Botswana’s Success Sparkles amid African Gloom

While the world has been watching the pathetic spectacle being played out in Harare, Zimbabwe, as Robert Mugabe clings desperately to the levers of power he has held for nearly three decades (see my report last week), not enough attention has been paid to the truly remarkable transition taking place contemporaneously just 500 miles to the west in Gaborone, Botswana. There, on March 31st, President Festus Gontebanye Mogae stepped down and was succeeded by his vice president, Seretse Khama Ian Khama (generally known as Ian Khama).

Sad though it is that the sight of an African head of state leaving office voluntarily is still a rare enough occurrence as to rate mention, what makes this particular handover all the more extraordinary was that Mogae was not leaving office because of age, infirmity, public pressure, defeat at the polls, or even the end of his elected term of office. In fact, Mogae had more than a year left on the five-year term to which he was reelected in October 2004 (Botswana is what could be described as a hybrid Westminster parliamentary democracy with the executive state president being elected by a majority vote of the newly returned legislators after each general election; there is also an advisory upper House of Chiefs).

However, having succeeded to the presidency upon the retirement of his predecessor, Sir Quett Ketumile Joni Masire, on April 1, 1998, Mogae faced the fact that the Batswana constitution set a limit of ten years on any incumbent's tenure as chief executive. Hence, as he simply stated at the end of his State of the Nation address last November: “Mr. Speaker, in accordance with the Constitution, I will leave the leadership of our country to His Honor the Vice President – a patriot, who I am sure will carry the mantle of leadership with distinction, as he has previously done.“

In contrast to the octogenarian Mugabe who, at least as of this writing, was refusing to give up the reins of state, and unlike Nigeria's septuagenarian Olusegun Obasanjo, who tried unsuccessfully to amend his country's constitution to allow for another term in office last year, and Cameroon's septuagenarian Paul Biya, who has already been in office since 1982 and whose rubber-stamp parliament will probably oblige him in the coming weeks by scrapping the limit on the number of times he can be “reelected” to a seven-year term of office, the 68-year-old Mogae's strict adherence to constitutional norms is quite remarkable. Even more remarkable is the fact that the Batswana took it for granted. As a March 28th editorial, Mmegi (“The Reporter”), the country's independent English-language daily newspaper, noted:

In a region where incumbent presidents and their cohorts unashamedly manipulate constitutions to extend their term in office, we have reason to be proud as Batswana that such undemocratic tendencies are a heresy we eschew. For it is ingrained in us as a people that transfer of power ought to be orderly and smooth. This is as much to the credit of President Mogae as it is to the people of Botswana who have internalized democracy to the point where it now seeps through our public actions.

In fact, rather than taking credit for heeding the law, Mogae has paid tribute to his predecessors – “the achievements our country has registered over the last ten years of my administration would not have been possible without the firm foundation of values, principles and commitment, which was laid by my predecessors, Sir Seretse Khama and Sir Ketumile Masire” – as well as homage to the citizens of Botswana:

Last but by no means least, let me pay tribute to every citizen, young and old, for choosing to make our country what it is today, a country that has chosen the path of peaceful political contest over conflict, progress over regression; a country with a rich democratic political tradition and something positive to demonstrate and contribute to the rest of the world.

Nor are their democratic, law-based politics – Botswana is the only African country to have maintained constitutional order without interruption since independence (the case of South Africa since its transition to majority rule being an exceptional and more recent case) – the only index whereby the Batswana have distinguished themselves from their neighbors. Although its economy grew by only a modest 4.7% last year, Botswana has long maintained one of the highest economic growth rates in the world, moving from the third poorest nation at its independence in 1966 to being an “upper middle income” country by the time it celebrated its pearl anniversary in 1996.

Last year, according to the International Monetary Fund, Botswana's nominal GDP per capita $7,270 puts it ahead of every Sub-Saharan African country except oil-rich Equatorial Guinea (where the division of GDP per capita is meaningless unless the only heads being counted are those belonging to the members of the Nguema-Obiang clan who have ruled without interruption since independence in 1968). In terms of GDP at purchasing power parity (PPP) per capita, the CIA's 2008 World Factbook puts Botswana, with its GDP (PPP) per capita of $14,700, ahead of Asian powerhouses like Malaysia ($14,400), Thailand ($8,000), the People's Republic of China ($5,300), and Vietnam ($2,600). The country has a negligible foreign debt and foreign reserves estimated to total some $9.6 billion at the end of last year. Not bad for a country that started out with all of a dozen kilometers of paved surface and a per capita income of $40.

So how is Botswana's impressive record to be explained?

It certainly helped that just one year after the British colonial authorities recognized the independence of their erstwhile Bechuanaland Protectorate, prospectors from De Beers discovered diamonds in the nascent state's north. The first mine at Orapa began production in 1972, followed by the smaller mines of Lethlakane and Damtshaa. Then, in 1982, Debswana, an equal partnership between the South African-based cartel and the government of Botswana, opened Jwaneng Diamond Mines about 100 miles west of the Batswana capital.

Jwaneng (the name means “a place of small stones”) is the world's richest diamond mine, producing more than 14 million carats a year. In terms of both raw carats and value, Botswana is the world's biggest producer of the gemstone. And with yet another mine, AK6, expected to become operational this year, experts estimate that the country has at least another sparkling half century to go before its reserves are depleted. As part of its license renewal in 2006, De Beers agreed to move its Diamond Trading Company (DTC) operation to Botswana. A DTC facility opened last month, selling to sixteen international firms which likewise set up shop in Botswana. By next year, all of De Beers sales – some 45% of total global production – will be marketed in Botswana, rather than London.

But resource wealth is not sufficient. Elsewhere the discovery of valuable natural resources, rather than being a catalyst for development, has actually reduced economic growth and, in the end, left countries poorer since the growth foregone may be greater the income they derived from commodity exports. If all this was not bad enough, researchers have noted that the negative economic impact of resource windfalls is compounded by their tendency to also worsen governance. New sources of revenue in polities which already suffer from lack of transparency only create further incentive to limit accountability, exacerbating the cycle of corruption. And since a rational tax system is not needed by regimes suddenly enriched by resource revenues, the general public and civil society organizations are further marginalized from the levers of power since they contribute little to the public treasury. Thus the would-be wealth turns out to be a “resource curse,” with affected nations experiencing economic underdevelopment, military conflict, and political mismanagement.

That such has not been the fate of Botswana owes something to the relative ethnic homogeneity of the 1.8 million inhabitants of the semi-arid Texas-sized country. Four-fifths hail from the Batswana (known in neighboring South Africa as the Tshwana) people, with several smaller groups making up the rest of the population. But even more is attributable to the country's first president, Sir Seretse Khama, grandson and heir to Khama III, last fully independent hereditary king (kgosi) of the Bamangwato, the largest of the eight principal divisions of the Batswana. Educated at Fort Hare University College and Balliol College, Oxford, Seretse Khama provoked a furor among the colonial authorities and the apartheid regime in neighboring South Africa by marrying Ruth Williams, an English law clerk whom he met while training to become a barrister at the Inner Temple. Botswana's new president, Ian Khama, born in 1953, is the second of the couple's four children. (The couple's love story is the subject of a 1990 film A Marriage of Inconvenience with Irish actress Niamh Cusak playing Ruth and African American actor-writer Ray Johnson as Seretse.)

Seretse Khama, who led Botswana until his death in 1980, and his successor Ketumile Masire, who governed until his retirement in 1998, were steadfastly committed to building a free society. Dr. George Ayittey, Distinguished Economist in Residence at the American University, is perhaps best known for his no-holds-barred excoriations of the incompetence and corruption of African leaders, especially those who seeking to import development models. Instead of looking abroad, his 2005 book Africa Unchained: The Blueprint for Africa's Future argued, “Botswana ought to be the 'African model' that should be replicated across the continent,” noting that

Largely due to Botswana's openness and a vibrant press, there is a refreshing absence of corruption – the bane of many African regimes. Botswana has a lively free press and freedom of expression … Botswana can find solutions to its economic problems because it permits free debate and freedom of expression. By contrast, the rest of black Africa is mired in an economic quagmire, for want of ideas and solutions to extricate itself.

It happens that free and open discussion of political topics was long institutionalized in Batswana culture with customary tribal gatherings, kgotla, which made kinds and chieftains answerable to their constituents. No subject is off-limits for the kgotla. In 1949, for example Seretse Khama's uncle Tshekedi challenged his interracial marriage and tried to have it annulled. After a series of kgotla at which Seretse and Ruth Khama appeared and submitted themselves to questioning, the tribal elders reaffirmed their allegiance to the future president as the kgosi. Thus, unlike other African polities I have written about here, the institutions of modern Botswana can claim organic continuity with the country's rich social, cultural, and political history.

Furthermore, the politics of racial resentment which Mugabe has exploited in Zimbabwe had no place in independent Botswana. Instead, Botswana's leaders forged a strong bond with the country's whites, who still make up some 7% of the population. Aside from occasional complaints concerning their treatment by some of the San Bushmen in southwestern Kalahari Desert – some of which grievances were very well justified as Botswana's independent judiciary ruled in a landmark case two years ago – the country is alone on the African continent of having no record of internal turmoil.

And, unlike other nationalist leaders, the elder Khama and Masire adopted a series of pro-market policies which paid rich dividends over the years, including low and stable taxes for foreign investors (there are no restrictions on foreign ownership), liberal trade terms (foreign exchange controls were abolished in 1999), and low income tax rates for its citizens and businesses (the corporate tax rate is 15%); Botswana, ranking in at 36 out of 157 countries measured, has the highest score of any African country on the Heritage Foundation's 2008 Index of Economic Freedom. On Transparency International consistently rates Botswana as Africa's least corrupt country and, in the 2007 edition of the group's Corruption Perception Index, actually ranked it ahead of half the membership of the European Union.

Not surprisingly, U.S.-Botswana ties are excellent, having transcended the donor-recipient relationship that places an awkward strain on American dealings with most African countries because the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) phased out its longstanding bilateral partnership with Botswana in 1996, after successful education, training, entrepreneurship, environmental management, and reproductive health programs had largely fulfilled their objectives. Quite simply, the Batswana were capable of managing on their own with minimal outside assistance in some specialized epidemiological areas such tuberculosis, where the Ministry of Health has partnered with the Centers for Disease Control, and HIV/AIDS, where Botswana is one of the fifteen focus countries for the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and the beneficiary of some $230 million in assistance since 2004.

Moreover, Botswana is a partner in a number of U.S. strategic initiatives to promote capacity and enhance security throughout the region. The country hosts a massive Voice of America (VOA) relay station which transmits to most of the African continent. In 2000, the U.S. and Batswana governments entered into an agreement to establish an International Law Enforcement Academy (ILEA) as part of an initiative launched by President Bill Clinton five years earlier to create a network of such institutions throughout the world to combat international drug trafficking, criminality, and terrorism through strengthened international cooperation. (ILEA Budapest opened that year, while ILEA Bangkok started its first courses in 1999; subsequently, ILEA Roswell, New Mexico, opened in 2001, followed by ILEA Lima in 2005.)

Under the terms of the U.S.-Batswana accord, the two countries cooperate to provide training for middle managers from member countries of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) as well as East African and other eligible countries in sub-Saharan Africa. The government of Botswana provides a managing director and his or her deputy as well as the administrative and technical staff of ILEA Gaborone. A program director and two deputy program directors are provided by the United States. Non-resident trainers from the United States and the host country provide instruction. The host government, the U.S. Embassy in Botswana, and U.S. law enforcement agencies provide other significant human, logistic and material support. As of the end of 2007, ILEA Gaborone had trained 3,246 law enforcement officials.

The Botswana Defense Force (BDF) – of which President Ian Khama served as commander, with the rank of lieutenant general, until his retirement in 1997 – is a capable, well-disciplined professional force of approximately 12,000. Since the transition to majority rule in neighboring South Africa, the BDF has focused mainly on anti-poaching activities, disaster-preparedness, and peacekeeping. The United States has been the largest single contributor to the development of the BDF, and a large segment of its officer corps has received U.S. training at the cost of barely $600,000 per year in recent years.

According to the U.S. State Department's fiscal year 2009 budget justification to Congress, is Botswana is considered “a model for civilian-military relations for the rest of the continent” as well as “the most reliable supporter of the formation of the United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) in the Southern African region.” (The mere willingness of President Mogae and then-Vice President Khama to even entertain the unlikely possibility that AFRICOM could be based in Botswana is extraordinary, given the strong opposition to the initiative by South Africa which I have previously reported here.)

Botswana's sustained success, especially when contrasted with the unmitigated failures experienced by many of its neighbors, clearly demonstrates that the right institutions, leaders, and choices can make all the difference. Former President Mogabe's valedictory to his country should encourage other African countries to follow Botswana's example: “Whatever our challenges, ours is a land of hope and promise.”

J. Peter Pham is Director of the Nelson Institute for International and Public Affairs at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia. He is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies in Washington, D.C., as well as Vice President of the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA). In addition to the study of terrorism and political violence, his research interests lie at the intersection of international relations, international law, political theory, and ethics, with particular concentrations on the implications for United States foreign policy and African states as well as religion and global politics.

Dr. Pham is the author of over two hundred essays and reviews on a wide variety of subjects in scholarly and opinion journals on both sides of the Atlantic and the author, editor, or translator of over a dozen books. Among his recent publications are Liberia: Portrait of a Failed State (Reed Press, 2004), which has been critically acclaimed by Foreign Affairs, Worldview, Wilson Quarterly, American Foreign Policy Interests, and other scholarly publications, and Child Soldiers, Adult Interests: The Global Dimensions of the Sierra Leonean Tragedy (Nova Science Publishers, 2005).

In addition to serving on the boards of several international and national think tanks and journals, Dr. Pham has testified before the U.S. Congress and conducted briefings or consulted for both Congressional and Executive agencies. He is also a frequent contributor to National Review Online's military blog, The Tank.