Developing Cultures

Case Studies

Lawrence E. Harrison, Peter Berger

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2006
• ISBN:
  9781135440350
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Developing Cultures: Case Studies is a collection of 27 essays by a group of leading internationals scholars on the role of culture and cultural change in the evolution of countries and regions around the world.

Part I

Africa

1

Explaining Botswana’s Success

STEPHEN R. LEWIS, JR.

Botswana has come to be known as the “African Exception.” Its record of economic growth and political democracy stands in stark contrast to virtually all other parts of Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). I will argue that Botswana’s success is closely related to how its founders built the new nation on those parts of traditional culture which were compatible with or essential to democratic development.

Beginnings

In the 1950s the Bechuanaland Protectorate was an economic and political backwater. In 1885 Britain had unilaterally declared its “protection” for Bechuanaland in order to forestall any expansion by the Germans in Southwest Africa and Paul Kruger’s Transvaal Republic. Then in 1895, three chiefs (Khama III, Bathoen I, and Sebele I) traveled to Britain to ask Queen Victoria’s government for further assistance, on a mission arranged through the London Missionary Society (LMS). This was an early example of what became a long-standing practice. Botswana used some foreigners, the LMS, to help the country deal with other foreigners: the Boers, Cecil Rhodes’s British South Africa Company, and the British government. For decades, many people expected Bechuanaland to be absorbed into South Africa—an eventuality provided for in the Union Agreements that ended the Anglo-Boer War. Botswana’s chiefs, aided by allies in Britain, waged a long and successful campaign against incorporation. Eventually the policies of South Africa’s National Party government, culminating in the Sharpeville massacre of 1960 and South Africa’s withdrawal from the Commonwealth, ensured that the British would not hand over Bechuanaland to South Africa, though South Africa continued to press for it.

In the early 1960s, as constitutional development emerged in the protectorate, the general situation was grim. By 1965, the thinly populated, landlocked country was surrounded by white minority regimes in South Africa, Rhodesia, and Southwest Africa. A multiyear drought eventually destroyed more than one-third of the national cattle herd (the country’s only asset), and an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease prevented farmers from moving cattle to market before they starved. Grants-in-aid from the British covered half of the operating budget and the entire development budget.

There were only a handful of university graduates, and the first government secondary school was not established until the eve of independence. There were five kilometers of paved road in a country the size of France. Perhaps ten times as many Botswanan citizens held wage jobs in South Africa as were in modern cash employment in Botswana itself. Its per capita income was about 10 percent of the world average, placing it among the world’s poorest countries.

To add insult to injury, the capital was in Mafeking, in the Cape Province of South Africa. As a prohibited immigrant in South Africa, Botswana’s most important political figure, Seretse Khama, could not even travel to the capital of his own country. As Sir Seretse and his successor, Quett (later Sir Ketumile) Masire, Botswana’s first and second presidents, often said, “When we asked for independence, people thought we were either very brave or very foolish.”

The Record

World Bank data show that from 1965 to 1999, Botswana achieved the world’s highest rate of growth of per capita income: over 7 percent per annum. By comparison, GDP in SSA was growing 2.6 percent annually, so average real income fell over thirty-five years. Botswana’s GDP grew 10.6 percent and exports 10.5 percent annually. Manufacturing exports, starting from essentially a zero base in 1965, grew over 16 percent per year from 1975 to 1999. Growth in modern sector jobs was about 7.5 percent per year at least since around 1980, two to three times the rate of population and labor force growth; employment of Batswana, as the citizens of Botswana are known, in South Africa declined to a small fraction of the labor force. External debt is negligible, and for several years foreign exchange reserves have exceeded two years’ imports. In 1965 Botswana’s income per capita was about 60 percent of SSA and about 10 percent of the world average. By 1999, Botswana’s income per head was six times that of the rest of SSA, and 60 percent of the world average.

Diamonds accounted for much of the growth of Botswana’s GDP. De Beers announced a discovery at Orapa in 1967. By 1982 Botswana had two major mines at Orapa and Jwaneng, and by 1990 it was the world’s largest producer of diamonds. But any observer of development knows that the presence of mineral wealth does not guarantee broader economic success. Indeed, the political and economic difficulties of managing mineral wealth often lead mineral-rich countries—Nigeria and Venezuela are contemporary examples—into severe economic, political, and social trouble. Botswana’s nonmining economy has grown more than 10 percent annually—a growth rate that would also have led the world. Further, while Botswana is De Beers’s largest supplier of rough diamonds, Debswana, Botswana’s diamond mining partnership with De Beers, transfers more than 75 percent of its profits to the Botswana government and now owns about 15 percent of De Beers.

Cattle ownership continues to be a major source of rural wealth and rural aspirations, but agricultural development has been a serious disappointment, despite massive government investments in agriculture and rural development. By the late 1990s, annual expenditures by the Ministry of Agriculture amounted to over 60 percent of value added in agriculture. Other factors also cause concern: economic disparities, unemployment among school-leavers, the very high rate of HIV/AIDS infection, and high defense costs.

Botswana held its first multiparty elections in 1965, eighteen months before independence, under a constitution unanimously agreed upon by a multiparty conference and later endorsed unanimously by the Legislative Council, which had been established in 1961. Since independence, Botswana has held elections every five years, from 1969 to 2004. The Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) won 81 percent of the vote in 1965, and its majority shrank over the succeeding thirty-four years. Twice (1969 and 1984) a sitting vice president lost his seat in the elections. Opposition parties are particularly strong in the urban areas. There have been two constitutional successions in the Presidency: from Seretse Khama to Quett Masire in 1980, following Khama’s death, and from Masire to Festus Mogae in 1998, following Masire’s decision to retire.

Transparency International has ranked Botswana as having the lowest perceived corruption in Africa. Botswana also was ranked second best (behind Chile) among all developing countries, and less corrupt than a number of OECD countries, including Japan, Spain, Belgium, Greece, and Italy. Since the 1980s, several independent weekly newspapers have provided lively (sometimes sensational) coverage of political news, with sixty to eighty thousand copies sold each week, mainly in cities and larger villages.

Botswana has played an important role regionally. It was a respected member of the Front Line States during the struggles for liberation in Southern Africa. In 1980 it was a key advocate and architect of the Southern African Development Coordinating Conference (now Development Community, or SADC). Botswana was selected to chair SADC for fifteen consecutive years, reflecting its standing with both peers in the region and with donors. Botswana has sent troops on UN peacekeeping missions, and its leaders have taken an active, if quiet, role in dealing with difficult domestic problems in several other countries.

On the negative side of the political ledger, both BDP and opposition politicians, as well as many other observers, have expressed concerns about inequities in distributing the fruits of economic development and the political consequences. Controversy continues around government development policies for the Basarwa (or San, or Bushmen) peoples. A famous court case on gender discrimination, brought by a woman named Unity Dow, garnered Botswana a good deal of adverse attention. The courts ultimately found, as she had charged, that the Citizenship Act (which granted citizenship to the children of male, but not female, citizens if the spouse was a noncitizen) was unconstitutional. Unity Dow herself is now a judge.

With the huge exception of HIV/AIDS, an epidemic that has exploded since the mid-1990s, Botswana’s progress has been impressive both socially and economically. Government revenues were heavily reinvested in health care, and in primary, secondary, and tertiary education; education rates for females are generally higher than for males. Water supply projects, first in major villages and then in smaller ones, gave virtually everyone access to potable water. Botswana now has one of the best systems of paved roads on the continent (over 5,000 km, compared to 5 km at independence). Monthly grants were introduced for all citizens over the age of sixty-five, and they have made a major impact in reducing poverty among the aged. A large network of NGOs operates in all fields, from education and health to women’s issues, social services, services for the disabled, and youth services.

Roots of Success: Traditional Society and Deft Choices

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, as impulses for political independence were stirring in Bechuanaland, most people in the protectorate were still living in a traditional society. Their lives were regulated by the seasons, since agriculture—crop farming or animal husbandry—was the dominant economic activity. However, a substantial portion of adult males (one-third of those aged twenty to forty) as well as many women, worked in South African mines, farms, and factories.

The British ruled Bechuanaland through classic indirect rule: the ordinary person was governed by his or her chief, or by a subchief or a headman in the area. The colonial district commissioner worked with the chief. Europeans (perhaps 1 percent of the population) and the very small Asian and mixed-race communities had more direct contact with the colonial authorities. The chief presided at kgotla, the traditional gathering place in the village which served as a judicial chamber, administrative body, or advisor to the chief, as the occasion demanded. The kgotla was and continues to be a central institution in Tswana culture and governance. The chief adjudicated disputes and dispensed justice, allocated land—for arable farming, grazing, home sites, and commercial ventures—and distributed stray cattle at his discretion. He made decisions on educational policy and public works projects, told people when it was time to plow or harvest, and was, in general, responsible for managing the lives of his subjects.

A Setswana saying conveys an important attribute of traditional culture: “Kgosi ke Kgosi ka batho”: a chief is a chief by the will of the people. Chiefs generally consulted people before making a decision on matters of any importance. While they did not necessarily abide by the consensus in the kgotla, the tradition of consultation and seeking consensus is deeply important in Tswana society. A chief would seldom venture an opinion in the kgotla until all who wished to opine had done so.

The churches were a presence through most of the country, and chiefs were the first converts to Christianity. Initiation rites continued, but now circumcision and ritual sacrifices were barred. Prayers for rain replaced (or were performed alongside) rainmakers. Liquor was banned. The churches were a major source of the education and health care available to Batswana, and they were seen to be bringing useful skills to the country and its people. The first speaker of the National Assembly was the Reverend Dr. Alfred Merriweather, the missionary doctor who headed the Scottish Livingston Hospital in Molepolole. His successor as speaker was the Reverend Albert Lock, also of the United Congregational Church, successor to the LMS.

Many of the chiefs were progressive in their attitudes toward modernization, often encouraged by missionaries. The Bakgatla National School, opened in 1923 in Mochudi, was a self-help project pushed by the Bakgatla Regent, Isang Pilane, who respected modern ideas and wanted his people to learn the skills the whites possessed. Chief Linchwe I sent Bakgatla to South Africa so they could bring back education to develop his people. Tshekdi Khama fought for more rights for Africans within the protectorate, established a secondary school, and promoted modern agriculture. So while many factors in traditional society, including the power of witch doctors and sorcery, inhibited change or progressive ideas, powerful countervailing forces came from some of the chiefs.

There was relatively little formal education beyond primary school; modern farming methods for crops and livestock had not penetrated very deeply into traditional life. Farming in drought-prone Bechuanaland was highly risky, but those risks were simply part of what life had to offer. Traditional society also produced skepticism about new ideas and jealousy of those who moved ahead by their own efforts, inhibiting change and discouraging progressive activities. In the 1950s Quett Masire became the first master farmer and the largest African producer of grain in the protectorate. His high yields and large harvests were widely attributed to witchcraft rather than the elaborate system of dryland farming he had developed through reading, observation, and experimentation. Aspirations for men included working in the mines long enough to accumulate savings for some cattle, a wife, a home and family; some had the ambition to be a clerk in the colonial government.

Among ethnic groups in Southern Africa, the Tswana have one of the weakest military traditions, and more bellicose tribes pushed them to the periphery of the arable land. A Setswana proverb holds that “the big battle should be fought with words,” and their skill at diplomacy has deep historical and cultural roots. Their survival in a relatively harsh and risky physical environment and climate depended on a good deal of cooperation, especially in times of extreme drought. And a strong tradition held that those who had resources should assist those who lacked them.

Respect for others, integrity, modesty, lack of personal pride, and honesty were important virtues. Eschewing showiness helped avoid “prestige” projects and unnecessary expenditures after independence. For many years only the president flew first class to international meetings, or had the use of an official car with a driver. Until the late 1970s or 1980s, ministers and permanent secretaries drove pickup trucks in the capital. In the 1970s, when the minister of agriculture discovered a delegation from the Botswana Meat Commission staying in a five-star hotel in Europe, he made them move immediately to a cheaper one.

Colonial Authorities and Constitutional Change

The British colonial authorities provided honest administration but very little development of physical or human resources. A colleague in Botswana once observed, with some anger, “The British left us with nothing!” He then paused, thoughtfully, and added, “On the other hand, the British left us with nothing.” There was no large settler community claiming political power, no bureaucracy of privileged civil servants, no large houses of colonial rulers, no inheritance of inferiority that plagued many other former colonies. Nor did Botswana endure the rapacious rule of the Belgian Congo or other exploited colonies in Africa. A blank slate was in many ways a blessing,

Successive resident commissioners and those who reported to them had occasionally had stormy relationships with some chiefs, notably Tshekedi Khama, a nephew of Khama III, who was particularly independent and self-confident. These disputes generally arose when commissioners tried to exercise greater control over areas that were the chiefs’ prerogative. The colonial authorities established a Native (later African) Advisory Council in 1919 and a European Advisory Council in 1920 (though very few whites then lived in the territory). A Joint Advisory Council (JAC), established in 1951, had eight members from each of the other advisory councils and four government members. In 1956 the government asked the JAC to begin debating and commenting on proposed legislation for the protectorate, though laws were still promulgate...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Some Reflections on Culture and Development
• Part I Africa
• Part II Confucian Countries
• Part III India
• Part IV Islam
• Part V Latin America
• Part VI Orthodox/Eastern Europe
• Part VII The West
• Contributors
• Index