History

Between the 1880’s and its independence in the 1960’s, Botswana was a poor and peripheral British protectorate known as Bechuanaland. The country is named after its dominant ethnic group, the Tswana or Batswana and the national language is called Setswana.

Since the 1960’s, Botswana has gained international stature as a peaceful and increasingly prosperous democratic state. Botswana has one of the fastest growing economies in the world based on the mining of diamonds and other minerals as well as the sale of beef to Europe and the world market. This has ensured an extensive development in educational and health facilities in villages and traditional rural towns. 

Early History

The Khoe-san speaking hunters and herders have lived in Botswana for many thousands of years. The Tsodilo Hills in the north western corner of Botswana contains evidence of continuous Khoe-san occupation from about 17000 BC to about 1650 AD. Culturally the Khoe-san are divided into the hunter gatherer San and the pastoral Khoi. During most of this time, the Khoe-san people subsisted as hunters and gatherers. Their tools were made from stone, wood and bone. Their hunting and gathering lifestyle was adapted to seasonal mobility in family groups over grassland and scrub, in and around the extensive riverine lakes and wetlands that once covered the north of the country.

During the last centuries, most Khoe speaking people in Northern Botswana converted their lifestyle to pastoralism – herding cattle and sheep on the rich pastures of the wetlands of the Okavango Delta and Makgadikgadi lakes. Some Khoe pastoralists migrated with their livestock through central Namibia as far south as they could, to the Cape of Good Hope, by about 70BC.

Bantu speaking farmers

Both farming of grain crops and the speaking of Bantu languages were carried southwards from north of the Equator over the course of millennia. From West Africa, Later Stone Age farming reached through Angola, and had been converted to the use of iron tools on the upper Zambezi by around 380 BC. From East Africa, Early Iron Age farming spread down the savanna to the Zambezi by around 20 B.C., as well as along the east coast. The farmers brought with them the speaking of western and eastern Bantu languages.
It took hundreds of years before the Iron Age farming culture and Bantu languages replaced the Khoe pastoral culture in the Okavango and Makgadikgadi areas.
As early as 200 BC people in the Okavango and Makgadikgadi areas were making a kind of pottery known as Bambatha ware, which archaelogists think was Khoe pottery, influenced by the (western) Iron Age styles. 
The Khoe language was being spoken by pastoralists around the Boteti River area as late as the 19^th century.

Iron Age Chiefdoms and States

The earliest dated Iron Age site in Botswana is an iron smelting furnace in the Tswapong Hills, near Palapye (dated around 190 AD). During this time the farming culture of the Western Iron Age type spread through Northern and South Eastern Botswana. The remains of beehive shaped small houses made of grass matting, occupied by Western early Iron Age farmers, have been dated from around 420 AD around Molepolole. Evidence of early farming settlements of a similar type existing alongside Khoe-san hunter and pastoralist sites in the Tsodilo Hills area, date from around 550 AD. Archaeologists now have difficulty in interpreting the hundreds of rock paintings in the Tshodilo Hills area as they were once assumed to have been painted by the ‘Bushmen’ hunters from the pastoralist and farmer contact.

Eastern Botswana chiefdoms

From around 1095 south-eastern Botswana saw the rise of a new culture, characterized by a site on Moritsane hill near Gabane, whose pottery mixed the old western style with new Iron Age influences derived from the eastern Transvaal (Lydenburg culture). The Moritsane culture is historically associated with the Khalagari (Kgalagadi) chiefdoms, the westernmost dialect-group of Sotho (or Sotho-Tswana) speakers, whose prowess was in cattle raising and hunting rather than in farming.

In east-central Botswana, the area within 80 or 100 kilometres of Serowe saw a thriving farming culture, dominated by rulers living on Toutswe hill, between about 600-700 and 1200-1300. The prosperity of the state was based on cattle herding, with large corrals in the capital town and in scores of smaller hill-top villages. The Toutswe people were also hunting westwards into the Kalahari and trading eastwards with the Limpopo. East coast shells, used as trade currency, were already being traded as far west as Tsodilo by 700.

The Toutswe state appears to have been conquered by its Mapungubwe state neighbour, between 1200 and 1300. Mapungubwe had been developing since about 1050 because of its control of the early gold trade coming down the Shashe, which was passed on for sale to sea traders on the Indian Ocean. The site of Toutswe town was abandoned, but the new rulers kept other settlements going - notably Bosutswe, a hill-top town in the west, which supplied the state with hunting products, caught by Khoe-san hunters, and with Khoe-san cattle given in trade or tribute from the Boteti River. Mapungubwe's triumph was short-lived, as it was superceded by the new state of Great Zimbabwe, north of the Limpopo River, which flourished in control of the gold trade from the 13th to the 15th centuries. It is not known how far west the power of Great Zimbabwe extended. Certainly its successor state, the Butua state based in western Zimbabwe from about 1450 onwards, controlled trade in salt and hunting dogs from the eastern Makgadikgadi pans, around which it built stone- walled command posts.

The Butua state passed from the control of Chibundule (Torwa) rulers to Rozvi invaders from the north-east in about 1685. Under Rozvi rule, the common people of Butua became known as the Kalanga. The old Chibundule rulers appear to have fled to the western Kalanga (in the area now in Botswana), where they became known as Wumbe, giving rise to a number of local Kalanga chiefdoms.

North-western Botswana chiefdoms

From about 850 AD farmers from the upper Zambezi, ancestral to the Mbukushu and Yeyi peoples, reached as far south and west as the Tsodilo hills (Nqoma). Oral traditions tell of Yeyi farmers and fishermen scattering among the Khoe-san of the Okavango Delta in the early 18th century. The oral traditions of Mbukushu chiefs tell of migrations from the upper Chobe down the Okavango River later in the 18th century. These appear to have been responses to increased raiding in Angola for the Atlantic slave trade. The oral traditions of Herero and Mbanderu pastoralists, South West of the Okavango straddling the Namibia border, relate how they were split apart from their Mbandu parent stock by 17th century Tswana cattle-raiding from the south.

Rise of Tswana domination

During the 1200-1400 period a number of powerful dynasties began to emerge among the Sotho in the western Transvaal, spreading their power in all directions. Fokeng chiefdoms spread Southwards over Southern Sotho peoples, while Rolong chiefdoms spread Westwards over Khalagari peoples. Khalagari chiefdoms either accepted Rolong rulers or moved Westwards across the Kalahari, in search of better hunting and the desirable large cattle of the west. By the 17th century Rolong-Khalagari power stretched, as far as Mbandu country across the central Namibia- Botswana frontier. In the 1660's the military and trading power of the main Rolong kingdom at Taung (South of Botswana), in conflict with Kora groups of southern Khoi over copper trade, was known as far away as the new Dutch settlers at the Cape of Good Hope.

The main Tswana (Central Sotho) dynasties of the Hurutshe, Kwena and Kgatla were derived from the Phofu dynasty, which broke up in its Western Transvaal home in the 1500-1600 period. Oral traditions usually explain these migrations as responses to drought, with junior brothers breaking away to become independent chiefs. The archeology of the Transvaal shows that the farming population was expanding and spreading in small homesteads, each clustered round its cattle corral, across open countryside - with a few larger settlements as evidence of petty chiefdoms. But after about 1700 the settlement pattern changed, with stone-walled villages and some large towns developing on hills - evidence of the growth of states often hostile to each other. These states were probably competing for cattle wealth and subject populations, for control of hunting and mineral tribute, and for control of trade with the east coast.

Growth of Tswana States

Kwena and Hurutshe migrants founded the Ngwaketse chiefdom among Khalagari-Rolong in South-Eastern Botswana by 1700. After 1750 this grew into a powerful military state controlling Kalahari hunting and cattle raiding, and copper production, west of Kanye. By about 1770 a group of Ngwato, called the Tawana, had settled as far North-West as Lake Ngami, in country occupied by Yeyi and previously frequented by Khalagari-Rolong and Kwena hunters and traders.

Times of war

Southern Africa as a whole saw an increasing tempo of disruption, migration and war from about 1750 onwards, as trading and raiding for ivory, cattle and slaves spread inland from the coasts of Mozambique, the Cape Colony and Angola. By 1800 raiders from the Cape had begun to attack the Ngwaketse. By 1826 the Ngwaketse were being attacked by the Kololo, an army of refugees under the dynamic leadership of Sebetwane, who had been expelled North Westwards, possibly by raiders from Maputo Bay. The great Ngwaketse warrior king, Makaba II, was killed, but the Kololo were pushed further North by a counter-attack.

The Kololo moved through Shoshong, expelling the Ngwato northwards, to the Boteti River, where they settled for a number of years - attacking the Tawana and raiding for cattle as far West as Namibia, where they were warded off in a battle with Herero. In about 1835 they settled on the Chobe River, from which the Kololo state stretched northwards until its final defeat by its Lozi subjects on the upper Zambezi in 1864. Meanwhile the Kololo were followed in their tracks by the Ndebele, a raiding army led by Mzilikazi, who settled in the Butua area of western Zimbabwe in 1838-40 after the conquest of the Rozvi. These wars are called the Difaqane by historians.

Post-war Tswana commercial prosperity

The Tswana states of the Ngwaketse, Kwena, Ngwato and Ngwato were reconstituted in the 1840s after the wars passed. The states competed with each other to benefit from the increasing trade in ivory and ostrich feathers being carried by wagons down to the Cape Colony in the South.  New roads also brought Christian missionaries to Botswana, and Boer trekkers who settled in the Transvaal to the east of Botswana.

The most remarkable Tswana king of this period was Sechele (ruled 1829-92) of the Kwena around Molepolole. He allied himself with British traders and missionaries, and was baptized by David Livingstone. He also fought with the Boers, who tried to seize Africans who fled to join Sechele's state from the Transvaal. But by the late 1870's the Kwena had lost control of trade to the Ngwato, under Khama III (ruled 1875-1923), whose power extended to the frontiers of the Tawana in the North-West, the Lozi in the north and the Ndebele in the north-east.

A British Protectorate

The Scramble for Africa in the 1880s resulted in the German colony of South West Africa, which threatened to join across the Kalahari with the independent Boer republic of the Transvaal. The British in Cape Colony responded by using their missionary and trade connections with the Tswana states to keep the "missionaries' road" to Zimbabwe and the Zambezi open for British expansion. In 1885 the British proclaimed a protectorate over their Tswana allies, as far north as the Ngwato; and the protectorate was extended to the Tawana and the Chobe River in 1890.

British colonial expansion was privatized, in the form of the British South Africa (BSA) Company, which used the road through the Bechuanaland Protectorate to colonize Rhodesia in 1890. But the protectorate itself remained under the British crown, and white settlement remained restricted to a few border areas, after an attempt to hand it over to the BSA Company was foiled by the delegation of three Tswana kings to London in 1895. The kings, however, had to concede to the company the right to build a railway to Rhodesia through their lands.

The British government continued to regard the protectorate as a temporary expedient, until it could be handed over to Rhodesia or, after 1910, to the new Union of South Africa. Therefore the administrative capital remained at Mafikeng, actually outside the protectorate's borders in South Africa, from 1895 until 1964. Investment and administrative development within the territory were kept to a minimum. It declined into a mere appendage of South Africa, for which it provided migrant labour and the rail transit route to Rhodesia. Short-lived attempts to reform administration and to initiate mining and agricultural development in the 1930s were hotly disputed by leading Tswana chiefs, on the grounds that they would only enhance colonial control and white settlement. The territory remained divided into eight largely self-administering 'tribal' reserves, five white settler farm blocks, and the remainder classified as crown (i.e. state) lands.

In 1950, the extent of Bechuanaland’s Protectorate’s subordination to the interests of South Africa, was revealed. This caused political controversy in Britain whereby the British Government barred Seretse Khama from the chieftainship of the Ngwato and exiled him for 6 years. This was also in order to satisfy the South African government which objected to Seretse Khama's marriage to a white woman at a time when racial segregation was being reinforced in South Africa under apartheid.

Botswana gains Independence

In June 1964, Britain accepted proposals for democratic self-government in Botswana. The seat of government was moved from Mafikeng, in South Africa, to newly established Gaborone in 1965. The 1965 constitution led to the first general elections and to independence in September 1966. Seretse Khama, a leader in the independence movement and the legitimate claimant to traditional rule of the Bamangwato, was elected as the first president, re-elected twice, and died in office in 1980.

For the first five years of political independence, Botswana remained financially dependent on Britain. This was to cover the full cost of administration and development. After the discovery of diamonds in Orapa during 1967-1971, the planning and execution of economic development took off.

Botswana gains International Stature

From 1969 onwards Botswana began to play a more significant role in international politics, putting itself forward as a non-racial, liberal democratic alternative to South African apartheid.

South Africa was obliged to step down from its objections to Botswana building a road, with US aid finance, direct to Zambia avoiding the old railway and road route through Rhodesia. From 1974 Botswana was, together with Zambia and Tanzania, and joined by Mozambique and Angola, one of the "Front Line States" seeking to bring majority rule to Zimbabwe, Namibia and South Africa.

Economic and political growth

With an economy growing annually between 12 and 13 percent, Botswana extended basic infrastructure for mining development and basic social services for its population. More diamond mines were opened, and less economically successful nickel-copper mining commenced at Selebi-Phikwe. 

The BDP was consistently re-elected with a large majority, though the Botswana National Front (BNF, founded 1965) became a significant threat after 1969, when "tribal" conservatives joined the socialists in BNF ranks attacking the "bourgeois" policies of government.

During the late 1970’s, civil war broke out in Rhodesia, and urban insurrection in South Africa, from which refugees flowed into Botswana. When Botswana began to form its own army, the Botswana Defence Force, the Rhodesian army crossed the border and massacred 15 Botswana soldiers in a surprise attack at Leshoma (February 1978). Botswana played its part in the final settlement of the Rhodesian war, resulting in Zimbabwe independence in 1980. But its main contribution was in formulating the Southern African Development Coordination Conference (SADCC), to look to the future of the region.

The idea behind SADCC, as expounded by Seretse Khama, was to coordinate disparate economies rather than to create a unified market in southern Africa. All the states of Southern Africa, except South Africa and Namibia, formed SADCC in 1980, to work together in developing identified sectors of their economies - particularly the transport network to the ports of Mozambique.

Masire succeeds Seretse Khama

In July 1980, Seretse Khama died. He was succeeded as president by his deputy, since 1965, vice-president Sir Ketumile Masire.

Between 1984 and 1990 Botswana suffered from upheavals in South Africa when South African troops raided the 'Front Line States'. Two raids on Gaborone by the South African army in 1985 and 1986 killed 15 civilians. A new era in regional relations began with the independence of Namibia in 1990, and continued with internal changes in South Africa culminating in its free elections of 1994.

The economy continued to expand rapidly after a temporary slump in diamond and beef exports at the beginning of the 1980s. The expansion of mining output slowed in the 1990s, but was compensated for by the growth of manufacturing industry producing vehicles and foodstuffs for the South African market.

Mogae succeeds Masire

In April 1998, Sir Ketumile Masire retired as president, and was succeeded by his vice-president Festus Mogae. Botswana handed over leadership of SADCC, now the Southern African Development Community(SADC), to South Africa in 1994. The secretariat of SADC remains housed in the capital of Botswana, Gaborone. As well as SADC, the Republic of Botswana is a member of the United Nations, the Organization of African Unity (OAU), the Non-Aligned Movement, and the Commonwealth. Botswana is also a member (with Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa, and Swaziland) of the Southern African Customs Union (SACU).

Khama succeeds Mogae

Festus Mogae stood down as Botswana’s president on 01 April 2008, after a decade in which his country cemented its status as one of Africa’s success stories. Mogae, handed over the reins of power to his long-time heir, Ian Khama.

The new Botswana president is the son of the country’s respected founding president, Sir Seretse Khama. His late father is still a revered figure in Botswana and the traditional hereditary chieftainship carries a lot of weight and attracts praise, unquestioning loyalty and authority.
Ian Khama obtained his military training at Britain’s famous Sandhurst Academy and took over command of the Botswana Defence Force (BDF) in 1989 when General Merafhe retired to join elective politics.
In 1998, Mr Khama was removed from the military by his political mentor and predecessor, Festus Mogae, and appointed vice-president.

(Portions of the text above were excerpted from The Botswana History Pages by Neil Parsons)