Diamonds, Dispossession and Democracy in Botswana (review)

The Republic of Botswana has occupied a privileged position in Africanist literature as the premier developmental state. Yet the country's liberal democratic order stands in sharp contrast to Asia's militaristic dictatorial developmental states. (In fact, the literature on Botswana notes that it has held fewer political prisoners than its former colonial power, Britain.) After World War II Taiwan and South Korea both inherited a relatively productive economic infrastructure from Japanese colonial rule; Britain, by contrast, left behind a basket case: as it departed in 1966, the British predicted (in the Porter Report) that Botswana would be dependent on international aid for decades to come, as "nothing happens here." But events belied the prediction, and today Botswana is taken to be a success story in the eyes of many observers.

Diamonds, Dispossession and Democracy in Botswana takes aims at what it calls "celebratory" literature by positing that Botswana is neither developmental nor democratic in material terms. The book consists of an introduction, six substantive chapters, a brief conclusion, and appendix. The introduction provides a general outline of the argument; focusing on the distinction between growth and development, it posits the rise of what the author terms "autocracy under former president Mogae and his vice president Khama" (4). Chapter 1 elaborates on this by describing how the economic dominance of diamond exports combined with an elitist power structure created path dependency by equating wealth accumulation with development. It asserts that Botswana will have great difficulty extracting itself from such a trap.

Chapter 2 suggests that Botswana is formally democratic but substantively autocratic. Here Good contends that Botswana's three postcolonial presidents engineered a political structure that enabled them to usurp much of the powers of parliament and the judiciary, and that the dominant political party, Botswana Democratic Party (BDP), facilitated this centralization of authority. The major hallmark of such centralization has been the capacity of sitting presidents to select the next president of the country by appointing vice-presidents; such automatic succession to power has sidelined parliament and the public. Consequently, this strategy has bred an arrogance that has blinded the leaders to the shortcomings of their political and economic programs. Similarly, chapter 3 narrates the political dominance of the BDP since independence and describes how its uninterrupted hegemony has allowed the executive presidency to centralize power and undermine democracy. In other words, the majority party's MPs have been party to their own disempowerment.

Chapter 4, entitled "The Social Consequences of Diamond Dependency," depicts how excessive dependence on diamonds has produced an authoritarian political elite and how such a dictatorial order trickled down to all institutions, including public schools (which sanction corporal punishment). Such wealth accumulation and an authoritarian political culture have led to radical inequalities: the perpetuation of abject poverty for many and missed opportunities to transform the economy from a wealth-rich to a job-rich system. The combination of diamond dependency, an autocratic presidency, and a dominant party led by the rich not only has subverted democracy, but also has compromised human rights, the independence of the courts, and any pattern of equitable development in the country. Chapter 5 brings this argument to a head by narrating the painful history of the San people in Botswana. This is by far the most searing chapter in the book—and based on existing literature and news reports, as well as on the author's own earlier work; indeed others have noted the unnecessary and cruel treatment of the San people by government authorities and the ways in which they have become subjects in the land of their birth. The brief conclusion of the book serves as a prelude to the appendix, which narrates the author's own difficulties with the government, which ultimately led to his expulsion from the country.

Kenneth Good was an employee of the University of Botswana for more than a decade...