Botswana at 50: democratic deficit, elite corruption and poverty in the midst of plenty

Botswana, a much vaunted African success story, turned 50 on the 30th of September 2016, amidst much pomp and ceremony. The tagline for the occasion was Botswana50: United and Proud. So, are Batswana united and proud?

Colonised by Britain in 1885, Botswana (then called Bechuanaland) seldom rose beyond the status of a labour reserve for South Africa throughout the colonial period (Parsons 1984). At independence in 1966, Botswana was listed among the world’s poorest nations, and labelled as a ‘hopeless basket case’ (Colclough and McCarthy 1980). Despite more than 80 years of colonial rule, Botswana inherited very little in the form of infrastructure and was left with very few people with high levels of education, training or public service experience (Harvey and Lewis 1990; Good and Taylor 2008). As a protectorate, the country had been ruled indirectly, from Mafeking in South Africa, by a colonial power who aimed to do ‘as little in the way of administration as possible and keep the cost of their involvement in Bechuanaland to a minimum’ (British government official in Colclough and McCarthy 1980). When Britain handed over power at independence, it left the country with ‘7 km of tarred road and a capital that amounted to little more than a railway station’ (Cropley 2016). Less than a year later, diamonds had been found at Orapa, and the county was on its way towards becoming one of the continent’s most celebrated ‘success stories’.

At 50, looking back, it is hard to see a Botswana that would shower its colonial British parents with praise for good parenting. It feels more like an infancy at an orphanage, or being the child of an absentee parent. The ruling Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) has won every election since independence, when it was shepherded into power by the British, who had built up the BDP as opposition to the more radical nationalist Botswana People's Party, which was linked to the African National Congress and seen as pro-communist (Mogalakwe 1997).

In the absence of employment opportunities inside the country, the colonial system of Hut Tax had pushed more than 30% of Botswana’s labour force to seek work in South Africa as migrant workers, where they generally worked in mines and factories, or as domestic servants. Since independence, Botswana’s rate of domestic employment has grown (Harvey and Lewis 1990), but the job market still remains somewhat limited, with the state having done little to successfully promote diversification of the country’s economy, which remains heavily diamond dependent (Hillbom 2008, 2011; Hillbom and Bolt 2015). The Bank of Botswana (2015) puts the country’s current unemployment rate at 20%, a high rate of unemployment by any standards.

At independence, about half of recurrent expenditures and all development expenditures were dependent on foreign aid. By the mid-1970s, however, Botswana started experiencing an economic turnaround and was able to balance its recurrent budget, and by the mid-1980s national revenues started to exceed national expenditures (GoB 2009a). This enabled government to avoid domestic borrowing and to start building up foreign reserves, which now stand at about P85 billion (about US$7.9 billion), representing 19 months import cover of goods and services (GoB 2016a).

For about 20 years, Botswana had one of the highest economic growth rates in the world, averaging 9.2% in real terms from 1975 to 1995, and 8.7% in the period up to 2007/2008 (GoB 2016b). This turnaround in Botswana’s fortunes was mainly due to two factors: first, the discovery and profitable exploitation of diamond deposits, and second, the Southern African Customs Union revenue sharing formula, which has greatly benefited Botswana. The latter has, however, been seen by some (notably Grynberg 2011a, 2011b) as being at the expense of domestic industrialisation. Suffice it to say that Botswana is now rated as a middle-income country, whose present state has led to it being chosen to host the headquarters of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), a far cry from its humble beginnings in 1966.

The foregoing overview of Botswana’s graduation from poor parenting to post-colonial growth and achievements has led to a belief in the ‘exceptionality of Botswana’ (Good 1992). Good, whose commentary on Botswana appears in this volume, once described Botswana as a shining example of liberal democracy in a continent notorious for one-party states and military dictatorships. At about the same time, Hoogvelt, Phillips, and Taylor (1992), writing in the left-leaning Review of African Political Economy (ROAPE) journal, criticised what they characterised as the World Bank’s simplistic tendency to lump together African countries as if Africa is one entity. In their critique of the World Bank, the authors found fault with the Bank’s argument that Africa has common problems that need common strategies and solutions. They used a range of statistical techniques through which they found not one, but four types of African countries. Botswana was assigned to cluster 4, all to herself, as a country like no other in Africa (Mogalakwe 2003). For many, Botswana is a ‘success story’ in an Africa of dismal economic performance, political corruption and mismanagement, offering an antidote to the expanding intellectual movement of ‘afro-pessimism’ (Stedman 1993). To Stedman, Botswana stands out as an example of economic development, functioning governance and multiparty liberal democracy; an exception that confounds generalisations, but whose very exceptionality prompts analysts to see it as a hopeful model for other African countries (1).

What then can we say about Botswana as it celebrates its 50th anniversary of independence and coming of age from the nightmare of colonial indifference? Mogalakwe (2008, 2003) argues that the accolades and praises lavished on Botswana are a result of a mistaken identity; that Botswana may have come a long way from its colonial infancy of neglect and apparent indifference by the British overlords, but it is not what it appears or is said to be. A scratch beneath the surface of this much vaunted success story will reveal, not the much touted liberal democracy, but a top-down presidentialism, an emasculated parliament, and corruption and massive poverty in the midst of plenty. As Kenneth Good – a victim of deportation in 2005 for daring to criticise the purportedly liberal Botswana state – points out in his commentary in this volume, except in very few cases of critical scholarship, the bulk of the literature on Botswana tends to be celebratory, based largely on quantitative and economistic analysis, and missing social and political dynamics taking place in the country. A distinctive feature of this volume is a noted departure by the contributors from the usual celebratory positions. The essays in this volume are much more critical, seeking to scratch beneath the surface and pierce the much vaunted liberal democratic veil of Botswana. This is the point to which we now turn.

Botswana, which for a long time was seen as Africa’s ‘democratic hope’, has now been joined by a new kid on the block, post-apartheid South Africa. de Jager and Sebudubudu (2017) describe how both countries are now considered comparatively successful democracies relative to their peers in Sub-Saharan Africa. The authors argue, however, that the two countries have shown an ambivalence to liberal democracy, and have maintained a mere formal or procedural democracy of regular elections, as opposed to a more substantive liberal democracy with strong checks and balances and recognition, respect and protection of the rights and freedoms of individuals. In both countries, the dominant party system has also led to the blurring of lines of demarcation between the state and the ruling party. Out of fear of losing their dominant positions, both the African National Congress (ANC) of South Africa and the BDP are resisting restraints on their access to state power, and both parties have shown reluctance to fully embrace liberal democracy. According to Sebudubudu and de Jager, the liberal democratic values of the founders of both the ANC and the BDP have been replaced by illiberal values. In particular, the authors attribute the partial democratisation or incomplete liberal democratisation in Botswana to two main factors: the authoritarian Tswana political culture of the Kgotla system, dominated by the Kgosi, with its emphasis on deference and submission to authority, and the wide ranging powers of the president and the dominance of the executive, which have thwarted attempts to advance liberal democracy, with the executive in Botswana left largely free to shape policy. For many, Botswana has become a ‘minimalist democracy’ (Good and Taylor 2008), which ‘does as little as possible to engender participation, transparency, access to social support, accountability and human rights’ (Kaboyakgosi and Marata 2012).

That being said, the powers of the president of Botswana are as old as the constitution itself. Section 41 of the Constitution gives the sitting president absolute immunity from criminal and civil proceedings. It states that no criminal or civil proceedings shall be instituted or continued against the president in respect of anything done, or omitted to be done, in his private or official capacity. Thus, in 2009, the High Court dismissed with costs a case by Gomolemo Motswaledi, who was dismissed from his position as the Secretary General of the ruling party by the party president, who also happens to be the President of the Republic. Motswaledi had taken Khama and the BDP to Court for unfair dismissal and challenged his suspension from the party for 60 days, which was effectively preventing him from running for election under the ruling party ticket. The Court of Appeal concurred with the High Court that section 41 of the Constitution grants the President immunity and prohibits civil proceedings against the sitting President. It remains to be seen whether this immunity would also prevent the wife of a sitting president from instituting an action for divorce or child support (Otlhogile 1998).

Section 47 of the Botswana Constitution states that the executive powers of Botswana shall vest in the President and that in the exercise of any function conferred upon him, the President shall act in his own deliberate judgement and shall not be obliged to follow the advice tendered by any person or authority. Section 92 of the Constitution empowers the President to dissolve a democratically elected parliament, even though the President himself is not democratically or popularly elected. In fact, the Botswana Parliament is not really the proverbial watchdog of the executive but rather functions more like a department in the office of the president, which is controlled not by the Speaker, but by the Vice President, who is referred to as the Leader of the House (Mogalakwe 2008). As far back as March 1988, Parliament passed a motion calling on the executive, then under President Masire, to take steps forthwith to ensure parliament is detached from the Office of the President and becomes an independent institution. Masire and his government ignored the motion. Some 14 years later, in 2002, a Task Force was appointed to look into the 1988 motion. Its recommendations were tabled in parliament in 2004, but they were vociferously opposed by members of the executive, then headed by President Festus Mogae (Molomo 2012).

Speaking at the opening of the January 2017 Court of Session recently the President of the Botswana Court of Appeal, Judge President Ian Kirby confessed that ‘in Botswana there is no real separation between the executive and the legislature’. According to Kirby, the real separation of powers is between these two putative branches of government, which he characterised as ‘effectively one’ and the Judiciary, which he implored to remain independent and free of political influence. Kirby acknowledges Botswana's flawed democracy, The Botswana Gazette, 18^th January 2017.

According to Molomo, who was the Speaker of Botswana’s Eighth Parliament from 1999 to 2004, and is currently a member of the ruling party’s Council of Elders, ‘the Parliament of Botswana is a puppet of the executive’ (emphasis added) (2012, 291), firmly shackled by the executive, and its attempts to emancipate itself were a fiasco engineered by the executive (298). For Molomo: ‘The absence of autonomy and independence in the Parliament of Botswana constitutes the gravest democratic deficit in this lovely country’ (emphasis added) (476). Some 12 years later, the motion to detach parliament from the presidency has not been brought back to parliament, which is now under the control of General Ian Khama through his Vice President and Leader of the House. These excessive powers allowed to Botswana’s president were introduced during the Seretse Khama era, in order to neutralise the powers of the traditional leaders as alternative centres of political power in the newly founded Republic of Botswana (Sebele 2015). According to Chazan et al. (1999, 46), one of the characteristic features of the post-colonial state in Africa is the centralisation of power around the head of state or president and a process of consolidation with strong authoritarian and even repressive overtones. Contrary to popular perceptions, Botswana is no exception.

Catharina Groop (2017) takes an interest in the linkages between politico-institutional structures, possibilities for accountability and prevalence of corruption in the Botswana context. Her point of departure is the fact that corruption, although occurring, is a relatively uncommon phenomenon in Botswana, something that theoretically could be explained by efficient accountability. With this in mind, Groop studies principals’ possibilities to hold agents to account, the aim being to establish whether the relative uncommonness of corruption in the Botswana context can be explained through efficient accountability on the part of principals. Groop finds, however, that many principals do not have access to accountability mechanisms de jure, or do not make use of them in practice. As a result, she concludes that the relatively low levels of corruption in Botswana cannot be explained through accountability alone. Alongside accountability-related variables, she stresses the need to analyse the role of other factors such as informal rules, emphasising, among other things, the moral value of botho, which guides actors in the Botswana context, and which might hold a part-answer as to why corruption in Botswana is not more common than it is.

The stories of corruption coming out of Botswana, however, do not point to lower levels of corruption as much as the inability of the Botswana Directorate on Corruption and Economic Crime (DCEC) to deal with elite corruption, especially if it involves members of the executive arm of the state. Elite corruption has flourished under the current regime of General Ian Khama, who was also one of its early beneficiaries. When the Botswana Defence Force (BDF) was formed in 1977, his father, then President of Botswana, appointed him a Brigadier-General at the age of 23, above the heads of far more experienced officers from the then Botswana Police Mobile Unit (Mogalakwe 2008). Various newspapers in Botswana have reported on corrupt deals which have privileged the presidents’ family and friends. Not least of these has been Seleka Springs, Khama’s brothers’ company, which has long dominated the BDF’s defence procurements. The Khama brothers, including President Khama himself, and their friends, have been sole middlemen of especially lucrative BDF procurement deals, from fighter aircraft through to trainer and transport aircraft, and on to armoured vehicles and tanks. The BDF arms procurements have made President Khama and his brothers so wealthy that they have been referred to as Botswana’s ‘military millionaires’ (Motlogelwa and Civilini 2015).¹

A recent entrant to Botswana’s elite corruption industry is Col. Isaac Kgosi, President Ian Khama’s right-hand man and Director-General of the feared and loathed Directorate of Intelligence and Security (DIS). Like Ian Khama, Isaac Kgosi was parachuted ahead of other, more educated and experienced officers of the then Botswana Police Special Branch, by none other than Khama himself. Col. Kgosi had started working for Gen. Khama as a Junior Staff Officer, rising to be Khama’s Senior Staff Officer when Khama became the commander of the BDF. When Khama became Vice President, he insisted on Col. Kgosi coming along with him, as a condition for leaving the BDF to join the ruling party. When he became President in 2008, Khama made Kgosi the Director-General of the DISS, even though Col. Kgosi had very little formal education and lacked management experience. Isaac Kgosi has been involved in a running battle with the DCEC for some time now.² In 2014, the DCEC was reported to have finalised its investigations into the Kgosi corruption case, handing the docket (referenced DOC/IF/ 2011/001166) over to the Directorate of Public Prosecutions. The charges are thought to include abuse of office, fraud, theft, obtaining by false pretenses, giving false information, and money laundering.³ Col. Kgosi has yet to have his day in court.⁴

For Makgala and Botlhomilwe (2017) political corruption and the strong ‘link between BDP elite and army generals’ serves to illustrate the relationships between ‘politicians, businesspeople, and high ranking military leaders’ which together can be seen to form Botswana’s self-perpetuating ‘power elite’ (Mills 1956). Here, ‘political, economic and military powers combine through interwoven alliances’ (Mills 1956) to form a power elite whose interests drive policy and societal values in the direction it wants, regardless of democratic principles (Dye and Zeigler 1997, 155). The authors consider how Botswana’s limited economy, which leaves the state as the country’s main employer, has resulted in political participation coming to be seen as one of the main avenues to achieving wealth and social standing. This makes for a highly contested political field, which has become characterised by ‘debilitating factionalism’ and party defections from both the ruling and opposition parties, many seemingly related to opportunities for increased economic benefit (Makgala and Botlhomilwe 2017; Poteete 2012).

Side by side with elite corruption is Botswana’s much celebrated economic growth story. The World Bank (2015) acknowledges Botswana’s macroeconomic achievements as truly remarkable, in that, from independence in 1966 to the late 1990s, Botswana was one of the fastest growing economies in the world. But the Bank goes on to note that Botswana’s economic achievement has not been equally shared. While at independence Botswana was one of the 10 poorest countries in the world, some 50 years down the independence road, despite its remarkable economic achievements, it is now instead one of the 10 most unequal countries in the world, with high levels of extreme poverty. Out of these 10 most unequal countries in the world, Botswana is third, with a Gini-coefficient of 60.5, and 50% of the national income confined to the richest 10% of the population, while the poorest 10% have to make do with about 1% of the national income (World Bank 2015). According to the World Bank (2015), poverty in Botswana has a young face, with children less than 15 years of age representing about 46% of the poor, with larger households with more children having higher rates of poverty. The recent study on poverty in Botswana, the Botswana Core Welfare Indicators Survey, reveals the number of people living below the poverty datum line at national level declined from 30.6% in 2002/2003 to 20.7% in 2009/2010 (GoB 2011). However, the same report also reveals that some districts have recorded very high incidences of poverty in comparison to others. For example, in Kweneng West, the poverty rate was 48.6%, in Ngamiland West 47.3%, in Ghanzi 35.7% and in Kgalagadi 31.2% (GoB 2011).

According to Ulriksen (2017), Botswana’s much talked about ‘economic miracle’ status has not translated into the reduction of poverty and social inequality for her citizens. She argues that Botswana’s successful economic growth is also a story about poverty in the midst of plenty; of growth without development. Redistributive policies such as drought relief, feeding schemes, destitute policies and old age pensions have failed to achieve their desired goals. According to Ulriksen, Botswana’s mineral wealth has allowed for limited redistribution through tax and social transfer policies that are driven by the rich, who will generally have an interest in minimising costs for social transfers and in limiting the extent of taxation. Public spending on infrastructure and social services may be prioritised to ensure continued legitimacy, but highly redistributive policies which would be costly to the elites are unlikely to be promoted. Ulriksen posits that Botswana’s poverty and social inequality are an outcome of the political economy of natural resource wealth, with social transfers introduced only reluctantly, in a top-down manner, and only to ensure loyal support of the mainly rural poor. Perhaps herein lies the secret to the 50-year dominance of the BDP!

Botswana’s heavy dependence on diamonds leaves her vulnerable to changes in the global market, and at risk should the country’s diamond deposits prove exhausted, which some predict could happen by 2050 (Grynberg, Sengwaketse, and Motswapong 2015), bringing about an urgent need to diversify and expand the economy. One of the less talked about engines of economic growth is Botswana’s growing tourism industry, which currently contributes around 5% of the country’s annual GDP, making it the country’s second largest economic sector (Mathambo 2014; WTTC 2015). The state now has a deliberate focus on supporting tourism as a means to sustainable economic development (Stevens and Jansen 2002; Botswana Tourism Board 2008; Khama 2015).

Much of Botswana’s tourism industry centres around the extensive wildlife and wilderness areas concentrated mainly in the northern part of Botswana, in Chobe National Park, Moremi Wildlife Reserve and the Okavango Delta. The ecologically unique Okavango Delta is the ‘jewel’ of Botswana’s tourism industry; spanning about 16,000 km², it is the world’s largest undeveloped river catchment, and was declared the 1000th World Heritage Site in 2014 (Holland 2014; GoB 2016b). The Delta is also home to some of the most luxurious safari camps in Africa, and Botswana is becoming increasingly popular as an international tourism destination, for example, being chosen as Lonely Planet’s top country to visit in 2016 (2015). But despite the lauded success of Botswana’s tourism industry, many local communities have yet to see real benefits from an industry which could be said to be built upon their land and natural resources (Sebele 2010; Mbaiwa 2011; 2017). Ironically, Botswana’s multibillion Pula elite tourism industry, with its internationally recognised World Heritage Sites (the other being nearby Tsodilo Hills), is largely located in what is still one of the country’s most poverty stricken areas, Ngamiland West.

Mbaiwa (2005; 2017) points out that although tourism is such a lucrative industry, it has done very little to eradicate poverty, mainly due to its ‘enclave’ and ‘internal colonial character’. Internal colonialism in this context refers to a situation whereby natural resources in a host region mostly benefit outsiders, while the majority of locals derive little or no benefits. Mbaiwa’s research reveals a tourism industry which is mainly foreign controlled, with senior management positions generally in the hands of white expatriates. The state’s tourism policy since the 1990s has been ‘high value, low volume’ tourism (GoB 1990), which has left very little way for local communities to enter the tourism market as they are not able to develop expensive luxury accommodation facilities.

The industry currently has weak linkages with the domestic economy, offering very low wages to citizen employees, and being characterised by high revenue leakages because payments are generally made as packages paid outside the country (Burger 2007; Mbaiwa, 2017). This leads Mbaiwa (2017) to rightly point out that Botswana’s ‘enclave’ tourism cannot be classified as sustainable tourism, as it is so often promoted (e.g. Stevens and Jansen 2002; Spenceley and Syman 2016). The state’s more recent ecotourism policies, including the Eco Certification system (2010), can be said to focus more on the environment than on local people and their cultural and heritage resources, which alienates local communities and contributes to the erosion of local cultural knowledge and practices (Keitumetse 2009. See also Saarinen et al. 2009).

Tourism and conservation developments reflect the state’s top-down approach to land ownership and resource management, which is characterised by a lack of engagement with local stakeholders and a reluctance to devolve power because it would mean ‘leaving highly lucrative industry in the hands of the local people’ (Nelson and Agrawal 2008; Nelson 2010). The continual promotion of ‘unspoilt’ wilderness areas to conform to foreign tourists’ preconceived ideas about the ‘myth of wild Africa’ (Adams and McShane 1996) ignore the west’s ‘misreading of the African Landscape’ (Fairhead and Leach 1996, 2003), and the colonial legacy of land dispossession for the creation of these protected areas (Carruthers 2006; Beinart and Hughes 2007; Brockington 2007; Kepe 2008). Nowhere is this more apparent than in the continual marginalisation and exploitation of Botswana’s indigenous minority communities (Collister 2013), who have been systematically forced off their land in the name of conservation (Madzwamuse 2010; Winters 2014).

One of the companies that dominates Botswana’s tourism industry is Okavango Wilderness Safaris, which owns several lodges in the tourist hub. President Ian Khama and several of his family members are reported to have direct or indirect financial interests in the company and/or its subsidiaries.⁵ Wilderness Safaris describe themselves as the continent’s foremost ecotourism operator that shares ecotourism benefits with rural people.⁶ In an unprecedented development, in 2015 President Khama awarded the company a Presidential Order of Meritorious Service. Wilderness Safaris first came to public attention following the relocation of the Basarwa people from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (which had been created specifically to conserve both wildlife and the Basarwa’s way of life). The relocation was intended to free up their land to be ceded to conservation, tourism, fracking and diamond mining (Vidal 2014), with half of the reserve now reported to be allocated to multinationals (Barbee, Dutschke, and Smith 2013). The tourism industry continues to exploit indigenous minorities’ ‘San’ culture and heritage as a prime element to the exotic, wilderness tourism narrative promoted, while at the same time denying these communities rights to ancestral land, to cultural and livelihood practices, and with no access to tourism benefits beyond the minimal income from menial jobs or performing the staged authenticity (MacCannell 1973; West and Carrier 2004) promoted by exclusive luxury tourism operators. This has led to criticisms such as Survival International’s ongoing campaign for tourists to boycott Botswana’s tourism industry due to the ‘mistreatment of the San’ (Dingake 2013; Fabricius 2013; Haines and Booker 2016).

Not only is Khama reported to have tight control over Botswana’s tourism industry, he has appointed his younger brother as the Minister responsible for tourism, and is reportedly patron to all national environmental-based NGOs (Rihoy and Maguranyanga 2010, 59), considered by some to be the ‘Father of Conservation in Botswana’ (62), with his protectionist views towards conservation extending to involving the military in anti-poaching exercises (63). The increasing militarisation of conservation (Duffy 2010; Brockington and Duffy 2011; Lundstrum 2013) in the Botswana context and the involvement of political interests in conservation and tourism development offers another example of Botswana’s power elite at work.

Although it appears that neither the mineral wealth nor the lucrative tourism industry has been able to assist in the alleviation of poverty in Botswana, the World Bank (2015), seems to see a silver lining and posits that with adequate macro and social policies and strong focus on improving equity, Botswana can eradicate extreme poverty within a generation. But as Good notes (2017), presidentialism and elite corruption constitute the true essence of Botswana’s highly elitist and authoritarian democracy. Any attempt to eradicate poverty and social inequality in Botswana will thus require a very strong political commitment to redistributive social policies. Chances are, however, that the ruling party will continue to offer more of the same: minimum social transfers, or the proverbial crumbs from the table of the elite, in order to gain legitimacy. The last general elections, held in 2014, saw a massive swing to the left opposition, with the ruling party popular vote dropping to 48%, down from 53% in 2009. These elections followed a period of mass discontent, spearheaded by the Botswana Federation of Public Sector Unions (BOFEPUSU). But because of the spilt of the opposition’s vote, and Botswana’s electoral system of first past the post, the ruling BDP managed to survive. Nervous about the likelihood of a combined opposition victory in 2019, the ruling party has rushed through Parliament a law on electronic voting, a system that is susceptible to hacking, penetration and manipulation. It could be argued that the opposition has already lost the 2019 elections!⁷

With all these problems, how has Botswana continued to be regarded as an exemplar of democracy and good governance in Africa? Two factors come to mind. First, as mentioned above, is a very impressive macroeconomic performance at a time when most African economies were performing dismally. Second, when many African countries came under either one-party rule, military dictatorships or a combination of both, where elections were suspended altogether, or one-party elections were introduced (Lindberg 2006), Botswana (along with Senegal and Mauritius) has been a rare exception, continuing to hold regular elections every five years, the most recent having been in 2014, the 11th general elections since independence.

For Agreement Jotia (forthcoming), the state’s tightening control of the media is one of the biggest contributors to Botswana’s continued one-party dominant system. Jotia points out that the government has kept the main media outlets, especially Radio Botswana, Botswana Television and the Daily News, as departments in the Office of the President, where they function as government (read ruling party) mouthpieces. Although the government has followed overtly neoliberal economic policies and has vowed to retreat from direct participation in the economy, in order not to crowd out the private sector, when it comes to the media, the government has done the exact opposite. It has embarked on a deliberate path of directly competing with private sector media, which it views as hostile and anti-government, especially through the Daily News, which was commercialised in 1999 and is now getting the lion’s share of government advertising revenue. The government operates a national network of news bureaus and correspondents under the government-controlled Botswana Press Agency (BOPA). BOPA correspondents are civil servants governed by the Public Service Act and are under instruction to serve the government of the day, and by extension the ruling party (Mogalakwe and Sebudubudu 2006). As Jotia points out, this does not sit well with the basic tenets of liberal democracy, as it discourages and limits debates on national issues. The Botswana government has refused to grant operating licenses to community radio stations, claiming that such radio stations are divisive and undermine national cohesion. The 1994 Rwandan tragedy is often cited as a case in point. It can be argued, however, that the ruling party is not interested in encouraging pluralism, but rather seeks to maintain its political hegemony and legitimacy through control of public opinion, whist slowly bleeding the private media to death, for example, by pulling advertising from those who run articles which criticise government practices. The state’s persistent resistance to accepting a Freedom of Information bill certainly seems to indicate so. This bill is seen by many as one of main ways to begin to tackle the current government’s ‘culture of serial prohibitionism, gagging and reckless intimidation’ (Motswagole 2015).

The state’s attempts to muzzle opposing viewpoints during the 2011 strike, recent monitoring and intimidation of journalists by the DIS, and the increasing attacks against those who report on anything that can be considered ‘against the state’, such as the charge of sedition against Sunday Standard editor Outsa Makone in 2014 for publishing a story about the president being involved in a car accident that went unreported have raised serious flags about the state limiting media-freedom (Ontebetsi 2016; Jotia, forthcoming). Recent media-freedom indexes reflect that media-freedom in Botswana is deteriorating at an alarming pace (The African Media Barometer Botswana 2014; Freedom House 2016). Government also uses media censoring to limit coverage of environmental exploitation and human rights abuses, such as the mistreatment of minority groups and the continual marginalisation of Basarwa and Bakgalagadi communities (Nyamnjoh 2007; Collister 2013; Fabricius 2013; Haines and Booker 2016).

This leaves social media in an increasingly important position in Botswana, as it has the potential to ‘free the country from state media control’ (Jotia, forthcoming), by providing a platform for free speech, and by acting as watchdog to expose and more widely share news which the state is attempting to silence.

In the midst of this turmoil, Botswana has always featured very low in the World Happiness Report. The 2013 Report ranked Botswana 145th out of 156 counties surveyed. If Botswana is what it is said to be, why then are its citizens considered so unhappy? Following both Ulriksen and Jotia, it can be urged that a combination of factors contributes to Botswana’s dominant party system, namely the provision of minimum social transfers to the poor to buy their loyalty and the use of state media to cultivate legitimacy. It is hoped that the contributions that follow in this volume will help shed more light on this much talked about and little understood ‘Africa’s miracle and success story’.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on Contributors

Mogalakwe is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Botswana. He obtained his PhD (Sociology) from the University of Warwick. He is a long-time political activist and social commentator with research interests in the area of state-society relations. His publications such as Botswana: Exploding the Myth of Exceptionality (2008) and From Pre-colony to Post-Colony: continuities and discontinuities in political power and authority in Botswana (2006) are about Botswana's much vaunted, but deeply flawed ‘liberal democratic’ system. He can be contacted at: [email protected]

Francis B. Nyamnjoh is professor of social anthropology at the University of Cape Town. He is: a B1 rated Professor and Researcher by the South African National Research Foundation (NRF); a Fellow of the Cameroon Academy of Science since August 2011; a fellow of the African Academy of Science since December 2014; and a fellow of the Academy of Science of South Africa since 2016. He can be contacted at: [email protected]

Notes

1. For instance, Seleka Springs were awarded 33 out of 35 defence force tenders from 1998 (Ditlhase 2012). See also ‘Secret document links Khama to shady deals’, Sunday Standard, 28 September 2014; Kgathis’s BDF cover up. Botswana Guardian, December 2014; The Defence Deception, Khama’s Middlemen in P290m BDF aircraft deal. The Business Weekly and Review, 10 July 2015; Khama brothers rake millions from BDF tenders. The Patriot on Sunday, 12 July 2015; Batswana defrauded through hidden cost of BDF/DISS procurement. Sunday Standard, 15 May 2016.

2. See Kgosi – more suspicious cash trails uncovered, Sunday Standard, 6 July 2014; DCEC officer placed under DISS surveillance. Botswana Guardian Friday, April 2016; DISS launched ‘Black Op’ Spy attack against DCEC. Sunday Standard, 15 February 2015; US government spotlights Isaac Kgosi’s corruption case. Sunday Standard, 28 June 2015; Isaac Kgosi’s financier nets 500 million in OP/DISS deals. Sunday Standard, 29 November 2015; Plans to purge Kgosi’ s investigators-claim, Sunday Standard, 16 August 2015; Fresh evidence suggests Choppies bought off DISS, Sunday Standard 19 June 2016;

3. Sunday Standard, 7 June 2014.

4. Kgosi might not get prosecuted – DPP Director, Botswana Gazette, 7 January 2015.

5. See ‘Revealed: Khama’s stranglehold grip on tourism’, Mmegi Friday, 17 January 2014.

6. http://www.wilderness-safaris.com.

7. The fear of a hacked 2019 election, The Business Weekly and Review, Friday, 12 August 2016; The murky side of the electronic voting machines, and Parliamentary system rigged to push through electronic voting, Sunday Standard, 14 August 2016 (see also Botlhomilwe and Sebudubudu 2011).