Diamonds are a State's best friend: Botswana's foreign policy in southern Africa

In: Africa today, Band 40, Heft 1, S. 27-47

Abstract

The pattern of Botswana's foreign policy in southern Africa as outlined in this paper reveals, within given geopolitical parameters, an increasingly independent and hostile attitude towards South Africa. It is this change in Botswana's foreign policy, which "cannot be explained by its ideological positions" nor by changes in its geopolitical position in the region alone, that constitutes the basic question of this essay. The author argues that the answer must be located in the nature of the State in Botswana and the changing patterns of reproduction of that State. The first ten years of independence were a transition period in which a civil service dominated by expatriates slowly changed into a civil service dominated by Tswana and became the basis of the bureaucratic class. It is during this period of transition that the nature of Botswana's foreign policy changed as well. Furthermore, the booming diamond mining sector opened up a new source of revenue never before available to the State. As the sources of revenue changed and an independent bureaucratic class emerged, Botswana's geographical location increasingly became a constraint to the reproduction of the bureaucratic class. Economic activities in the SACU (Southern African Customs Union) region were no longer as important as unhindered access to the world market, especially Europe. (Documentatieblad/ASC Leiden)