Between two Chinas and two Koreas: African agency and non-alignment in 1970s Botswana

ABSTRACT

This article explains Botswana’s non-aligned stance at the United Nations in the 1970s. It focuses on two diplomatic wars between China and Taiwan, and between North Korea and South Korea. Botswana’s position was challenged by intimidation from South Africa and Rhodesia, and threats to cut aid from the United States. Gaborone was concerned with building its legitimacy among African states who questioned Botswana’s anti-colonial and anti-apartheid credentials. President Seretse Khama, when managing Cold War and southern African geopolitics, used the China and Korea questions to assert Botswana’s agency and sovereignty as a non-aligned state.

KEYWORDS:

• Botswana
• non-alignment
• United Nations
• China
• Korea

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Roland Burke for generous feedback and guidance on the research. The archival staff at the Botswana National Archives and Records Services in Gaborone, the National Archives of the United Kingdom, the Senate House Library at the University of London, and the Hoover Institution Library and Archives at Stanford University were exceedingly helpful in acquiring material. The article was enriched by insightful discussions with Holly Wilson, Jayne Rantall, and Jackie Hopkins at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia. This work is dedicated to the memory of Pasquale Molluso.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ Foreign and Commonwealth Office brief on Seretse, 3 November 1970, FCO 45/704, The National Archives, Kew (TNA); Embassy Gaborone to Department of State, 12 June 1978, Central Foreign Policy Files, 1973–79 Electronic Telegrams, 1978GABORO01773, RG 59, US National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), College Park, Maryland, US.

² Record of Heath’s meeting with Seretse, 6 November 1970, FCO 45/704, TNA.

³ Anderson to Foster, 17 May 1973, FCO 45/1282, TNA.

⁴ Natasa Miskovic, “Introduction,” in The Non-Aligned Movement and the Cold War: Delhi – Bandung – Belgrade, ed. Natasa Miskovic, Harald Fischer-Tiné, and Nada Boskovska (Abingdon: Routledge, 2014), 13; Robert J. McMahon, ed., The Cold War in the Third World (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013).

⁵ Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 74, 396.

⁶ Elizabeth Schmidt, Cold War and Decolonization in Guinea, 1946–1958 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2007), 5; Sergey Mazov, A Distant Front in the Cold War: The USSR in West Africa and the Congo, 1956–1964 (Washington: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2010).

⁷ Matthew Connelly, “Taking Off the Cold War Lens: Visions of North-South Conflict during the Algerian War for Independence,” The American Historical Review 105, no. 3 (2000): 742. See also Bevan Sewell and Scott Lucas, “Introduction,” in Challenging US Foreign Policy: America and the World in the Long Twentieth Century, ed. Bevan Sewell and Scott Lucas (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 1–2.

⁸ Jason Parker, “Ideology, Race and Nonalignment in US Cold War Foreign Relations: or, How the Cold War Racialized Neutralism Without Neutralizing Race,” in Challenging US Foreign Policy, ed. Sewell and Lucas, 75–98.

⁹ Jürgen Dinkel, “‘Third World Begins to Flex its Muscles’: The Non-Aligned Movement and the North-South Conflict during the 1970s,” in Neutrality and Neutralism in the Global Cold War: Between or Within the Blocs? ed. Sandra Bott and others (Milton Park: Routledge, 2016), 108–23.

¹⁰ Gerard McCann, “From Diaspora to Third Worldism and the United Nations: India and the Politics of Decolonizing Africa,” Past and Present 218, supplement 8 (2013): 259–60.

¹¹ Janick Marina Schaufelbuehl and others, “Non-Alignment, the Third Force, or Fence-Sitting: Independent Pathways in the Cold War,” The International History Review 37, no. 5 (2015): 902.

¹² Natasa Miskovic, “Introduction,” 13; Robert J. McMahon, “Introduction,” in The Cold War, ed. McMahon, 3–4, 8–9.

¹³ Frederick Cooper, “Conflict and Connection: Rethinking Colonial African History,” The American Historical Review 99, no. 5 (1994): 1516–45; Frank Gerits, “‘When the Bull Elephants Fight’: Kwame Nkrumah, Non-Alignment, and Pan-Africanism as an Interventionist Ideology in the Global Cold War (1957–66),” The International History Review 37, no. 5 (2015): 953, 964.

¹⁴ Ian Taylor, “Botswana’s ‘Independent Foreign Policy’: Gaborone-Beijing Relations,” Botswana Notes and Records 30 (1998): 79–86; Maitseo Bolaane, “China’s Relations with Botswana: An Historical Perspective,” in Afro-Chinese Relations: Past, Present and Future, ed. Kwesi Kwaa Prah (Cape Town: Centre for Advanced Studies of African Society, 2007), 142–74.

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¹⁶ Richard Dale, Botswana’s Search for Autonomy in Southern Africa (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1995).

¹⁷ Fred Morton and Jeff Ramsay, eds., The Birth of Botswana: A History of the Bechuanaland Protectorate from 1910 to 1966 (Gaborone: Longman Botswana, 1987); W. A. Edge and M. H. Lekorwe, eds., Botswana: Politics and Society (Pretoria: J. L. van Schaik Academic, 1998).

¹⁸ Ronald Hyam, The Failure of South African Expansion 1908–1948 (London: The Macmillan Press, 1972).

¹⁹ Hendrik Verwoerd, Dr. H. F. Verwoerd on I. Crisis in World Conscience II. The Road to Freedom for: Basutoland, Bechuanaland, Swaziland (Pretoria: Department of Information, 1963), 12; Saul Dubow, Apartheid: 1948–1994 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 105–13.

²⁰ Susan Williams, Colour Bar: The Triumph of Seretse Khama and His Nation (London: Penguin Books, 2007).

²¹ Barry Morton, Jeff Ramsay, and Fish Keitseng, Comrade Fish: Memories of a Motswana in the ANC Underground (Gaborone: Pula Press, 1999).

²² James Kirby, “‘Conditional on a Bill of Rights’: Race and Human Rights in the Constitution of Botswana, 1960–66,” law&history 4, no. 1 (2017): 30–61.

²³ Tom Lodge, Sharpeville: An Apartheid Massacre and its Consequences (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011); Luise White, Unpopular Sovereignty: Rhodesian Independence and African Decolonisation (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2015).

²⁴ For accounts of Botswana’s success, see Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty (New York: Crown Business, 2012); J. Clark Leith, Why Botswana Prospered (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2005). For important counter arguments, see Kenneth Good, “Interpreting the Exceptionality of Botswana,” The Journal of Modern African Studies 30, no. 1 (1992): 69–95; Ellen Hillbom, “Diamonds or Development? A Structural Assessment of Botswana’s Forty Years of Success,” Journal of Modern African Studies 46, no. 2 (2008): 191–214.

²⁵ James Kirby, “‘Our Bantustans Are Better Than Yours’: Botswana, the United States, and Human Rights Idealism in the 1970s,” International History Review 29, no. 5 (2017): 860–84; Policy Planning Council, “National Policy Paper, Southern Africa,” 20 November 1968, Department of State, Office of the Historian, Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) 1964–1968, Volume XXIV, Africa, Document 409.

²⁶ James Kirby, “‘What has Ghana got that we Haven’t?’: Party Politics and the Right to National Self-Determination in Botswana, 1960–1966,” The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 45, no. 6 (2017): 1049–74.

²⁷ Seretse, speech to welcome Kaunda, 21 May 1968, Botswana National Bibliography (BNB) 1164, Botswana National Archives and Records Services, Gaborone (BNARS); Nyerere, speech at banquet given in honour of Seretse, 28 August 1973, FCO 45/1272, TNA.

²⁸ Seretse, Presidential address delivered at the National Congress at Lobatsi, 28 March 1964, Political Parties Material, Botswana Democratic Party (PP.BS.BDP), Senate House Library, University of London (SHL); Seretse, “The President’s Election Message,” January 1965, PP.BS.BDP, SHL.

²⁹ Seretse, Presidential address at eighth annual conference in Kanye, 5 April 1969, BNB 9100, BNARS.

³⁰ Nwako, statement at Preparatory Conference of Non-Aligned Countries in Dar es Salaam, April 1970, in Non-Aligned Conference: Lusaka, 1970 (Gaborone: Government Printer, 1970), 12–13.

³¹ Seretse, statement at the Third Summit Conference of Non-Aligned Nations in Lusaka, 8–10 September 1970, in Non-Aligned Conference, 3–4.

³² Seretse, speech at Democratic Party conference in Molepolole, 28 March 1970, 45/433, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO).

³³ Wei Song, “Seeking New Allies in Africa: China’s Policy towards Africa during the Cold War as Reflected in the Construction of the Tanzania–Zambia Railway,” Journal of Modern Chinese History 9, no. 1 (2015): 46–65.

³⁴ B. K. Gills, Korea versus Korea: A Case of Contested Legitimacy (London: Routledge, 1996), 164.

³⁵ Kwante M. C. Kwante and Boga Thura Manatsha, “Origins and Dynamics of the Botswana-Soviet Union Relations, 1960s to 1990,” Botswana Notes and Records 48 (2016): 91–2.

³⁶ Anthony Lake, The Tar Baby Option: American Policy toward Southern Rhodesia (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976), 123–57. See also, under ‘Option 2’, National Security Council Interdepartmental Group for Africa, “Study in Response to National Security Study Memorandum 39: Southern Africa”, 9 December 1969, FRUS 1969–1976, Volume XXVIII, Southern Africa, Document 17.

³⁷ John Daniel, “Racism, the Cold War and South Africa’s Regional Security Strategies 1948–1990,” in Cold War in Southern Africa: White Power, Black Liberation, ed. Sue Onslow (London: Routledge, 2009), 41.

³⁸ Embassy Gaborone to Department of State, 22 August 1975, Box/Folder 4:4, David Benjamin Bolen Papers (DBB), Hoover Institution Library and Archives, Stanford University.

³⁹ Piero Gleijeses, Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa, 1959–1976 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2002).

⁴⁰ On cross-Taiwan Strait relations, see C. X. George Wei, “The Taiwan Issue and the Taiwan Factor: Studying Cross-Strait Relations within the Global Context,” in China-Taiwan Relations in a Global Context: Taiwan’s Foreign Policy and Relations, ed. C. X. George Wei (New York: Routledge, 2012), 1–11.

⁴¹ Seretse, Molomo, and Sim, 26 March 1965, in Official Report of the Debates of the First Meeting of the First Session (Gaborone: Bechuanaland Legislative Assembly, 1965), 55, 57, 62.

⁴² Latimer to British Government Representative in Maseru, 15 July 1965, CO 1048/638, TNA; Latimer to Campbell, 12 August 1965, CO 1048/638, TNA.

⁴³ Syson to Anderson, 28 February 1971, FCO 45/809, TNA.

⁴⁴ Anderson to Wilson, 20 January 1970, FCO 45/436, TNA.

⁴⁵ Yearbook of the United Nations 1971, The Yearbook of the United Nations, https://www.unmultimedia.org/searchers/yearbook/page.jsp?volume=1971&bookpage=126 (accessed 28 December 2017); Philip Hsiaopong Liu, “Dual Representation: Reviewing the Republic of China’s Last Battle in the UN,” Issues & Studies 47, no. 2 (2011): 87–118.

⁴⁶ Anderson to Wilson, 22 December 1970, FCO 45/809, TNA.

⁴⁷ Yearbook of the United Nations 1969, The Yearbook of the United Nations, https://www.unmultimedia.org/searchers/yearbook/page.jsp?volume=1969&bookpage=153 (accessed 28 December 2017); Yearbook of the United Nations 1970, The Yearbook of the United Nations, https://www.unmultimedia.org/searchers/yearbook/page.jsp?volume=1970&bookpage=194 (accessed 28 December 2017); Parsons to Wilson, 5 January 1971, FCO 45/809, TNA.

⁴⁸ Anderson to Wilson, 6 December 1971, FCO, 45/809, TNA.

⁴⁹ Anderson to Wilson, 6 December 1971, FCO 45/809, TNA.

⁵⁰ Haig to Nixon, October 1971, FRUS 1969–1976, Volume V, United Nations, 1969–1972, Document 422.

⁵¹ Nixon, Oval Office conversation, 22 October 1971, nixontapes.org, http://nixontapeaudio.org/chron2/rmn_e599b.mp3 (accessed 28 December 2017).

⁵² Nixon, Oval Office conversation, 28 October 1971, nixontapes.org, http://nixontapeaudio.org/chron2/rmn_e606a.mp3 (accessed 4 January 2018).

⁵³ Nixon and Kissinger, Oval Office conversation, 27 October 1971, http://nixontapeaudio.org/chron2/rmn_e608a.mp3 (accessed 28 December 2017).

⁵⁴ Office of the President, “Chinese Representation at the United Nations,” 7 October 1971, FCO 45/809, TNA; “Botswana Voted for Seating Peking,” Botswana Daily News, 26 October 1971.

⁵⁵ Thomas Tlou, Neil Parsons, and Willie Henderson, Seretse Khama 1921–80 (Braamfontein: Macmillan, 1995), 302.

⁵⁶ “Ties will be strengthened,” Botswana Daily News, 1 November 1971; Anderson to Moore, 17 November 1971 and 1 December 1971, FCO 45/809, TNA.

⁵⁷ Botswana Democratic Party, “Election Manifesto: Build Botswana,” 1974, 2464, BNB, BNARS.

⁵⁸ Embassy Taipei to Department of State, 8 April 1974, RG 59, Central Foreign Policy Files, 1973–79 Electronic Telegrams, 1974TAIPEI02170, NARA.

⁵⁹ Embassy Gaborone to Department of State, 8 January 1975, RG 59, Central Foreign Policy Files, 1973–79 Electronic Telegrams, 1975GABORO00034, NARA.

⁶⁰ Embassy Gaborone to Department of State, 2 September 1976, RG 59, Central Foreign Policy Files, 1973–79 Electronic Telegrams, 1975GABORO01164, NARA.

⁶¹ Jeremy Friedman, Shadow Cold War: The Sino-Soviet Competition for the Third World (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2015), 198–201; Gregg A. Brazinsky, Winning the Third World: Sino-American Rivalry during the Cold War (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2017), 309. See also Ian Taylor, China and Africa: Engagement and Compromise (London: Routledge, 2006), 34, 37, 43–4.

⁶² Tlou, Parsons, and Henderson, Seretse Khama, 332–3.

⁶³ Gwendolen M. Carter and E. Philip Morgan, eds., From the Frontline: Speeches of Sir Seretse Khama (London: Rex Collings, 1980).

⁶⁴ Seretse Khama, Speeches by His Excellency the President, Sir Seretse Khama, on the Occasion of his Visits to India, United States of America, United Kingdom, Canada, China and North Korea (Gaborone: The Government Printer, 1976), 27–38.

⁶⁵ Embassy Gaborone to Department of State, 19 October 1976, RG 59, Central Foreign Policy Files, 1973–79 Electronic Telegrams, 1976GABORO01923, NARA; Masire, 6 December 1978, in Official Report of the First Meeting of the Fifth Session of the Third Parliament (Gaborone: Government Printer, 1978).

⁶⁶ Department of State to US Delegation, 30 December 1976, RG 59, Central Foreign Policy Files, 1973–79 Electronic Telegrams, 1976STATE313047, NARA; Embassy Mbabane to Department of State, 21 July 1978, RG 59, Central Foreign Policy Files, 1973–79 Electronic Telegrams, 1978MBABAN02507, NARA.

⁶⁷ Embassy Gaborone to Department of State, 5 December 1978, RG 59, Central Foreign Policy Files, 1973–79 Electronic Telegrams, 1978GABORO03832, NARA.

⁶⁸ Embassy Gaborone to Department of State, 9 June 1977, RG 59, Central Foreign Policy Files, 1973–79 Electronic Telegrams, 1978GABORO00812, NARA.

⁶⁹ Stephen R. Lewis Jr., ed., Quett Ketumile Joni Masire: Very Brave or Very Foolish? Memoirs of an African Democrat (Gaborone: Macmillan Botswana Publishing, 2006), 300.

⁷⁰ Bolaane, “China’s Relations with Botswana,” 147–8.

⁷¹ Jamie Miller, An African Volk: The Apartheid Regime and its Search for Survival (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 10.

⁷² Benjamin R. Young, “An Emotional Relationship: Trust, Admiration, and Fear in North Korea-Zimbabwe Relations, 1976-1988,” S/N Korean Humanities 4, no. 2 (2018): 130; Benjamin R. Young, “Not There for the Nutmeg: North Korean Advisors in Grenada and Pyongyang’s Internationalism, 1979–1983,” Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review 7, no. 2 (2018): 367–8.

⁷³ Lyong Choi and Il-young Jeong, “North Korea and Zimbabwe, 1978–1982: From the Strategic Alliance to the Symbolic Comradeship between Kim Il Sung and Robert Mugabe,” Cold War History 17, no. 4 (2017): 331–4; Gills, Korea versus Korea, 98, 145, 188.

⁷⁴ “North Korean Delegation Visits Botswana,” Botswana Daily News, 28 February 1973; Anderson to Cook, 8 March 1973, FCO 45/1283, TNA.

⁷⁵ Embassy Seoul to Department of State, 7 April 1973, RG 59, Central Foreign Policy Files, 1973–79 Electronic Telegrams, 1973SEOUL02125, NARA; US Mission UN to Department of State, 26 October 1973, RG 59, Central Foreign Policy Files, 1973–79 Electronic Telegrams, 1973USUNN04388, NARA.

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⁷⁷ Yearbook of the United Nations 1974, The Yearbook of the United Nations, https://www.unmultimedia.org/searchers/yearbook/page.jsp?volume=1974&bookpage=173 (accessed 31 December 2017).

⁷⁸ Embassy Gaborone to Department of State, 14 November 1973, RG 59, Central Foreign Policy Files, 1973–79 Electronic Telegrams, 1973GABORO01666, NARA.

⁷⁹ Yeon and Bolen, memorandum of conversation, 27 June 1974, 5:2, DBB.

⁸⁰ Embassy Gaborone to Department of State, 22 August 1974, 5:2, DBB.

⁸¹ Department of State to Embassy Seoul, 10 October 1974, RG 59, Central Foreign Policy Files, 1973–79 Electronic Telegrams, 1974STATE223504, NARA; US Mission UN to Department of State, 15 November 1974, RG 59, Central Foreign Policy Files, 1973–79 Electronic Telegrams, 1974USUNN05096, NARA.

⁸² US Mission UN to Department of State, 23 November 1974, RG 59, Central Foreign Policy Files, 1973–79 Electronic Telegrams, 1974USUNN05364, NARA; US Mission UN to Department of State, 4 December 1974, RG 59, Central Foreign Policy Files, 1973–79 Electronic Telegrams, 1974USUNN05662, NARA.

⁸³ Embassy Gaborone to Department of State, 5 December 1974, RG 59, Central Foreign Policy Files, 1973–79 Electronic Telegrams, 1974GABORO01665, NARA.

⁸⁴ US Mission UN to Department of State, 27 November 1974, RG 59, Central Foreign Policy Files, 1973–79 Electronic Telegrams, 1974USUNN05463, NARA; Embassy Gaborone to Department of State, 27 November 1974, RG 59, Central Foreign Policy Files, 1973–79 Electronic Telegrams, 1974GABORO01630, NARA.

⁸⁵ Embassy Gaborone to Department of State, 5 December 1974, RG 59, Central Foreign Policy Files, 1973–79 Electronic Telegrams, 1974GABORO01661, NARA.

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⁸⁸ Embassy Gaborone to Department of State, 7 August 1975, 4:4, DBB.

⁸⁹ Embassy Gaborone to Department of State, 27 October 1975, RG 59, Central Foreign Policy Files, 1973–79 Electronic Telegrams, 1975GABORO01458, NARA.

⁹⁰ Embassy Gaborone to Department of State, 25 September and 17 October, 4:4, DBB; Embassy Gaborone to Department of State, 2 October 1975, 6:3, DBB.

⁹¹ Embassy Gaborone to Department of State, 22 August 1975, 4:4, DBB; Embassy Gaborone to Department of State, 28 August 1975, 5:2, DBB.

⁹² Benjamin R. Young, “The Struggle for Legitimacy: North Korea’s Relations with Africa, 1965–1992,” BAKS Papers 16 (2015): 102.

⁹³ Seretse, Speeches, 39–42.

⁹⁴ Emphasis added. Tlou, Parsons, and Henderson, Seretse Khama, 333–4.

⁹⁵ “Resolution 403: Botswana-Southern Rhodesia,” 14 January 1977, United Nations Security Council Resolutions, http://unscr.com/en/resolutions/403 (accessed 24 August 2018).

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⁹⁷ Gerits, “When the Bull Elephants Fight,” 964.

⁹⁸ Poppy Cullen, “‘Playing Cold War Politics’: The Cold War in Anglo-Kenyan Relations in the 1960s,” Cold War History 18, no. 1 (2017): 40. doi:10.1080/14682745.2017.1387774. On specifically urban settings, see George Roberts, “The Assassination of Eduardo Mondlane: FRELIMO, Tanzania, and the Politics of Exile in Dar es Salaam,” Cold War History 17, no. 1 (2017): 2.

⁹⁹ Aden Knaap, “Reintegrating Apartheid into Post-War Global History: An Interview with Jamie Miller,” The Toynbee Prize Foundation, 20 December 2017, http://toynbeeprize.org/interviews/jamie-miller/ (accessed 31 December 2017).

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James Kirby

James Kirby is a COFUND Junior Research Fellow in History at Durham University. He completed a PhD thesis in 2017 entitled ‘Beacon of Hope: Human Rights and Decolonisation in Botswana, 1960-80’. His work on Botswana has previously been published in The International History Review, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, and law & history.