History

Pre-history

Archaeological digs have shown that hominids have lived in Botswana for around two million years. Stone tools and faunal remains have shown that all areas of the country were inhabited at least 400,000 years ago. Evidence left by modern humans such as cave paintings is about 73,000 years old. The original inhabitants of southern Africa were the Bushmen (San) and Khoi peoples. Both speak Khoisan languages and hunted, gathered, and trade over long distances. When cattle were first introduced about 2000 years ago into southern Africa, pastoralism became a major feature of the economy, since the region had large grasslands free of the tsetse fly.

The history of Botswana covers a gap between the histories of neighboring South Africa and Zimbabwe, Namibia, Angola, and Zambia. In prehistoric and very recent times the Kalahari thirstlands of Botswana have been central in the historical geography of the region, as the intermediate territory between the savannas of the north and east and the steppes of the south and west. Khoesan-speaking hunters and herders, People speaking Khoesan (Kehoe and San) languages, have lived in Botswana for many thousands of years. A site in the Tsodilo Hills (Depression Shelter), in the north-western corner of Botswana, contains archaeological evidence of continuous Khoesan occupation from about 17 000 BC. to about 1650 AD.

For most of that period, Khoesan people subsisted as hunters and gatherers, their tools made of stone (and wood and bone), with a culture characterized by archaeologists as the ‘Later Stone Age’. 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 and were dotted elsewhere.

During the last centuries, BC many Khoe-speaking people in northern Botswana converted their lifestyle to pastoralism – herding cattle and sheep on the rich pastures exposed by the retreating wetlands of the Okavango Delta and Makgadikgadi lakes. Cattle and sheep had been brought from East Africa, where they had previously been herded by other Later Stone Age people for thousands of years. Some Khoe pastoralists migrated with their livestock through central Namibia as far south as they could, to the Cape of Good Hope, by about 70 BC. They took the Khoe language to areas where only San languages had previously been spoken.

The Arrival of Bantu People

During the final centuries of the last millennium before the Common Era, some of the Khoi (Tshu-khwe) people of northern Botswana converted to pastoralism, herding their cattle and sheep on the rich pastures revealed by the retreating lakes and wetlands. 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 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 for Iron Age farming culture and Bantu languages to replace the Khoe pastoral culture in the Okavango-Makgadikgadi area. As early as 200 BC people there were making a kind of pottery known as Bambatha ware, which archaeologists think was Khoe pottery influenced by (western) Iron Age styles. Khoe language was being spoken by pastoralists in the area, on the Boteti River, as late as the 19th century, within recent living memory.

The earliest dated Iron Age site in Botswana is an iron smelting furnace in the Tswapong hills near Palapye, dated around 190 AD – probably associated with eastern Iron Age Bantu farming culture from the Limpopo valley. Meanwhile 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 about 420 AD around Molepolole, and a similar site in the western Transvaal near Pretoria has been dated as early as 300.

The ancestors of the modern-day Kalanga moved into what is now the northeastern areas of the country. This proto-Kalanga was closely connected to states in Zimbabwe as well as to the Mapungubwe state. These states, located outside of current Botswana’s borders, appear to have kept massive cattle herds in what is now the Central District—apparently at numbers approaching modern cattle density. This massive cattle-raising complex prospered until 1300 AD or so and seems to have regressed following the collapse of Mapungubwe. During this era, the first Tswana-speaking groups, the Bakgalagadi, moved into the southern areas of the Kalahari.

Early Chiefdoms

From about 850 CE farmers from the upper Zambezi, ancestors of the Mbukushu and Yei peoples reached as far south and west as the Tsodilo Hills (Nqoma). The oral traditions of Herero and Mbanderu pastoralists, west of the Okavango, relate how they were split apart from their Mbandu parent stock by 17th-century Tswana cattle-raiding from the south.

The turn of the 11th Century, 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.

During the 13th and 14th centuries, a number of powerful dynasties began to emerge among the Tswana in the western Transvaal region. Rolong chiefdoms spread westward over lands controlled by Khalagari peoples. Khalagari chiefdoms either accepted Rolong rulers or moved westward across the Kalahari.
The main Tswana dynasties of the Hurutshe, Kwena, and Kgatla were derived from the Phofu dynasty, which broke up in its home in the western Transvaal region in the 16th century. The archaeology of the Transvaal region shows that, after about 1700, stone-walled villages and some large towns developed on hills. 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.

The first written records relating to modern-day Botswana appear in 1824. What these records show is that the Bangwaketse had become the predominant power in the region. Under the rule of Makaba II, the Bangwaketse kept vast herds of cattle in well-protected desert areas and used their military prowess to raid their neighbors. Other chiefdoms in the area, by this time, had capitals of 10,000 or so and were fairly prosperous. This equilibrium came to end during the Mfecane period, 1823-1843, when a succession of invading peoples from South Africa entered the country.

Although the Bangwaketse were able to defeat the invading Bakololo in 1826, over time all the major chiefdoms in Botswana were attacked, weakened, and impoverished. The Bakololo and Amandebele raided repeatedly and took large numbers of cattle, women, and children from the Batswana—most of whom were driven into the desert or sanctuary areas such as hilltops and caves. Only after 1843, when the Amandebele moved into western Zimbabwe, did this threat subside.

European Contact

The Tswana states of the Ngwaketse, Kwena, Ngwato, and Ngwato were reconstituted in the 1840s after the wars passed. The states took firm control of commoners and subject peoples, organized inwards under their own chiefs paying tribute to the king. The states competed with each other to benefit from the increasing trade in ivory and ostrich feathers being carried by wagons down new roads to Cape Colony in the south. Those 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 (see Links for a link to the free electronic text of his classic Missionary Travels). He also fought with the Boers, who tried to seize Africans who fled to join Sechele’s state from the Transvaal. But by the later 1870s, 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.

During the 1840s and 1850s trade with Cape Colony-based, merchants opened up and enabled the Batswana chiefdoms to rebuild. The Bakwena, Bangwaketse, Bangwato, and Batawana cooperated to control the lucrative ivory trade and then used the proceeds to import horses and guns, which in turn enabled them to establish control over what is now Botswana. This process was largely complete by 1880, and thus the Bushmen, the Bakalanga, the Bakgalagadi, and other current minorities were subjugated by the Batswana.

Following the Great Trek, Afrikaners from the Cape Colony established themselves on the borders of Botswana in the Transvaal. In 1852 a coalition of Tswana chiefdoms led by Sechele I resisted Afrikaner incursions, and after about eight years of intermittent tensions and hostilities, eventually came to a peace agreement in Potchefstroom in 1860. From that point on, the modern-day border between South Africa and Botswana was agreed on, and the Afrikaners and Batswana traded and worked together peacefully.

Due to newly peaceful conditions, trade thrived between 1860 and 1880. Taking advantage of this were Christian missionaries. The Lutherans and the London Missionary Society both became established in the country by 1856. By 1880 every major village had a resident missionary, and their influence slowly became felt. Khama III (reigned 1875–1923) was the first of the Tswana chiefs to make Christianity a state religion and changed a great deal of Tswana customary law as a result. Christianity became the de facto official religion in all the chiefdoms in World War I.

The new Bechuanaland

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

In 1890 areas north of 22 degrees were added to the new Bechuanaland Protectorate. During the 1890s the new territory was divided into eight different reserves, with fairly small amounts of land being left as freehold for white settlers. During the early 1890s, the British government decided to hand over the Bechuanaland Protectorate to the British South Africa Company. This plan, which was well on its way to fruition despite the entreaties of Tswana leaders who toured England in protest, was eventually foiled by the failure of the Jameson Raid in January 1896.

When the Union of South Africa was formed in 1910 from the main British colonies in the region, the Bechuanaland Protectorate, Basutoland (now Lesotho), and Swaziland (the High Commission Territories) were not included, but the provision was made for their later incorporation. However, the UK began to consult with their inhabitants as to their wishes. Although successive South African governments sought to have the territories transferred to their jurisdiction, the UK kept delaying; consequently, it never occurred. The election of the Nationalist government in 1948, which instituted apartheid, and South Africa’s withdrawal from the Commonwealth in 1961, ended any prospect of the UK or these territories agreeing to incorporation into South Africa.

An expansion of British central authority and the evolution of tribal government resulted in the 1920 establishment of two advisory councils to represent both Africans and Europeans. The African Council consisted of the eight heads of the Tswana tribes and some elected members. Proclamations in 1934 regulated tribal rule and powers. A European-African advisory council was formed in 1951, and the 1961 constitution established a consultative legislative council.

The extent of the Bechuanaland Protectorate’s subordination to the interests of South Africa was revealed in 1950. In a case that caused political controversy in Britain and the empire, the British government barred Seretse Khama from the chieftainship of the Ngwato and exiled him from Botswana for six years. This, as secret documents have since confirmed, was in order to satisfy the South African government, which objected to Seretse Khama’s marriage to a white Englishwoman at a time when racial segregation was being reinforced in South Africa under apartheid.

Independent Botswana

From the later 1950s, it became clear that Bechuanaland could no longer be handed over to South Africa, and must be developed towards political and economic self-sufficiency. The supporters of Seretse Khama began to organize political movements from 1952 onwards, and there was a nationalist spirit even among older ‘tribal’ leaders. Ngwato ‘tribal’ negotiations for the start of copper mining reached an agreement in 1959. A legislative council was eventually set up in 1961 after limited national elections. The Bechuanaland People’s Party (BPP) was founded in 1960, and the Bechuanaland Democratic Party (later Botswana Democratic Party, BDP) – led by Seretse Khama – in 1962.

After long resistance to constitutional advance before economic development could pay for it, n June 1964, the United Kingdom accepted proposals for democratic self-government in Botswana. The seat of government was moved in 1965 from Mafikeng in South Africa to the newly established Gaborone, which is located near Botswana’s border with South Africa. Based on the 1965 constitution, the country held its first general elections under universal suffrage and gained independence on 30 September 1966. Seretse Khama, a leader in the independence movement and the legitimate claimant to the Ngwato chiefship, was elected as the first President, and subsequently re-elected twice.

A new administrative capital was rapidly built at Gaborone. Bechuanaland became self-governing in 1965, under an elected BDP government under Seretse Khama as prime minister. In 1966 the country became the Republic of Botswana, with Seretse Khama as its first president.

For its first five years of political independence, Botswana remained financially dependent on Britain to cover the full cost of administration and development. The planning and execution of economic development took off in 1967-71 after the discovery of diamonds at Orapa. The essential precondition of this was a renegotiation of the customs union with South Africa so that state revenue would benefit from rising capital imports and mineral exports – rather than remaining a fixed percentage of total customs union income. This renegotiation was achieved in 1969.

The presidency passed to the sitting Vice-President, Quett Masire, who was elected in his own right in 1984 and re-elected in 1989 and 1994. Masire retired from office in 1998. He was succeeded by Festus Mogae, who was elected in his own right in 1999 and re-elected in 2004. The presidency passed in 2008 to Ian Khama (son of the first President), who had been serving as Mogae’s Vice-President since resigning his position in 1998 as Commander of the Botswana Defence Force to take up this civilian role.