and Swaziland) been targeted for incorporation into South Africa; a threat that

only fell away when Pretoria declared a republic in 1961. But apartheid South

Kenneth Good is currently in the Global Studies Unit of RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. IanTaylor is Professor of International Relations, University of St Andrews (United Kingdom) and the Depart-ment of Political Science, University of Stellenbosch (South Africa).

Democratization, Vol.15, No.4, August 2008, pp.750–765ISSN 1351-0347 print/1743-890X onlineDOI: 10.1080/13510340802191086 # 2008 Taylor & Francis

Africa was acutely hostile to the notion of an independent Botswana, not least

because of the large numbers of Setswana-speakers resident within South Africa.

Economically, when Botswana gained independence, it was amongst the poorest

of the world’s least developed countries, with a very poor resource base located in a

cattle industry that dominated the small rural-based and predominately illiterate

population of around half a million people living in a country of about 582,000

km2. The country’s developmental prospects were considered unpromising at best.

Unlike its immediate settler-dominated neighbours of South Africa and Rhodesia,

Botswana had never attracted noteworthy development resources from the metro-

politan power (Britain), which meant that the country’s physical and institutional

infrastructure was totally underdeveloped at independence. Botswana had less than

100 km of roads and the capital of the Protectorate had not even been in the

country, but at Mafeking in South Africa. The seat of government was moved to

Gaborone only in 1965, one year prior to independence.

Politically, Botswana had had no experience of electing leaders and the country

was dominated by hereditary chiefs who controlled patronage and acted as interme-

diaries with the British, whilst consolidating their cattle holdings and enriching them-

selves at the expense of the rural peasantry. Prior to independence, the chiefs had

sought to retain their power through occupying the central state institutions,

banning political parties, and maintaining the old ethnic relations, which subordi-

nated the non-Tswana ethnic groups to the control of the traditional Batswana.

This failed, primarily because the prominent Chief Tshekedi Khama died while con-

stitutional talks were still in their infancy. The Batswana chiefs then discarded their

position and switched support to the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP), which prom-

ised to maintain their positions. Practical politics dictated that a kind of minimalist

democracy be instituted, yet the soil in which any democratic plant was to be

planted was very thin at the time of Botswana’s independence.

In such circumstances, Botswana was able to construct an electoral democracy

against the odds. This article seeks to examine how and in what ways this was

achieved, as well as the limitations to the Botswana case in terms of accountability

and democratic consolidation. It will be argued that although the country posseses

a functioning electoral democracy, it is one marked by an illiberal authoritarianism

and presidentialism that is characterized by an elitist top-down structure of govern-

ance. This fits with what O’Donnell has described as enduring features of polyarchies,

namely clientelism, particularism, and executive dominance. In Botswana these all

serve to destabilize both the horizontal liabilities between and amongst state insti-

tutions, as well as obedience to the prescribed competitive spirit supposedly intrinsic

to democracy.1 Equally, in light of the democratization of Namibia and South Africa

as well as across the southern African region more generally, Botswana’s exception-

ality has actually become less remarkable, opening up greater space for a closer

engagement with the realities of Botswana’s democratic credentials. This is important

given the usual celebratory rhetoric around the country.

Indeed, Botswana has invariably been hailed as a democratic oasis that has

thrived and prospered for over four decades and which serves as a beacon to the

rest of the continent as to how it can and should be done. This is the image that

BOTSWANA: A MINIMALIST DEMOCRACY 751

has been carefully crafted over many years. Botswana (and Mauritius) is routinely

held up as an exception to the African condition and as a place where democratic con-

solidation has been realized. Certainly, within the academy, a consensus of sorts

exists around Botswana. However, this is a consensus that actually acts to limit criti-

cal debate. Repeatedly dubbed the ‘African Miracle’ by assorted researchers,2 the

government of Botswana has not been shy in adopting such sobriquets and advancing

Gaborone’s uniqueness. This is invariably based on continual and reiterated asser-

tions that the country is a ‘success story’ or a ‘model for success’, and one that is

exceptionally open-minded, democratic, and tolerant.3 Consider Botswana’s Minister

of Foreign Affairs Mompati Merafhe’s speech to the Royal African Society in 2003,

typically entitled ‘HowWe Did It: Botswana’s Success Story’, in which he celebrated

his country’s ‘strict adherence to the ideals of democracy’ and claimed that ‘we [his

government] have pledged to build a . . . compassionate . . . open, democratic and

accountable . . . and tolerant . . . nation’.4

President Festus Mogae himself has given lectures entitled ‘Botswana’s Success

Story: Overcoming the Challenges of Development’,5 and has remarked that

independent observers have commented favorably about the democratic evol-

ution of my own country, Botswana, citing our exemplary record of respect

for human rights . . . Some of our admirers have even gone so far as to cite

Botswana as a democratic model for Africa as a whole.6

It would certainly be accurate to assert that the vast majority of the academic

literature on Botswana is heavily imbued with celebratory positions akin to that of

the Botswana government.7 This remarkable affinity to a government’s own position,

unparalleled in the rest of the continent, has served to frame most discussions on the

merits or otherwise of Botswana’s democratic credentials and its wider political

economy and has staked out writings on the country from the early 1970s to contem-

porary times.

However, any sensible discussion of Botswana’s democratic credentials needs to

dig deeper into the country’s political history and into how the deviant democracy of

Botswana, whilst staking out a distinct difference with its undemocratic and auto-

cratic neighbours at independence and in highly unfavourable conditions, still

managed to entrench an elite minority who behave in a manner very different from

what one might expect from the ‘African Miracle’. While Botswana no doubt experi-

enced a transition to minimal democracy at the time of independence, and one which

took place in deviant circumstances, the consolidation of its electoral democracy has

been challenged by very low participation rates, a moribund civil society, and

increasing illiberalism.

Botswana’s Deviant Democratic Transition

At the start of the 1960s, as the winds of change swept through much of Africa, the

problem for Britain in Bechuanaland was how to initiate rather than oppose decolo-

nization in a territory where internal finances were non-viable and the consequent

British grant-in-aid was rising rapidly.8 Equally, there were no serious demands for

752 DEMOCRATIZATION

independence within the country, and what concerns existed, as on the part of a new

and weak Bechuanaland People’s Party (BPP), were deemed unrepresentative. As

late as 1961, i.e. five years prior to independence, ‘it was by no means certain’ to sym-

pathetic colonial officials, that the country was heading even for self-government ‘in

the foreseeable future’.9 Apoliticism reigned and unlike all of its neighbours, there

was a distinct lack of any move towards uhuru (freedom). According to Wass, a Pro-

tectorate officer involved in the run-up to independence, when a nationwide compe-

tition for the design of a new national logo and motto was launched, entries included a

picture of a biting spider with the proposed national motto being Tsoga! (Wake

Up!).10 The experience of popular struggle was wholly absent, and the BDP was a

‘party of government’ from its foundation, December 1960, shortly before the pre-

independence elections.11

Seretse Khama, soon to become independent Botswana’s first president,

explained in August 1961 to the visiting American Assistant Secretary of State for

African Affairs Mennen Williams that he was not involved in politics because, like

all other Batswana, he was too busy engaged in agriculture.12 For Seretse ‘it was

[his] personal and financial interest in cattle which first led him into the confidence

of . . . the colonial authorities’, and by the 1960s he was ‘the most influential livestock

producer in the country’.13 Liberation from colonialism was not high on the agenda of

Khama, nor of the inhabitants of Bechuanaland.

The goal of both colonial and national sides in these circumstances was far less

substantive democracy than continuity in the then pastoral-trading economy and in

gaining legitimacy and stability for government. A transition to a minimal democracy

was thus almost preordained when the British-initiated transition from colonialism

came late but rapidly. Seretse Khama entered politics hesitantly and reluctantly in

early 1962. He was then engaged as tribal secretary in Serowe in Bamangwato,

from where his forebears had ruled much of the country for decades. But what

most attracted the British was that he owned large herds of cattle and was thus con-

cerned ‘that the right steps should be taken’ to develop the livestock industry and

hence pursue ‘sensible’ policies. Khama was an appointed member of the Legislative

Council (Legco) and ‘greatly enjoyed the relaxed and happy social relations’ it

offered. He also had ‘warm personal relations’ with Arthur Douglas, the Government

Secretary, and generally Khama’s views were not those of African nationalism

expressed elsewhere. Khama accepted that steady progress was being made

towards self-government, and he regarded the BPP’s call for independence as irre-

sponsible and ‘dangerous’. Indeed, the BPP’s criticism of colonial authority was per-

ceived by Seretse as a personal attack on him and his colleagues in Legco.14

The country’s developmental weaknesses were nonetheless broad and deep, illus-

trating that Botswana is indeed a deviant democracy. The country acquired no func-

tioning legislature until the year before independence in 1966, as the limited political

development was concentrated on the embryonic executive. Unlike most other

African countries, there was no army, ‘no strong bureaucracy, and a weakling

middle class’.15 According to the census of 1967–1968, 13 per cent of the rural popu-

lation had no cattle or crops at all and survived on the incomes of absentee wage

earners; a further 31 per cent possessed no cattle; while 12 per cent of those who

did have livestock owned 60 per cent of all cattle.16 Inequalities were unusually large

in the Tswana pastoral economy growing from the 19th century onwards, and as inde-

pendence approached they were not decreasing.17 Development was concentrated in

cattle: 90 per cent of the active work force was employed in subsistence agriculture,

in livestock production, and in external wage labour.18 No popular social forces

existed, and the small Tswana educated elite was happy to collaborate with the colo-

nial state, the chiefs, and white settlers in forming the new ruling class.19

The BDP was formed in early 1962 with Seretse Khama as its president and

Ketumile Masire as secretary-general. While Fawcus described Masire as ‘an out-

standing organiser’ with ‘exceptional energy’, he was dismissive of Seretse as ‘a

simple man’, noting too the opinion in the Colonial Office in London that there

was a danger that Seretse ‘would quickly be written off as a colonial protege by

the rest of Africa’.20 All of the BDP’s founders were experienced in public life

and almost all African members of Legco quickly joined the new party. Both

Khama and Masire made their living by farming and together they made a ‘strong

and charismatic team’. In contrast, while the BDP leaders were ‘absolutely united’,

the BPP, while winning support in townships along the railway line in early 1962,

suffered from divisions among its leadership.21

In keeping with his previous reluctance to be involved in politics, Khama formed

the BDP ‘out of a sense of duty’, and with the strong conviction that ‘he was the one

man who could check the BPP’ in 1962. The party almost immediately captured the

political centre. After all, in an apolitical and conservative environment, it was the

BDP’s leaders and their close association with the colonial British and leading

farmers and traders, i.e. those with power, who seemed the most appealing to a gen-

erally uneducated and somewhat apathetic populace. Very quickly, the party was seen

as the ‘likely future governing party’.22

Botswana’s transition to democracy proceeded apace with its content and speed

largely determined by the colonialists, actively supported by the BDP. A necessary

constitutional review was prepared and organized by the Resident Commissioner

and a conference met for the first time in July 1963, with a draft agenda put

forward by the government. All participants agreed that what was termed ‘premature

publicity’ needed to be avoided at all costs. While it was accepted that the new docu-

ment would lead naturally and speedily to independence, no one called for this. The

Assistant Attorney General prepared a ‘complete sketch of a constitution’ and this

was circulated to all participants, being unanimously accepted. It was from such

entirely elitist proceedings that Botswana’s democracy emerged.23

The people entered the process belatedly and in a purely formalistic way. Voting

took place in March 1965 among ‘an entirely apolitical electorate’.24 Only slightly

over half of those eligible bothered to participate in an election that was almost cer-

tainly preparing the ground for the country’s independence; although the fact that this

subsequently became the highest turnout figure in the country’s electoral history

through to 2004 provides some context. The BDP contested all 31 constituencies

and gained all but three; the BPP won two seats in Francistown and another in

Mochudi, just north of Gaborone. Seretse Khama became prime minister, with

Masire as his deputy. On Fawcus and Tilbury’s assessment, ‘there could hardly

754 DEMOCRATIZATION

have been a more painless transfer of power’, an outcome of ‘an identity of interest’

established between Britain and the country’s elites as represented in the BDP and the

‘virtually identical’ policies and aims shared between Khama and his associates and

their erstwhile colonial masters.25

Independence day was 30 September 1966, though the attendant ceremonies saw a

disappointing response from the 70 invited nations. In contrast to Patrice Lumumba’s

famed speech at the Congo’s independence, Prime Minister Khama, now Sir Seretse,

made no reference to any past neglect of Bechuanaland by the British and indeed was

fulsome in his praise of Britain:

It would be wrong of me not . . . to state again, as I have done so frequently

before, the great gratitude of my people for the protection and assistance

given to Botswana by the United Kingdom during the long period of our depen-

dence . . . We look forward to a continuing association of pleasant

friendliness.26

This pleasant friendliness was able to be conducted in a milieu devoid of democratic

pressures or any substantial form of agitation or political expression by the vast

majority of Batswana.

Consolidation Underpinned by Elitism

As noted, the electorate of Botswana was, at independence, apathetic, which facili-

tated the country’s transition to a minimal democracy. This arguably stemmed

from a traditionalist culture of respect for authority, which hindered any disputing

of the post-colonial dispensation, and overlooked questions of class. This granted

space to Khama and his BDP to begin the task of establishing a hegemonic position

within post-independence Botswana, something that his royal status had importantly

prepared the ground for. At the same time, according to Tsie, the emergent national

became conscious of the fact that its interests would be better served by private

capitalist accumulation rather than state capitalism, because . . . the state itselfwas in dire financial problems at independence and could not therefore be the

sole means of accumulation. Consequently, this class did not necessarily see the

state as a source of self-enrichment.27

Instead, constructing an interventionist state to facilitate development, and hence

the accumulation of capital, was the main vehicle advancing the interests of the

nascent bourgeois and was integral to the consolidation of the country’s electoral

democracy.

The vacuum at independence was a double-edged sword, however, for while it

meant a state lacking in indigenous capacity, it also gave Khama and his circle the

space to strip possible alternative centres of influence, in particular the chiefs, of

their political power, whilst they sought to construct the BDP’s position and engineer

consolidation. Any chiefly threat to the new state’s legitimacy was nipped in the bud:

the Chieftainship Act of 1965 meant that power was granted to the president to

recognize a traditional ruler, making all chiefs subordinate to the central government.

In addition, a House of Chiefs was established, but with no legislative powers.28

Essentially, the new state established new bodies (parliament, land boards, town

and district councils, village development committees, etc.) that replaced the tra-

ditional leaders and transferred authority from the traditional to the modern state.

Though the chiefs became ex-officio members of local institutions, because of

their chiefly status, their positions were dependent on recognition by the state; some-

thing that could be (and was) withdrawn.

This incongruous position was compounded by their role as pre-modern chairs of

thoroughly modernizing institutions. Thus while traditional elites were seemingly

incorporated into state structures in independent Botswana, the potency of their new-

found roles was profoundly circumscribed. This meant both that potential opposition

to the new government was dissolved and a potential site of alternative power

removed. Instead, traditional rulers, dependent on the state for official recognition,

served as facilitators for consolidation. Whilst accorded respect and status, their

role within Botswana was re-invented and chiefs became agents of the government

at the grass-roots level, communicating at the kgotla (village assembly) information

from the state for developmental purposes.29

The relative autonomy of the political leadership in Botswana developed from

such enduring linkages between Batswana traditional authority and its subjects,

which the British protectorate did nothing to erode. At independence, the new lea-

dership enjoyed ‘old’ legitimacy, but was also relatively autonomous from the

dominant chiefly groups, as well as the broader population.30 In addition, the

absence of any coherent challenge from the opposition granted a great deal of

space for the new government to entrench the transition. The BDP were thus able

to implement policies with both legitimacy and a lack of opposition able to overturn

decisions: ‘the strength and cohesion of the ruling party in the National Assembly

. . .made it possible for those in power to implement their market-oriented develop-

ment strategy rather undiluted’.31 This helped facilitate the transition to democracy

and its consolidation.

Certainly, the civil service tended to dictate policymaking.32 Leading elements

of the bureaucracy were assimilated, creating a dynamic interaction between the

various (cross-cutting) groups that stimulated policies favourable to the elites them-

selves, but had the important knock-on effect of motivating structural development

as part of a ‘national’ project. What occurred in Botswana was a ‘typical’ develop-

mental state situation, where the bureaucracy and the ruling party meshed. This

‘social group’ was evidenced by the common policy of recruitment of senior

civil servants directly, not just into the ruling party politics but also into senior

state positions.33 The classic example is the current president Festus Mogae. He

has variously been Planning Officer, Director of Economic Affairs, Alternate

Governor for Botswana at the IMF, Governor of the Bank of Botswana, Permanent

Secretary to the President, Secretary to the Cabinet, Minister of Finance and

Development Planning and finally vice-president in 1992, before taking over the

presidential reins in 1998. The contrast with the rest of Africa is quite stark,

where such an array of jobs for one person is very rare.

756 DEMOCRATIZATION

Continuity and Control: South Africa and the West

The BDP ruling elite was never anti-colonialist or African nationalist. They were

wealthy men with a personal stake in the economy; Seretse Khama and Ketumile

Masire were among the biggest cattlemen in the country, and in this alone they had

nothing in common with nationalist ‘upstarts’ like Kwame Nkrumah or Julius Nyerere

in Tanzania. Perhaps an approximate equivalent would be Felix Houphouet-Boigny,

the largest African coffee and cocoa planter in the Cote d’Ivoire, on whom France

safely conferred political power at independence. The BDP’s identity of interests and

aims with Britain contrasted with the volatility of the anti-colonialist post-1957 wave

north of the Zambezi. The gulf between the Africa of the north and the south was dee-

pened by the inclination of Nkrumah and others to view Botswana’s leaders as little

more than stooges of South Africa and the West. When Masire attended the Afro-

Asian Solidarity Conference in Accra in March 1965, he was apparently ‘appalled’ by

the (entirely predictable) cold reception he received.34

The goal of Botswana’s rulers was far less democracy in any active and substan-

tive sense (other than a minimalist form) than continuity in the pastoral-trading

economy and stability in government. Despite apartheid, the BDP’s leaders drew

towards South Africa and away from black Africa, reflecting the deviant nature of

Botswana’s transition. The given realities were obviously part of this. Seretse

Khama said in April 1966 that for economic and geographical reasons ‘it will be

necessary to maintain good relations with [apartheid South Africa]’.35 Khama

stressed soon after that the country’s relations would be determined by ‘the interests

and peoples of Botswana’ and not by ‘emotion and sentiment’.36 Consequently, inde-

pendent Botswana helpfully captured escaping African nationalists from South

Africa and often imprisoned them and/or deported them back to Pretoria. Chris

Hani, for instance, was incarcerated in Botswana for over two years. At the height

of the general insurrection against the regime in Pretoria in the 1980s, Gaborone

closed the African National Congress offices in the country and expelled the

ANC’s representatives.37 Equally, the country remained a member of the long estab-

lished and South African-dominated Southern African Customs Union, and renego-

tiated the terms of the agreement in 1969. Botswana even remained a member of

the Rand Monetary Area until it established its own currency and central bank in

1976–1977, ten years after independence.

Economics and Elitism

Sizable diamond resources were exploited after independence, and the government

adopted a growth-first developmental strategy, based on intensification of production

of cattle and diamonds. Within this context, winners and losers inevitably resulted

and existing inequalities deepened, sowing the seeds for later disenchantment.

Indeed, the share of national income accruing to the poorest 40 per cent of people

in Botswana was 12 per cent in 1974–1975 and only 11 per cent in 1985–1986,

while that commanded by the top 20 per cent was 58 per cent in that first year and

61 per cent 11 years later. The Gini coefficient of income distribution in the 1970s

was already 52; anything above 50 is considered to be critical by the United Nations

Development Programme. The number of registered destitutes, or chronically poor

people, in the 1980s was ‘growing rapidly’, doubling in the four years 1984–1988

alone. The majority were found in rural areas, but the most rapid rate of growth in

official destitutes was in urban areas. There were then as many of the very poor as

there were people employed in mining.38 This was during a period of sustained

very high growth in Botswana.

When much of Africa was undergoing military upheavals and embracing single-

party dictatorships, the BDP leadership recognized that a minimalist democratic

system would best ensure control and stability. Individual accumulation had long

existed in the country along with political competition among elites, and multi-

party politics represented both continuity with the past and a significant modernizing

move forward. An important symbiosis existed between a competitive liberal polity

and the market economy, and the former functioned to uphold the latter, facilitating

consolidation. In short, the liberal state was the politics of choice, in the service of an

economy of choices.39 Electoral democracy conferred legitimacy on a government

that no president-for-life or military usurper could aspire to.

An almost instantly predominant BDP imbued with the resources of incumbency

had little to fear and much to gain from open, if not entirely fair, competition and

worked to consolidate this structure. How things would work within a simple

majority or first-past-the-post electoral process was shown, not atypically, in 1989.

Six opposition parties competed and they received in total 35 per cent of votes

cast. The Botswana National Front (BNF) got the largest share of almost 27 per

cent; two others received about four and two per cent, while the rest got less than

one per cent. The BNF’s solid popular support, however, brought it just three seats

in the National Assembly, while the ruling BDP’s share of 64.8 per cent of votes

translated into 31 (or 91 per cent of) the parliamentary seats. Elite democracy presup-

poses competition and allows for opposition, while at the same time it contains and

controls that competition.40

The BDP government moved quickly to consolidate ruling party predominance

with presidentialism or the concentration of power in an executive president.

Seretse Khama, we are told by his biographers, had ‘never been really happy’ with

constituency politics and parliamentary debate, so the constitution was changed, as

early as October 1972, to accommodate the indirect election of the president –

‘the first step on the way to autocracy’.41 Henceforth, the presidency was placed

outside the electoral process. The constitution empowered the president, in Setswana

the Tautona or Great Lion, as an autocrat who decided almost everything alone,

something that remains to this day. So elevated, all three presidents to date have

been ready to subordinate the law and the constitution to the political exigencies of

the time on more than one occasion.

For instance, when Vice-President Masire was twice rejected by his Kanye con-

stituency, in 1969 and 1974, defeated by former Chief Bathoen Gaseetsiwe of the

BNF, President Khama first abolished the provision for constituency election of

the president (in 1972), and then introduced the requirement that a chief had to

have resigned his position for a period of five years before qualifying for

758 DEMOCRATIZATION

parliamentary election. The set of constitutional amendments introduced by President

Masire in 1998 also allowed for the automatic succession of the vice-president on the

retirement, death or incapacitation of the president. Parliament, effectively the BDP

in parliament, was removed from the succession process. When Ian Khama became

vice-president, while remaining Paramount Chief of the Bamangwato, both Mogae

and Khama violated Masire’s earlier constitutional amendment.

Presidential arrogance is repeatedly displayed in the immediate re-appointment of

BDP MPs and ministers rejected democratically by their constituencies. The appoint-

ment of four so-called Specially Elected Members of Parliament was a constitutional

provision intended to assist weak communities to gain representation, but the pro-

vision has been blatantly used for getting ruling party members back into parliament

against the wishes of their constituents (see below). The provision was quickly used

to re-appoint Masire as both MP and vice-president by Seretse, after his defeat in the

elections mentioned above.42 Notably, in 1989 the former permanent secretary to the

president, Festus Mogae, and the former army commander, General Mompati

Merafhe, were co-opted into parliament and elevated to cabinet office. When Vice-

President Peter Mmusi was forced to resign in 1991, after his involvement in

corrupt land transactions, Masire made Mogae his deputy with no reference to the

people.

This practice is a norm in Botswana politics. In October 2004, Margaret Nasha, an

old BDP stalwart, was kicked out by her Gaborone Central constituents, only to be

immediately returned to parliament, and to her Ministry of Local Government, by

Mogae, in direct contradiction of the wishes of the electorate. In the popular view:

‘The BDP government tends to reward its activists, rejected by the voters. The great-

est loser in the whole circus is the people’.43

The dominance of nomination over election is extensive. In November 2004

Nasha announced the names of nominated councillors. Out of 101 nominated local

government councillors, only three came from the opposition. Given that the BDP

gained 52 per cent of the popular vote, while the opposition accounted for 48 per

cent, the nominations were described by the press as ‘a monstrosity’. As a local news-

paper noted:

We are reminded yet again that this is Botswana where a person who has been

rejected by the people [i.e. Margaret Nasha] is brought to Parliament through

some phony democratic exercise called specially elected arrangement. The out-

rageous circus continues when the same individual is appointed to oversee

another ridiculously undemocratic ritual of nominating councilors.44

Currently, Botswana represents a minimalist, formalistic electoral democracy where

the people elect only parliament. Voter turnout in general elections is usually below

half of those eligible to vote. Whilst this form of democracy is consolidated, it is

shallow in its substance. Consolidation in terms of one or more successful transitions

in government achieved through the ballot box has not occurred over 40 years.

However, consolidation in terms of a minimalist democracy that can be expected

to last into the future has certainly been achieved.

Diamond Dependent Development

Above all structural and systemic factors, it is diamond production that has

determined Botswana’s consolidation and its orientation to the world. From indepen-

dence, diamonds, the De Beers Corporation, economic growth, and the government

have been closely interlinked. The De Beers Botswana Mining Company (Debswana)

was established to develop the Orapa field in 1969. Production of high quality, kim-

berlite gems, in low-cost, opencast operations, began in 1971, and expanded further in

1979. Another mine opened at Letlhakane in 1979, followed by Jwaneng, the largest

and richest in 1982. A fourth mine, Damtshaa, also followed. Diamond exports rose

rapidly in value towards figures of some $1,400 million over two decades, when they

represented about 35 per cent of GDP. It was producing around 25 per cent by value

of the world’s rough diamonds. There is no doubt that the gems were ‘the main

driving force’ behind the country’s high growth, averaging about 11 per cent a

year between 1974 and 1989.45 Capital-intensive diamond production transformed

Botswana from a poor underdeveloped country, with nonetheless rich elites,

towards becoming an Upper Middle Income Country, and came to dominate the

political economy across the board.

Revenues were utilized for infrastructural development both physical and human.

They bought extensive communications systems and good education and health

facilities, and aid dependency ended as early as 1972, with budget surpluses by

1983, even when government expenditure was rising by some 10 per cent a year. Dia-

monds also brought a strong national currency, and high foreign exchange reserves

which supported it. No significant foreign debt was acquired in the process.

Debswana, owned equally by the government and De Beers, and run by a simi-

larly based high-level management board, was the prime domestic agency for

diamond development. In keeping with the outlook of the BDP leaders, it eschewed

all nationalization measures, and remained under the operational control of Anglo

American Services Ltd for 23 years, before establishing its own management struc-

tures. The Botswana government favours corporate-based joint ventures and profit-

sharing agreements, and aims at the steady expansion of production achieved

through negotiations. It is argued that this approach harnessed the know-how of

the big corporation in Botswana’s interest, while allowing it to take full advantage

of its resource.46

This has been at considerable cost, however. Capital-intensive diamond mining

creates few jobs, and the wealth is generally utilized, in addition to infrastructural

development and capital accumulation, to import manufactured goods and food

from neighbouring producers, mostly in South Africa. The diamond industry has

not been directed towards improvements in productivity and employment, and struc-

tural transformation and economic diversification have never been truly attempted.

Importantly though, diamonds have meant that a developmental project has been

pursued on the one hand benefiting the nascent bourgeoisie through programmes

geared towards infrastructure, cattle, and commercial development. On the other

hand, through the provision of basic services and a relative qualitative uplifting of

the lives of the peasantry, the project has a ‘national’ rather than simply a class

760 DEMOCRATIZATION

appearance and this facilitates consolidation as ‘politics’ is cast as being universal

and ‘fair’. Thus, even though inequality within the social formation has increased,

the lack of taxation by the central state (due to the in-flow of diamond receipts)

and the empirical manifestation of service provision by the same state (totally

absent prior to independence) granted a cloak of legitimacy to the post-1966 tran-

sition to minimalist democracy.

Botswana committed all of its diamonds to De Beers for a quarter-century, and

extended the country’s dependence on this gem. Inside three decades it became,

taking commodity exports as a percentage of GDP, the most mineral-dependent

country in the world. On wide ranging experience, such heavy resource reliance

(whether diamonds or oil) fosters poverty and corruption.47 Interestingly, despite a

variety of corruption scandals within the government of Botswana being uncovered

over the years,48 Botswana has traditionally portrayed itself, and has been largely por-

trayed by academic commentators, as corruption-free. This has very often been based

on favourable reports from Transparency International (TI).49 What is rarely men-

tioned, however, is that the head of the Botswana chapter of TI was Quill

Hermans, the former Bank of Botswana governor and someone with intimate,

decades-long links with the governing elite.

Capitalist Development and Democracy

The relationship between capitalism and democracy is arguably problematic, and

there is nothing direct and causal in the linkage between the two. The former is

rather ‘associated’ with the latter, and the process of development opens a potentiality

for democratization, where democracy may become a process directed towards

increasing political equality.50 Whether democratization will be realized, depends

on the power relations in a society and, particularly, on the role of the state and

the class relations therein. Barrington Moore’s bold generalization, ‘no bourgeois,

no democracy’, alluded to the capacity of a new property-owning middle class to

overcome older landed and possibly bureaucratic interests and establish elected,

responsible government.51 Democratization as the popular struggle for equality is a

more complex, fraught, and long process, comprising emergence, deepening, stabil-

ization, and consolidation, striving to move beyond the early stages sought by and

satisfactory to a liberal bourgeoisie. That class is indeed ‘supportive of the installation

of constitutional and representative government’, but equally thereafter, ‘opposed to

extending political inclusion to the lower classes’.52 Botswana is no exception.

On much historical evidence, an urban working class ‘was the most consistently

pro-democratic force’ in a long-term sense. This class ‘had a strong interest in effect-

ing its political inclusion and it was more insulated from the hegemony of rural domi-

nant classes than the rural lower classes’.53 The working class seeks the betterment of

its work and living conditions as well as the vote, and within industrial capitalism it

acquires the organizational capacities to bring this about through the creation of self-

determining civic groups and trade unions. This happened in 19th-century Britain and

from the 1970s onwards in South Africa.54 The bravery of a poor peasantry in Kenya

could produce conditions wherein Britain decided that it was no longer worth

supporting the settler state, but its disorganized allies had no chance of withstanding

conservative forces around Kenyatta. Capitalist development ‘is associated with

democracy because it transforms the class structure’. In the long process of increasing

equality, the urban working class is ‘the most frequent proponent of the full extension

of democratic rights because this promise[s] to include the class in the polity where it

could further pursue its interests and because the working class, unlike other lower

classes, had the capacity to organize itself’.55

The material basis for this occurring is the development of advanced capitalism,

embracing manufacturing industry, and its associated urbanization and infrastructural

growth. ‘Capitalist development furthers the growth of civil society – by increasing

the level of urbanization, by bringing workers together in factories, by improving the

means of communication and transportation, by raising the level of literacy.’ A

strengthening civil society is of particular importance in democratization because it

‘establishes a counterweight to state power’.56 The process was on dramatic

display within industrialization in South Africa, focused on a rising trade union

movement and the United Democratic Front at the core of a growing civil society.

It brought an end to the power of apartheid, but was stopped in 1994, at the consti-

tutional-representative government level.57

Diamond-dependent Botswana is totally different. Manufacturing remains at

much the same low level as at independence; as a consequence, the working class

is small and trade unions are closely constrained by the state. Seretse Khama was

highly critical of what he saw as the selfishness of working class interests and he

made repeated exhortations to the citizenry to make sacrifices for the ‘greater

good’ of the nation. Representative of this message was the persistent call for

Batswana to exercise ‘responsibility’ and accept their condition lest the country

become destabilized. This was often couched in paternalistic rhetoric, for instance,

with Khama telling trade unionists that:

[Y]ou do not live in isolation from the rest of the country and its economic rea-

lities . . . [A]s I told you in 1971, you are first and foremost Batswana and your

first responsibility is to assist in the development of the country. If you exercise

your freedom to bargain for higher wages without restraint, you will be delib-

erately avoiding this responsibility . . . Until we achieve greater self-sufficiencyand cut down on our imports from other countries, we are going to be faced

with rising prices over which we have no control.58

The state and Debswana soon became predominant in an undiversified political

economy. In this statist-corporate system, civic groups or NGOs function actually

as ‘neo-governmental’ organizations, merely ‘extensions of the state’.59

Conclusion

As with oil, diamond dependency has a ‘strong negative impact’ on democratization.60

Botswana’s limited electoral democracy has hardly developed beyond its initial transi-

tional stage initiated by colonialism, and this non-participatory system is consistent

with its elitist, rural capitalist past and its undiversified, corporate-capitalist economic

762 DEMOCRATIZATION

development. It represents the approximate opposite to the processes described above

and celebrated by Rueschemeyer, Stephens, and Stephens. Botswana is relatively

wealthy, but limited capitalist development plus diamond dependency is readily associ-

ated with a limited, albeit consolidated, democracy.

Whilst Botswana has indeed enjoyed a transition to democracy and the consolida-

tion of this process in the post-independence period, the quality and depth of this

democracy is shallow and marked by a high-handed presidentialism that brooks no

substantive opposition. Whilst Botswana emerged as a deviant democracy, accounts

that celebrate Botswana as a ‘model’ for the rest of Africa need to be much more

circumspect and need to engage far more critically with what is the actual record

regarding the country’s democratic credentials.

1. Guillermo O’Donnell, ‘Illusions about Consolidation’, Journal of Democracy, Vol. 7, No. 2 (1996),pp. 34–51.

2. See e.g. Penelope Thumberg-Hartland, Botswana: An African Growth Economy (Boulder, CO: West-view, 1978); Abdi Samatar, An African Miracle: State and Class Leadership and Colonial Legacy inBotswana’s Development (Portsmouth: Heinemann, 1999).

3. Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James Robinson, ‘An African Success Story: Botswana’, inDani Rodrik (ed.), In Search of Prosperity: Analytical Narratives on Economic Growth (Princeton,NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003), pp. 80–119; Louis Picard, The Politics of Development in Bots-wana: A Model for Success? (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1987).

4. Mompati Merafhe, ‘How We Did It: Botswana’s Success Story’, Speech by Lt. Gen. MompatiMerafhe, Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Republic of Botswana, to theRoyal African Society, London, 15 October, 2003.

5. Speech by H.E. Mr Festus G. Mogae, President of the Republic of Botswana, Corporate Council onAfrica’s 2003 Gala Awards dinner, 24 June, 2003, Washington DC.

6. ‘Botswana’s Success Story: Overcoming the Challenges of Development’, Speech given by His Excel-lency Mr Festus G. Mogae, President of Botswana at the United Nations University, Tokyo, Japan, 18March 2003.

7. See Richard Vengroff, Botswana: Rural Development in the Shadow of Apartheid (London: AssociatedUniversity Presses, 1977); Thumberg-Hartland (note 2); Louis Picard (ed.), The Evolution of ModernBotswana (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1985); Picard (note 3); Charles Harvey andStephen Lewis, Policy Choice and Development Performance in Botswana (New York: St Martin’s,1990); John Holm and Patrick Molutsi (eds), Democracy in Botswana (Gaborone: Macmillan,1989); S. J. Stedman (ed.), Botswana: The Political Economy of Democratic Development (Boulder,CO: Lynne Rienner, 1993); Richard Dale, Botswana’s Search for Autonomy in Southern Africa (West-port, CT: Greenwood, 1995); Andreas Danevad, ‘Responsiveness in Botswana Politics: Do ElectionsMatter?’, Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol. 33, No. 3 (1995); Clark Leith, ‘Why BotswanaProspered’, Paper presented to the Department of Political and Administrative Studies, Universityof Botswana, 3 March 2004; Richard Werbner, Reasonable Radicals and Citizenship in Botswana:The Public Anthropology of Kalanga Elites (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2004).

8. Peter Fawcus and Alan Tilbury, Botswana: The Road to Independence (Gaborone: Pula Press and theBotswana Society, 2000), p. 60.

9. Ibid., p. 85.10. Peter Wass, ‘Initiatives to Promote Civil Society in Botswana in the 1960s: A Personal Memoir’,

Botswana Notes and Records, Vol. 36 (2004), pp. 74–81.11. Picard (note 3), pp. 138–42.12. Fawcus and Tilbury (note 8), p. 57.13. Neil Parsons, Willie Henderson, and Thomas Tlou, Seretse Khama, 1921–1980 (Gaborone: Macmillan

and Botswana Society, 1995), pp. 188–9.14. Fawcus and Tilbury (note 8), p. 87.15. Patrick Molutsi, ‘The Ruling Class and Democracy in Botswana’, in John Holm and Patrick Molutsi

(eds), Democracy in Botswana (Gaborone: Macmillan, 1989), p. 104.

16. Neil Parsons, ‘The Economic History of Khama’s Country in Botswana, 1844–1930’, in Robin Palmerand Neil Parsons (eds), The Roots of Rural Poverty in Central and Southern Africa (London:Heinemann, 1977), p. 135.

17. John Iliffe, The African Poor: A History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 78.18. Fawcus and Tilbury (note 8), p. 189.19. Molutsi, (note 15), p. 104.20. Fawcus and Tilbury (note 8), p. 128.21. Ibid., pp. 88–91, 122.22. Ibid., p. 127–8.23. Ibid., p. 129–36.24. Ibid., p. 182.25. Ibid., pp. 187, 193.26. Ibid., pp. 207, 218.27. Balefi Tsie, ‘The State and Development Policy in Botswana’, in Kempe Hope and Gloria Somolekae

(eds), Public Administration and Policy in Botswana (Johannesburg: Juta, 1998), p. 13.28. Mogopodi Lekorwe and Gloria Somolekae, ‘The Chieftaincy System and Politics in Botswana, 1966–

95’, in Wayne Edge and Mogopodi Lekorwe (eds), Botswana: Politics and Society (Pretoria: VanSchaik, 1998), pp. 186–98.

29. In many respects the chiefs acted as intellectuals in participating in a particular conception of what wasgoing on in Botswana and contributing to that conception and democratic consolidation by communi-cating this to their tribesmen.

30. Samatar (note 2), pp. 27–8.31. Danevad (note 7), p. 395.32. Gloria Somolekae, ‘Bureaucracy and Democracy in Botswana: What Type of a Relationship?’, in

S. J. Stedman (note 7), p. 116.33. Roger Charlton, ‘Bureaucrats and Politicians in Botswana’s Policy-making Process: A Reinterpreta-

tion’, Journal of Commonwealth and Comparative Politics, Vol. 29, No. 3 (1991), p. 283.34. Fawcus and Tilbury (note 8), pp. 154, 193.35. Ibid., p. 156.36. Bertha Osei-Hwedie, ‘The Role of Botswana in the Liberation of Southern Africa since 1996’, in Edge

and Lekorwe (note 28), p. 426.37. Ibid., p. 435.38. Republic of Botswana, Report of the Presidential Commission on the Review of the Incomes Policy

(Gaborone: Government Printer, 1990), pp. 23, 153.39. C. B. Macpherson, The Real World of Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 46; and

Kenneth Good ‘Interpreting the Exceptionality of Botswana’, Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol.30, No. 1, (1992), pp. 86–7.

40. Good (note 39), pp. 87–9.41. Parsons, Henderson and Tlou (note 13), p. 299.42. Ibid., pp. 283–4.43. Mmegi (Gaborone), 29 November 2004.44. Ibid.45. Keith Jefferis, ‘Botswana and Diamond Dependent Development’, in Edge and Lekorwe (note 28),

p. 302.46. Ibid., p. 306.47. Mark Ross, ‘The Natural Resource Curse: How Wealth Can Make You Poor’, in Ian Bannon and Paul

Collier (eds) Natural Resources and Violent Conflict (Washington DC: The World Bank, 2003),pp. 17–42.

48. Good (note 39).49. Botswana is repeatedly cast as Africa’s ‘least corrupt’ nation; see www.transparency.org.50. Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Evelyn Huber Stephens, and John Stephens, Capitalist Development and

Democracy (Cambridge: Polity, 1992), p. 5.51. Barrington Moore, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (Boston, MT: Beacon, 1966),

p. 418.52. Rueschemeyer, Stephens, and Stephens (note 50), pp. 5, 8.53. Ibid., p. 8.54. Kenneth Good, The Liberal Model and Africa: Elites Against Democracy (London and New York:

Palgrave, 2002).55. Rueschemeyer, Stephens, and Stephens (note 50), pp. 6–7.

764 DEMOCRATIZATION

56. Ibid., p. 6.57. Good (note 54), pp. 182–90.58. Seretse Khama ‘Addressing the Nation on the Occasion of the Tenth Anniversary of Independence—

30 September 1976’, in Gwendolen Carter and Philip Morgan (eds) From the Frontline: Speeches ofSir Seretse Khama (London: Rex Collings, 1980), pp. 327, 328.

59. M. Polelo, ‘The State and Education Policy in Botswana’, PhD dissertation, University of Melbourne,forthcoming, chapter 4.

60. Laza Kekic, The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Index of Democracy (London: Economist, 2007), p. 2.

Manuscript accepted for publication February 2008

Address for correspondence: Professor Ian Taylor, School of International Relations, University ofSt Andrews, St Andrews KY16 9AL, Scotland, United Kingdom. E-mail: ict@st-andrews.ac.uk

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