The state and extreme poverty in Botswana: the San and destitutes

In: The journal of modern African studies: a quarterly survey of politics, economics & related topics in contemporary Africa, Band 37, Heft 2, S. 185-205

Abstract

The rise of wealth and power within the cattle-owning economy of Botswana
has been accompanied by the creation of poverty and weakness. The impoverishment
of the San and 'destitutes' was a structured, comprehensive,
and long-term process, caused less by phenomena such as periodic drought
than by an elite of economic and political power, and the exploitation which
they practised. The growth economy of recent decades has not ameliorated
the situation, but has strengthened the wealthy while neglecting or worsening
the plight of the San. The state possesses the financial resources and developmental
capacities to alleviate poverty, but its controllers continue to prioritise other matters.