Related Papers
Botswana Politics and Society Chapter 8
THE EMERGENCE OF NATIONALIST POLITICAL PARTIES IN BOTSWANA by JEFF RAMSAY
1998 •
Jeff Ramsay
In 1960 the Bechuanaland People's Party (BPP) emerged as Botswana's first mass-based political party, having been preceded by a variety of localized, elitist, and/or externally based organizations. In its early months, the BPP made rapid progress in mobilizing support along the eastern line of rail. In its pioneering freedom squares, it called for immediate independence, while attacking racism and royal privilege. But the party ultimately failed to attract significant support in most of the rural reserves. Compromised by internal power struggles of its own making, after 1962 the BPP was eclipsed by the Bechuanaland Democratic Party (BDP), which began as a coalition of educated local notables. Although generally more moderate in its rhetoric than its BPP counterparts, leading members of the BDP were equally determined to transfer power from the chiefs and colonialists to a centralized national democratic government. The BDP's 1965 landslide victory in Botswana's first one-person-one-vote election established an electoral pattern that would survive for another quarter century.
The Making of a President: Sir Ketumile Masire's Early Years
THE MAKING OF A PRESIDENT -SIR KETUMILE MASIRE'S EARLY YEARS
1994 •
Jeff Ramsay, Barry Morton
Over the past three decades, His Excellency Sir Ketumile Masire has been the leading architect of modern Botswana. Yet despite his importance very little is known about him. The following account of his rise to leadership is a revised version of a nine-part series which appeared in the Botswana Gazette newspaper in July-September 1993. We are indebted to the Gazette's managing editor, Clara Taukobong Olsen, and her staff for their help in preparing the series. As was the case with our original articles, this text merely seeks to shed light on aspects of the President's early life. The material we have collected is inadequate for a more comprehensive biography. Moreover, the time is not yet ripe for such a project as some of its most important chapters belong to our present future. We also feel that the Masire presidency is still too recent to give us sufficient historical perspective, and so we stopped at 1980. But we hope that modest effort has at least made a start at describing a man with an interesting and important career.
Historia
The politics of renaming 'colonial' streets in Francistown, Botswana
2014 •
Boga Manatsha
Francistown is located in the North East district (part of the former Tati district) in Botswana. It was "founded" in 1897 by Daniel Francis, an English prospector and the first director of the Tati Concessions (today called the Tati Company). The Tati Concessions administered the Tati district like a colony within a protectorate after annexing and effectively colonising it in the 1880s. It was not until 1969 that the company eased its total control over Francistown owing to pressure from the pan-Africanist Botswana People's Party formed in 1960. A former settler city, Francistown's street names replicate a typical European city. Since 2008, there has been pressure, mainly from councillors in the Francistown City Council, to change the city's name, rename colonial streets and some public buildings after local "heroes and heroines". In February 2011, the city's full council finally passed a motion to rename colonial streets. The proposed names are ...
Pula: Botswana Journal of African Studies
The politics of exclusion in Botswana: A creation of the independence constitutional talks
2015 •
Kekgaoditse Suping
This article analyses the development of a political system in Botswana with a focus on the constitutional talks leading to the country’s independence. It examines the constitutional negotiations and argues that the manner in which they were conducted, and the setting in which there was no nationalist movement, political party or civil society representation gave birth to a political system of exclusion where political power and access to it are limited to a few people. The article argues that the relations between the executive and parliament, questions of accountability, elections and voting, and the relations between the government and the civil society have also been shaped or predetermined by the undemocratic circ*mstances under which the Botswana constitution was formed. In post-independence Botswana, as much as there are consultations with the people on a number of issues of national concern, such consultations are a mere formality as they fail to reflect and represent the vo...
TRADITIONAL LEADERSHIP: SOME REFLECTIONS ON MORPHOLOGY OF CONSTITUTIONALISM AND POLITICS OF DEMOCRACY IN BOTSWANA
city boy
BOTSWANA POLITICS AND SOCIETY CHAPTER 6
TWENTIETH CENTURY ANTECEDENTS OF DECOLONISING NATIONALISM IN BOTSWANA BY JEFF RAMSAY
1998 •
Jeff Ramsay
Decolonising nationalism, as expressed through mass-based political parties, only emerged in Botswana in the 1950s. The relatively late formation of nationalist political parties can be largely attributed to two factors that had characterized the Protectorate: a peculiar twentieth-century relationship between nationalist sentiment and support for British overrule, and the survival of traditional Setswana political culture within the colonial context. During the Protectorate's last decade both of these conditions were altered by a combination of internal and external initiatives. There were, however, significant undercurrents of non-traditional political activity within Botswana dating from the 1920s. after the Second World War, these undercurrents began to surface through local political competition.
Alternation - Interdisciplinary Journal for the Study of the Arts and Humanities in Southern Africa
The Discourse of Tribalism in Botswana’s 2019 General Elections
2020 •
Andy Chebanne, Leonard Sesa
Continuity and Change in Botswana's Democracy: An Assessment of the Presidency
Boikanyo Modungwa
This study presents an analysis of the presidency in Botswana from 1966 to 2013. It explores the character of presidential power, how that power has been used since 1966 and how the presidency has changed over the past five decades. The paper traces the constitutional, institutional and external and internal socio-political dynamics that have facilitated the centralisation of power in the presidency. It further explores the relationship between the presidency and institutions established to deepen Botswana’s democracy. Lastly, it explores each President’s tenure. It concludes that the presidency remains an impediment to deeper democracy in Botswana.
The Elite as a Critical Factor in National Development : The case of Botswana
2011 •
Patrick Molutsi
SSRN Electronic Journal
An African Success Story: Botswana
2001 •
Daron Rock
