Feminism and Social Democracy in Botswana

Socialism and Democracy, Vol.21, No. 3, November 2007, pp. 97-124

Judith Van Allenjv43@cornell.edu

Botswana many seem an unlikely place in which to

explore the intersections of gender politics, democracy and

socialism in Africa. The gendered “dual political systems”

and strong market women’s associations of West Africa that

might provide historical precedents and contemporary

political bases for women’s rights organizing are absent

(Van Allen 1976b, 2000),1 and Botswana scores are weak by

the criteria of liberal feminist political science and the

dominant development models, including the Millenium

Development Goals.(UNDP 2005: 305) There are no electoral

quotas for women and relatively low percentages of women in

parliament, local government and the ruling party’s

structures—and in the most recent elections, in 2004, when

the SADC goal was 30% representation of women in member

parliaments, the percentage of women in Botswana’s

parliament actually dropped from 18% to 11%.

Botswana has no history of either Tanzanian-style

“African Socialism” nor a Marxist-led national liberation

movement. The social democratic opposition has repeatedly

been split by factionalism. After an unprecedented strong

2

showing in the 1994 elections when it won 33% of contested

seats, the leading opposition party, the Botswana National

Front, split in 1998, a year before the next national

election, and parliamentary opposition dropped from 13

seats in the 1994 election to seven (17% of an expanded

parliament). Trade unions are relatively weak and legally

restricted.

Botswana is celebrated in the bourgeois political

science literature and among neoliberal “development”

agencies for its “multi-party” democracy, its stability and

its growth rate.2 But its “democracy” has produced de facto

one-party rule by the Botswana Democratic Party since

independence in 1966, and there has been much criticism and

concern expressed in the last few years about the growing

power of the executive relative to parliament and the

consequent weakening of democracy. Its political stability

has depended significantly on the credibility of the

promises made by the ruling party to bring the benefits of

its diamond wealth to the masses of its citizens, but it has

3

one of the greatest disparities of income and wealth in the

world and at least a third of its people live below its own

poverty datum line.3

Botswana can in fact be understood as suffering from a

paradox of peace: its transition to political independence

absent not only a national liberation struggle but any

nationalist struggle at all produced political stability at

the cost of political consciousness. Rural people—a

majority of the population until recently and still a

significant proportion of voters—experienced independence as1For indigenous women’s political spheres and mobilization, Okongo 1976;Ritzenthaler 1960; Wipper 1982. Such formations are rare in Southern Africa.

2With variations in emphasis and reservations on some issues, such praise can be found in a range of scholarly works, including anthologies, whose titles or subtitles include the word “development” (Vengroff 1977; Hartland-Thunberg 1978; Picard 1985, 1987; Harvey and Lewis 1990; Danevad 1993; Stedman 1993; Dale 1995; Samatar 1999)

3Greater skepticism about Botswana’s future can be found in works on thecountry’s “political economy,” some more explicitly Marxist than others, which acknowledge the great successes in economic growth, effective bureaucracy and formal liberal democracy, but see severe contradictions and sources for future conflicts located in class polarization and increasing poverty alongside increasing wealth (Parsons 1977; Colclough and McCarthy 1980; Oomen, Inganji and Ngcongco1983; Parson 1981, 1983, 1984; Tsie 1989; Gulbrandsen 1996; Botswana Society 1997; Hope 1997). Botswana's wealthiest 10% receive roughly 40% of income; the bottom 40% roughly 10%, about the same proportions as in the U.S. Statistics for Botswana, here and below, are drawn from Central Statistics Office (CSO) 1995; CSO 1991; Brothers 1993; Nteta 1997; UNDP 2005.

4

something done “for them” by wealthy and royal-family

elites. “Democracy” came to be identified not with

ideological or party competition, but with the Botswana

Democratic Party. Suffrage, gained without struggle, did not

come to be valued. Not in Botswana were there ever those

impressive long snaking lines of South African voters

waiting in the hot sun to cast their first votes.

Botswana also suffers from a paradox of wealth: Seretse

Khama, president from independence in 1966 until his death

in 1980, wealthy himself from cattle ownership, is generally

seen as having treated the government as a trust, using

revenues from the young diamond industry to develop

infrastructure and provide education and health care for his

people, although rural development programs did benefit

large cattle owners much more than the rural masses. With

the burgeoning wealth from diamonds in the 1980s and the

influx of international aid in the face of the apartheid

South Africa government’s threats and attacks on Botswana,

the BDP is said to have grown fat—much economic and social

development has continued, but government “development”

5

programs have primarily benefitted the wealthy and those in

the process of becoming wealthy, many of them BDP office-

holders and their allies. The demise of the apartheid state

and Botswana’s classification as a “middle income country”

by the World Bank have merged into the current paradox of

peace and wealth: no more anti-apartheid-based international

aid, no more poverty-eradication international aid,4 just

South African capital eyeing the rest of Africa for

investment possibilities, with Botswana right under South

Africa’s neoliberal nose, and DeBeers already securely in

place within the diamond export business on which Botswana

relies for its continued stability and even survival.

Botswana thus provides a “revealing though not

representative” context for examining the contradictions and

possibilities for political engagement created by capitalism

in Africa, the possibilities for growth and challenge as old

relations of domination break apart under capitalist

pressures, the liberatory moment as well as the alienating

4International aid for HIV/AIDS is available but does not cover the costs of Botswana’s aggressive program of education, testing, care and treatment, including the provision of free anti-retrovirals.

6

one, as new social relations are being formed. (Van Allen

2000; O’Laughlin 1998) Although still dominant, the

Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) has been gradually losing in

the popular vote during its 40 years of rule, getting only

52% in 2004 (although 77% of parliamentary seats), and there

are some indications that opposition parties may be able to

form a successful electoral coalition and government in

2009, although no one is holding her breath. In the last 20

years an active women’s movement has successfully challenged

laws, policies, party structures and political discourse,

getting significant concessions from the BDP government and

strong support for “equality” in the social democratic

opposition parties’ platforms and quotas in their party

structures.

The leading women’s group and the social democratic

opposition parties share concerns about persistent high

levels of poverty and social inequality and a desire to

increase the political consciousness and mobilization of

voters. But there are still tensions and conflicts, in

practice and in theorizing the connections (and

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contradictions) between class and gender. Explanations for

how these potentially transformative forces have emerged,

separately from each other, lie in the history of

Botswana’s political economy and in the contemporary

processes of neoliberal globalization. Possibilities for

progressive connections are not to be found in any attempt

to create Marxist-feminist “grand theory” in the Western

mode, with its contentious courtship and “unhappy marriage”

(Sargent 1981), nor in “one big union” (or party), but in

much more measured negotiations and interconnections

appropriate to the particularities of contemporary political

struggle in Botswana.

Cattle, Mission Schools, Mines and Wage Jobs

Botswana is a dry, often drought-ridden, land, with a

short rainy season suitable for agriculture and a lot of

land suitable for grazing. In pre-colonial Tswana and

Tswana-dominated societies, men owned or controlled cattle

and boys herded them at cattle posts. Although men cleared

fields, women and children did most of the farming. When

missionaries arrived and set up schools, starting in the

8

19th century, many girls went to school, and many boys did

not. After diamonds and gold were discovered in South

Africa, in 1867 and 1886, Botswana (then the British

Protectorate of Bechuanaland) was incorporated into the

mining economy as a labor reserve, and young men started

being recruited (and coerced) into migrant work, while girls

continued to go to school, benefitting from the extensive

expansion of state schools after independence and the ending

of schools fees in the early 1990s. Female school enrollment

is still higher until girls get old enough to get pregnant;

university enrollment is about equal; female literacy is

about 5% higher than male, at about 90% for the more than

50% of women who live in urban areas.5

Botswana’s great good fortune in discovering diamonds

only after independence, and in having good negotiators, gave

the government 50% ownership of Debswana, the Botswana-De

5Girls were required to drop out of school if they fell pregnant and return only to a different secondary school, which resulted in many girls not returning to school, until Emang Basadi pressured government to change the rules, now allowing girls to return to the same school after childbirth and allowing girls in their final year to sit for examinations. However, pregnancy still reduces the proportion of femalesecondary school enrollment.The fathers of the children, many of them older men, are not punished. (Emang Basadi 1999; Nyati-Ramahobo 1992)

9

Beers mining company, and the export of gem-quality diamonds

continues to drive the economy. Diamond wealth was largely

invested in infrastructure, an expanding provision of

services, and sufficient economic development and

urbanization to create wage jobs, and young women were ready

to move into them. Capitalist transformation of Botswana’s

economy thus first wrenched young men’s labor out of rural

family control, increasing the workload on those left

behind, then pulled and pushed increasing numbers of young

women into urban wage labor, as rural livelihoods fell and

the wages of migrant daughters as well as sons were needed

to maintain the rural household. Droughts plagued

agriculture in the 1980s, and cattle and land ownership

became increasingly privatized and concentrated in the hands

of wealthy men through market-oriented, government-sponsored

“development” programs.

By the 1980s the face of business and government and

services was often a female face--shop clerks, grocery

checkers, managers, office workers, bank tellers,

administrators, school teachers, technicians, cooks,

10

government researchers, office cleaners or domestic workers,

depending on their level of education, as well as the

nursing and other health care jobs generally held by women

throughout SubSaharan Africa, and a significant body of

highly educated professional women—university lecturers,

lawyers, journalists—had emerged in the capital city,

Gaborone. Women were much less well represented in the

small industrial sector, although they did work in diamond-

sorting and in garment manufacturing, and women workers were

in general not organized. Thus during the 1980s a female

working class and a female petty bourgeois was forming in

urban areas, particularly in Gaborone, but without class

consciousness and in the absence of any political movements

that might have fostered class consciousness.6

Feminist Consciousness vs. Class Consciousness

Women’s roles in “reproduction”—their responsibility

for care work, and particularly for children—and their

identification in Setswana7 culture as mothers seems to

6For a much more detailed analysis of female class formation in Botswanaand its current effects on women’s integration into salaried and waged work, see Van Allen 2000.

11

produce a distinctive gendered consciousness among women

even as workers. Motherhood, not marriage, indicates social

adulthood; and the identity of “women” as “mothers” is

reflected in the term of polite address for adult women,

“Mma”—that is, “Mother.”8 To a great extent the ways in

which women experience constraints on their lives reflect

their identities and treatment as women-mothers more than as

“workers,” and their complaints are often expressed as what

Molyneux terms “practical gender interests”—perceived needs

that arise out of the existing gendered division of labor,

as distinct from “strategic gender interests,” which

challenge gendered divisions of labor and power.(Molyneux

1986: 284-5) Women criticize men for not supporting their

children. They criticize government for not providing the

health services they need as mothers. They may phrase

demands for higher wages in terms of needing to feed their

children. Domestic workers complain that their employers

will not give them leave to go “home” to the village to take

care of family needs. (Nyamjoh)

12

As Molyneux argues, it is the specific task of

“feminist political practice” to politicize these practical

interests and transform them into strategic interests that

challenge gender inequality (1986: 285)—and that is exactly

what the women’s movement in Botswana has done.

The BDP government provided the spark by passing a

newly discriminatory Citizen Act in 1982, and then, as

authorities often conveniently do, prompted the mobilization

of a movement by refusing to reform the law. Responding to

concerns about the abuse of Botswana citizenship and its

benefits by Zimbabwean political refugees, many of whom took

their educations and businesses and, for some, their

Batswana wives, back home with them after the nationalist

7On the base "-tswana" are built Bo/tswana, the nation; Ba/tswana, the people; Mo/tswana, an individual of the Batswana or a citizen of Botswana; Se/tswana, the language or culture; and a long list of government programs, parastatals and private corporations, the largest ofwhich is the gold-mining parastatal, "Debswana," from "DeBeers" and "(t)swana." A mosadi is a woman; basadi, women. For clarity I will use "Tswana" to refer to the original polities and the dominant ethnic group,but generally "people of Botswana" to refer to citizens today.

8“Mma” is used as a polite title, combined with a woman’s surname,as in “Mma Ramotswe,” the protagonist in Alexander McCall Smith’s popular series about the “No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency.” But also as a commonly used name in combination with a woman’s child’s name, e.g., Vice President Ian Khama’a mother could have been called “MmaIan” in place of “Ruth.”

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victory in 1980, the law changed the basis of citizenship

from birth in the country to descent. But it did not allow

women citizens married to foreigners to pass on their

citizenship to their children, although men married to

foreigners could do so.9

Opposition to the law started slowly, with a

conference organized by the new, two-person Women’s Unit

in the Department of Home Affairs in 1980, which led to

seminars in various districts and town councils and

publication of a handbook and two pamphlets on how

existing laws affected women.(A. Molokomme 1984a,

1984b,1986) But their criticisms of the Citizenship Law—

and their “standing” to represent the “women of Botswana”—

were dismissed by government. In response, in 1986 a

small group of women professionals organized a women’s

rights “action group,” Emang Basadi! (Stand Up, Women!),

which evolved into an effective force for social change.

As government continued to resist reforming the law, EB

9Similar laws exist in many Africa countries. Dow 1995:70 lists Lesotho, Swaziland and Zambia in Southern Africa, as well as Uganda, Mauritius, and Gambia. Similar laws in Zimbabwe are criticized in Women Voters Association of Zimbabwe 1995: 145.

14

activists focussed on a court challenge, a suit by lawyer

and activist Unity Dow against the Citizenship Act on

Constitutional grounds. Victory in the case mobilized

larger numbers of women into organized action, creating a

political momentum that Emang Basadi sustained until the

2004 election. The arguments and findings in the case

crystalized Emang Basadi’s defining core belief that

Tswana customary law as well as common law and the

statutes that express it oppress women and must be

rejected in favor of women’s equal rights.

Dow argued that the Citizenship Law discriminated

against her on the grounds of sex in violation of Section

Three of the Botswana Constitution, which provides that

“...every person in Botswana is entitled to the fundamental

rights and freedoms of the individual,...whatever his race,

place of origin, political opinions, colour, creed or

sex...” (Dow 1995: 31) The Attorney General attempted to

use an appeal to customary law, arguing that the

Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, were premised upon

“the traditional view” that a child born to a married couple

15

belonged to the father in all ways, including citizenship

and guardianship. He pointed out, in support of that

construction, that another part of the Constitution, Section

15(3), says that “no law shall make any provision that is

discriminatory either of itself or in its effect,” and

enumerates prohibited discriminatory categories: “race,

tribe, place of origin, political opinions, colour or

creed,” but not “sex,” and that therefore discrimination

on the basis of sex is not a breach of the Constitution. The

existence of these two different sections had led many

people in Botswana, including some lawyers who advocate for

women’s rights, to declare that the Constitution does not

prohibit discrimination against women. (A. Molokomme 1987)

But both the High Court and the Court of Appeal upheld Dow’s

challenge and the Citizenship Law was referred back to

Parliament for revision in 1992.

The High Court Judge’s decision, upheld on appeal,

argued that the list in 15 (3) was simply a set of examples

and not to be taken as restrictive of guaranteed

protections. He explicitly rejected the government’s claim

16

that those who approved the Constitution intended it to

maintain the continuation of patrilineal custom:

...the time that women were treated as chattels or werethere to obey the whims

and wishes of males is long past and it would be offensive to modern thinking

and the spirit of the Constitution to find that the Constitution was framed

deliberately to permit discrimination on the grounds of sex.” (Dow 1995: 31)

As of that decision, as upheld on appeal, the

Constitution of Botswana does prohibit discrimination on the

grounds of sex.

Despite the court ruling, the BDP continued to

stonewall on amending the Citizenship Law, and reports that

government was considering calling a nation-wide referendum

to support the law led to the formation of the Non-

Governmental Oorganization Network for Women’s Rights, co-

founded by Emang Basadi, to advocate against it. Emang

Basadi published a Women’s Manifesto in the run-up to the

1994 elections, to make clear to all political parties “what

women want” and to demonstrate to politicians that “women’s

issues are political issues.” (Emang Basadi 1998a: 4). The

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Manifesto was distributed widely throughout national and

local government and political parties and to all

participants in the process, and was followed up with an

electoral strategy: mobilizing women voters to vote only for

parties and candidates who supported women’s issues. As the

1999 revised Manifesto somewhat dryly puts it, “…it dawned

on many activists that lobbying for reform by appealing to

leaders’ good sense was not sufficient.” (Emang Basadi 1999:

vii)

The Manifesto was intended to represent “women’s

issues, rather than those of a particular organization,” and

was based on wide consultation and participation from a

range of women’s and human rights non-governmental

organizations, women’s wings of political parties, churches

and tertiary institutions.(Emang Basadi 1998a:4) The

organization of the NGO Women’s Network and the inclusion of

that network and other groups in the creation of the

Manifesto were parts of an attempt to counter government

claims that Emang Basadi represented only a small group of

“Westernized” university women. EB’s organizational

18

response was a significant move in creating a network among

a wide variety of individuals and groups as a basis for

continued mobilization and for changing public political

discourse. Emang Basadi in 1993 also began its political

education project, expanded after the 1994 elections, and

designed both to conscientize women voters and to recruit

and train women candidates, particularly for local

elections. (Emang Basadi 1998a).

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Emang Basadi’s focus on urging women voters to make

electoral choices based on their interests “as women”

promoted a liberal feminist consciousness, innocent of

class, but nevertheless potentially powerful in challenging

both formal and substantive inequality and contributing

significantly to the development of politically aware

voters. They built on and politicized women’s interests as

mothers, moving in a sort of rolling feminist dynamic from

mothers’ “practical” needs to “strategic” challenges by

women as wives/mothers/workers/citizens to the existing

gender divisions of labor and power. In Emang Basadi’s

educational materials for women, their Manifesto, and in the

Citizenship Case itself there is a subtext and sometimes an

explicit construction of women as mothers. The Setswana

version of the Women’s Manifesto (printed back-to-back with

the English version) uses “Bomme,” the polite term to refer

to “mothers,” not “Basadi,” “women”; choice of words depends

on context.10 The Citizenship Case itself, although argued

primarily in terms of “women’s rights” to equal citizenship,

posed mothers’ rights (to pass on citizenship to children)

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against fathers’ rights. Many provisions in the Manifesto

construct women as mothers, as do its many of its

illustrations. But the Manifesto and other materials, such

as the Political Education Project (PEP) handbook (EB 1998a)

move on to challenge all discriminatory laws, cultural

biases against women as leaders, the culturally-based gender

division of labor, and male power over women, whether

expressed in marriage law, financial practices or male

violence against women, including marital rape. EB’s

efforts successfully pushed women’s rights issues into party

platforms from 1994 on, and through EB’s own meetings,

conferences and workshops, through the press and radio, and

through “Radio Mall,” consciousness of “gender issues” moved

into the dominant public discourse.

In sharp contrast, opposition left parties have

historically had little success in pushing class

consciousness into the dominant public discourse, nor in

developing class consciousness among Botswana’s workers,

male or female. Explanations again lie in Botswana’s

political economy as well as its colonial history. Analysis

21

based on male migrants in Botswana has classified such

cyclical workers as a “peasantariat” because of the

dependence of their “household” on a combination of rural

farming/herding and migrant wage labor, seeing them as

unlikely to develop a “working class consciousness” because

of their identification with the village as “home” and their

investments there. (Parson 1984) It is also significant

that during the years of heavy migrant mine labor that

continued after independence, citizens of Botswana resident

outside the country during elections could not vote, a

useful measure to block the possibility of migrants

organizing politically at the point of production and

effectively expressing a radical political consciousness.

When they returned “home” they would be dispersed and

reincorporated into village communities, most of which had

chiefs supportive of the dominant Botswana Democratic Party.

However, as indicated above, the historical lack of

radical or working class consciousness is rooted in the

absence of a nationalist struggle for independence that

could have radicalized both workers and sectors of the petty

22

bourgeoisie. In contrast to surrounding countries, there

was no significant white settler class whose presence could

have provoked a radical nationalist movement. Botswana

achieved political independence through a transfer of formal

power from the British colonial authorities to their

preferred political formation, the Botswana Democratic

Party, organized by Seretse Khama, the royal heir in the

largest Tswana polity (Bangwato) and the wealthiest man in

the country at independence, and other wealthy Tswana cattle

owners, joined by the few wealthy white cattle owners. The

BDP was organized specifically as a counter to the first

organized party, the radical Botswana People’s Party, which

had historical and ideological links to nationalist

movements in South Africa. The BDP was multi-racial,

dominant class-based, and from the beginning extremely

hostile to trade unions, a hostility expressed in

10“Bomme” is used to refer to two or more women who are not present to the speaker, and “Mme” to refer to one, as “Bomma” (Bo/mma) is used to address two or more women, and “Mma” to address one. “Basadi” is used tomean both “women” and “wives”; singular Mo/sadi. Choice of words depends on context. Emang Basadi takes its name from the national anthem, which adjures men to stand up, and women/wives to stand up beside their men—EB pointedly left off the “beside your men” part. Someeducated women now use “Ms.,” also pointedly.

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restrictive laws, which for decades prohibited the

unionization of civil servants and criminalized strikes and

which still impose restrictive rules on organizing unions,

collective bargaining and strikes.

The continued dependence of the economy on diamond

exports and its lack of serious diversification into

manufacturing industry is today a major obstacle for the

development of a strong trade union movement.

Diversification is constrained by South Africa’s domination

of the regional economy, a problem that will face any

governing party. A Hyundai plant enticed by government

benefits to new investors was opened with much celebration,

and then shut down by pressures from South Africa,

protecting its own auto manufacturing sector. Although

recent laws have allowed for the unionization of civil

servants—a significant change since the government still

employs a large proportion of wage workers—and for improved

rules on collective bargaining and strikes, they have not

yet been implemented and still contain bureaucratic

restrictions.

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Copper and nickel miners have the strongest history of

militancy, and the potential for the emergence of labor

militancy among women as well as men has been demonstrated

in the 2004 strike of 461 workers—women and men—at Debswana,

and in protests by women garment workers. But so is the

continued hostility of the BDP and the constraints of

globalizing capitalism. The Debswana he workers were fired,

with no redress. The Chinese-owned factories shut down

operations as soon as their government incentives ran out.

The BDP’s record on labor issues, and its persistent refusal

to sign almost any International Labor Organization

protocols, has been identified as the “blot” on its record

by human rights organizations.

For all the criticism possible of BDP economic

policies, the BDP still receives deserved credit from

Batswana for all the social development that it has

fostered. Whatever criticisms can be made of the BDP

elites, they have actually significantly developed the

country, providing not only roads and safe water and

electrification, but schools and health care. No one is

25

accusing them of salting the diamond wealth away in foreign

bank accounts while the people starve. And Seretse Khama

received international recognition as well as praise in

Botswana for his principled international stand against

apartheid and his government’s adherence to its policy of

accepting and protecting South African refugees, in the face

of economic pressure and SADF raids.

But with the ending of the outside threat posed by the

apartheid regime, political space has opened up for greater

questioning of government, as the consequences of economic

growth accompanied by growing inequality and unemployment

are more and more manifest. The BDP’s failure to make good

on promises to diversify the economy and provide jobs has

led to more public criticism of its economic policies and

its favoring of the “wealthy,” and opinion pieces and

letters appear that criticize neoliberalism and capitalism,

and sometimes call for socialist solutions, although they

are still relatively rare.

26

Feminism Aligned with Socialism?

In the run-up to the 1994 national elections, there

seemed to be some congruence and sympathy between the

campaigns of Emang Basadi and the leading opposition party,

the Botswana National Front. Emang Basasi, frustrated with

the Botswana Democratic Party’s stonewalling on changing the

Citizenship Law after Dow’s successful challenge to it, had

moved into a more oppositional stance toward government, and

some EB activists were also active in the BNF. The BDP did

promise to revise the Citizenship Act and to examine other

legislation. But the BNF went much further. In the 1990s

the Botswana National Front was undergoing changes, not for

the first time, but now in a new context, including the

impending election of the ANC in South Africa. The growth of

trade unions and of urban residence in general, along with

increasing dissatisfaction among young people with the

educational and job policies of the BDP, had swelled the BNF

membership and support, and the party formulated a strong

social democratic platform critical of the ruling party’s

“neoliberalism.” The combination of ANC influence and

27

pressure from militant women in the Youth Section resulted

in a strong women’s plank in the 1994 BNF platform, in its

section “On the Emancipation of Women”:

BNF is committed to the abolition of all forms of discrimination and inequality

based on sex. BNF believes that most Batswana women suffer from various

forms of sex discrimination and inequality, and that sex discrimination and

inequality are a result of social relations of a male dominated society. (BNF 1994: 10)

The BNF proposed “special projects and programmes” that

dealt with women’s access to management and skilled jobs,

economic and financial resources, agricultural credit, and

maternity leave at full salary. BNF also advocated support

for women “to organize themselves under organizations that

promote their particular interests as women”—a significant

recognition of the need for the autonomy of women’s

organizations, and committed the party to reserve 30% of

positions in party structures for women, with the remaining

70% to be contested by women “on an equal basis with men.”

(BNF 1994: 10)

28

The Women’s Manifesto called for legal protections for

“vulnerable workers,” agricultural workers and domestic

servants, and for those workers, a majority of whom are

women, calls for the application of international

conventions for their protection. (EB 1999 :6) The October

1994 election results jolted the ruling BDP: the old

parliament of 38 seats had only 3 seats held by the BNF and

32 by the BDP; the new parliament, expanded to 40 elected

seats, had 13 BNF seats and only 27 BDP elected seats plus

four more Specially Elected by the majority party

(effectively appointed by the President, himself—or herself—

determined by the majority party in parliament). The BDP

fielded two successful women parliamentary candidates, and

added two more as Specially Elected.

The significant gain in seats by the BNF was apparently

interpreted both by Emang Basadi and by the BDP as an

indication of the potential power of women’s votes, even

though the only women elected to parliament were from the

BDP, and other analysts have attributed the BNF gain at

least in large part to voter disapproval of vociferous and

29

public factionalism in the BDP just prior to the election.

(Makape 2006: 89-91) In any case, the BDP acted on its

gender promises, and continued between 1994 and the next

election in 1999 to carry out parts of Emang Basadi’s

agenda, earning recognition in the 1999 Women’s Manifesto

for having:

Amended the Citizenship Act in 1995, the Deeds RegistryAct in 1997, and the

Mines, Quarried, Works and Machinery Act in 1999 and in1999;

Adopted the National Policy on Women in Development;

Developed and adopted a National Gender Programme and Gender Plan of

Action;

Ratified the Convention on the Elinination of All Formsof Discrimination

Against Women (CEDAW);

Amended the Penal Code in 1998, defining rape as genderneutral and increasing

the minimum sentence to 10 years, and 15 years if accompanied by injurious

violence. (Emang Basadi 1999: iv-v)11

The BDP government also clearly recognized the threat

directly from the BNF, and, as the BNF points out in its

1995 Social Democratic Programme preface, adopted several

30

policies proposed by the BNF in 1994: creation of an

independent electoral commission, reduction of the voting

age from 21 to 18, social security for the aged, a two-term

limit on the presidency, and—not included in the preface—

extension of voting rights to citizens residing outside the

county. The BNF, along with Emang Basadi, claimed credit

for the BDP’s actions “to repeal the archaic laws that

oppress women.” (BNF 1995: Preface) The Social Democratic

Programme includes gender equality as part of a strong

social democratic formulation of social and economic rights

as the basis for political rights: “Equality is the pre-

requisite to liberty. In an unequal society, the victims

inequality inevitably have less control over their own lives

and dignity.” The BNF therefore opposes “an order of things

whereby rights, obligations and tasks are allotted according

11The 1999 Manifesto praises the law’s provisions of no bail for suspects charged with rape, and sentences of 10 years’ minimum and 15 years to life, with or without caning, if violence results in injury to the victim. This put Emang Basadi in alliance with the BDP against human rights and civil liberties advocates; the Botswana Constitution prohibits “torture” and “inhuman or degrading punishment” but specifically exempts punishments that existed at the time the Constitution came into force, namely, caning. Constitution Chapter II (7).

31

to sex” and “calls for equality between men and women.” (BNF

1995: 13). The SDP further calls for well paying and secure

jobs for women, equal sharing between men and women of “care

of children and the home,” and freedom for women “to

participate in political and trade union activities and

other national issues,” and commits to using “affirmative

action to put women in positions of leadership and

responsibility…” (BNF 1995: 15)

Approaching the 1999 elections, both the women’s

movement and the BNF seemed to have gained momentum. The

weekly Gaborone newspaper Mmegi (The Reporter) editorialized

in January 1996:

Women are evolving into a powerful constituency in Botswana. They

have always been a potentially strong block as they constitute the majority

of voters, especially in the countryside. However, in the past women did

not vote as a block rallying around common issues. With the momentum

that women’s civic associations like Emang Basadi have set in motion in

conscientising women about their rights, any politicalparty which does not

court women in the future will be doing that at its ownperil.

32

Emang Basadi emphasized this “peril” and their

continuing commitment to bring “gender sensitive” women into

political leadership at their 1997 national conference,

where participants wore tee-shirts proclaiming, "Democracy

without a woman in power belongs to the past," and warning,

"Dear President, Members of Parliament, Councillors and All

Candidates: In 1999 we will vote for those who advocate for

women's rights. Are you one of them?" Emang Basadi issued a

revised Women’s Manifesto, with greater emphasis on poverty

and “economic empowerment,” women’s reproductive rights,

violence against women, and democracy and human rights. The

revised Manifesto retained a strong focus on women’s legal

rights but also explicitly challenged men’s power over women

and argued that strategies that seek “power sharing between

men and women should target all levels of public and private

life in order to be successful.” (EB 1999: 16). The

Manifesto criticized the “basically oppressive” nature of

“certain aspects of Setswana culture,” including “the

cultural acceptance of men assaulting their wives.” (EB

33

1999: 23, 12) It therefore demanded not only the

elimination of the statutory or common law “marital power,”

which gave husbands’ control over their wives’ property and

rendered adult married women legal minors, it also demanded

that “all customary laws” should recognize “women’s right to

full legal capacity,” (EB 1999: 23), continuing Emang

Basadi’s long and determined struggle to assert women’s

equal legal rights against custom and customary law.

The BNF, having taken 13 seats in 1994, identified

seven additional seats as “marginal”—districts in which the

total combined vote of opposition parties was greater than

that for the BDP candidate. The BNF had in fact carried out

its commitment to increase women’s representation in party

structures. It added a “women’s lobby,” and at the party

congress in July 1997, a woman, Motsei Madisa from the

University of Botswana, was elected Deputy Secretary General

over male opponents, and three other women were elected to

hold “shadow portfolios.” This led additional women’s

rights advocates to ally with the BNF, forming part of its

“left wing.” In 1998 women made up one-third of the party

34

central committee. (Dingake 2004: 190) Still benefitting

from the ANC victory in South Africa and, perhaps even more,

from increasing frustration among urban youth about

unemployment, the BNF seemed poised finally to win a

majority and take control of government. But factionalism

and the “cult of personality” of BNF founder-leader Kenneth

Koma led to the “battle of Palapye,” a contentious and

eventually violent confrontation between opposing factions,

salaciously reported in the press. As a result, part of

the BNF split away, led by the BNF vice president, Michael

Dingake, and taking Deputy Secretary General Modisa, 12 of

18 members of the central committee, including all the women

members, and more than 800 party activists with it.

Dingake, Robben Island veteran and long-time socialist,

became the first president of the new Botswana Congress

Party, with Modisa as Deputy Secretary General. (Dingake

2004; Mmegi 1998: )

The Botswana Congress Party produced both a Manifesto

and a Democratic and Development Programme (DDP), with

provisions on gender that address discrimination and

35

subordination "in both public and private spheres,”

criticizes the use of “family privacy” and the “marital

power” to keep women vulnerable to male power and violence,

including marital rape, and calls for abolishing all laws

“modern and customary” that discriminate against women.(BCP

1999b: 40-41) The Manifesto includes these issues and

extends the calls for equality to “the boy child and the

girl child.” It also pledges to “ensure that gender is

mainstreamed in all sectors of the economy” by introducing a

“gender audit” to monitor mainstreaming. (BCP 1999a: 32-33)

Since the group that formed the BCP included 11 of the

13 BNF MPs, the BCP replaced the BNF in 1998 as the official

parliamentary opposition. But their triumph was short-

lived, as the 1999 elections brought in six BNF MPs but

returned only one BCP member, Gilson Saleshando, now the

president of the BCP. Instead of the “Year of the BNF,”

1999 became the “Year of the Woman,” as it was dubbed by the

Botswana Gazette. Four BDP women candidates were elected, and

BDP President Festus Mogae nominated two women for specially

appointed Parliamentary seats and appointed women to 10 top

36

positions in government and the public service, including

head of the National Bank. This increased the number of

women MPs to 18% of the total, an increase of 100%, and

women to 20% of the Cabinet.12

The “Year of the Woman” further energized and

encouraged women activists to continue their electoral

strategy and their pressure on government to remove

discriminatory laws, particularly the common law-based

“marital power” of the husband over the person and property

of his wife. Keboitse Machangana, chairperson of Emang

Basadi in 2002, said of the Citizenship Act victory and its

repudiation of “custom” in favor of equal rights, “Since

then, there has been no looking back!” ( Botswana Guardian

2002) Pressuring government, from outside and through the

actions of (BDP) women MPs, produced a notable success in

December 2004, when Parliament passed the Abolition of

Marital Power Act, which equalizes spouses’ control over 12Appointments included Ministers of Local Government and of Health and assistant ministers of Local Government and of the Office of the President. One woman has served as Minister of Foreign Affairs, and later as Minister of Education; one as deputy secretary of Foreign Affairs and later as assistant minister of Local Government, Lands and Housing.

37

joint property and juristic acts, and also removes the

definition of a married woman’s domicile as legally that of

her husband and equalizes rights regarding the domicile and

guardianship of children. This was a significant victory

after a long campaign, significant not only in terms of the

actual statutory changes, which matter directly for all

women, rural and urban, married under civil law, but

symbolically as a statement that men do not “own” their

wives. It becomes part of the shifting discourse on

domestic violence and provides increased possibilities for

changing law and practice on domestic violence. Even though

the change only affects civil marriage and not marriage in

customary law, it “rolls” the debate further on, bringing

into greater contention customary law “marital powers” and

the other “customs oppressive to women” targeted in the

Women’s Manifesto.

But the electoral strategy to elect more gender

sensitive women to Parliament was seriously called into

question by the defeat of many women candidates in primary

elections, and the reduction of women’s representation

38

from 11% to 6%.13 This was a serious blow to activists’

hopes, in the election supposed to increase women’s

representation to 30% to meet SADC member goals. Even if

all the women candidates standing in the general election

had won, they would still have held only 21% of seats.

Emang Basadi and academic analysts tend to locate the

problems in both culture and culture-inflected economics:

both women and men continue to question female leadership,

women candidates have fewer resources to meet campaign

costs, and women candidates still must balance their

family responsibilities with campaigning. (Selolwane 1998;

Emang Basadi 1998, 1999; I. Molokomme 2007) They also

locate problems directly in the electoral system and

political system: the “first past the post” elections in

single-member districts as opposed to proportional

representation, and parties’ lack of commitment to

fielding women candidates.14

Paradoxically, the combination of abolition of the

marital power and electoral defeats of women candidates

may indicate the success of Emang Basadi’s electoral

39

strategy to support parties and elect candidates that

support women’s rights—just not women candidates. The

actions of President Festus Mogae also suggest a response

to activists’ campaigns and a willingness to include women

in government—as long as he doesn’t have to risk losing a

parliamentary BDP seat by fielding many of them as

candidates. Along with appointing women as Specially

Elected MPs in both 1999 and 2004 and women as ministers,

deputy ministers and to other top government posts in

1999, Mogae appointed Unity Dow as the first female judge

of the High Court in 1998 (the very court that ruled in

her favor in 1991). In 2003 he appointed Athaliah

Molokomme, University of Botswana law lecturer, Emang

Basadi’s first president and author of the first women and

the law handbook, pamphlets, and many scholarly articles

on women’s rights, as the second female High Court judge;

13Actually, the same number of women was elected, but Parliament was enlarged, reducing the percentage. 14As of May 2007, Emang Basadi was not calling for quotas, either in party slates or in parliamentary seats. They are at present working on a new policy and strategy statement, but it is “in process” and not available.

40

and in 2005 he appointed her as the first woman Attorney

General of Botswana.

These actions make the BDP appear to deserve the

support of women who have been mobilized into more active

citizenship by activists’ campaigns. But they can also be

seen as the use of a political tactic well-practiced by the

BDP (and many other dominant parties): appointing effective

political opponents to positions that have influence, even

power, and certainly perks, but which prevent them from

engaging in politics. Dow has commented on the complexity of

the transition from political advocacy judicial

“impartiality,” from challenging the government to being in

government. She has said that she can still use her position

to advance women’s rights, since judges in a common law

system are able to interpret laws in the context of evolving

human rights standards, such as the provisions of CEDAW, and

bring those new standards into judicial discourse. She also

pointed out that non-governmental organizations are an

important source of cases in which she further develop human

rights law.(Dow 1999: 1) She is clearly willing to rule

41

against government: her opinion in the recent successful

case by the First People of the Kalahari against the

government’s policy of removing them from land in the

Central Kalahari Game Reserve has been described by FPK

supporters as a moving and inspiring affirmation of human

rights.(Nyati-Ramahobo 2007; Boko 2007) Molokomme, however,

has been recently criticized by the BNF for expanding the

power of the executive in her advisory judgement to

Parliament that the executive is bound only by statutes, not

by “motions in parliament,” the motion in question being a

move by BNF and backbench BDP members to block the sale of

Air Botswana to a South African company. (Mmegi June 2007;

Botswana Gazette 2007).

Toward 2009: Feminism, Socialism and the Democratic Project

Moving toward the next national election in 2009,

social democratic opposition parties are continuing their

cautious and sometimes contentious attempts to form

electoral coalitions. Emang Basadi is continuing its

attempts to bring a greater “gender sensitivity” to

political parties, government and voters, particularly women

42

voters, and to convince parties and voters to accept women

as leaders. Human rights groups and researchers/advocates

at various institutes and foundations continue to study and

urge programs to increase substantive democracy, sharing

with Emang Basadi the goal of convincing voters that they

can make changes in their lives with their ballots. BDP

factionalism has recently gained force, with a bloc of BDP

MPs and other party activists criticizing others for their

use of public office for personal gain.

So, what are the chances of a successful opposition

coalition? What would Emang Basadi gain from a more class

conscious and social democratic perspective? What would the

social democratic parties gain from Emang Basadi’s political

analysis? What are the likely locations in which feminism

and socialism could be brought together?

M press and scholarly attention has been paid to the

factional splits within the Botswana left opposition and to

the recurrent charges of “opportunism” by all sides against

each other. Factions are endemic to democratic politics, as

is the seeking of power. Open factional conflicts are a

43

part of Tswana political history, and the BNF is in some

ways more representative of Tswana traditions than the BDP:

in Tswana polities, when there was a contest for the

inheritance of power, the losing faction took their

followers and went somewhere else to live. The “problem” is

that within the political system today, containing

factionalism rather than allowing splitting is necessary for

political success, and the BDP, with its lock on the

resources that government offers, has been successful so far

at containing its factions.

But the Botswana National Front has engaged in a long

campaign to create a unified and successful opposition

formation, and in recent elections other opposition parties

have also engaged in attempts at forming coalitions and

pacts. The Botswana National Front was organized in 1965 in

an attempt to bring together various small parties and

individuals who opposed the Botswana Democratic Party, just

elected in the run-up to independence, characterizing it as

neo-colonial. Joined in 1969 by a dissident chief, Bathoen

II, the BNF has been an uneasy and often fractious alliance

44

of opponents of the BDP, and many small parties have split

off from it, some of which remain or have returned to be

“part” of the BNF, since membership has been both by

individuals on their own and by individuals who are members

of aligned groups and who run for election, when they do,

under the BNF banner. Many individuals, as well as groups,

have moved back and forth between the BNF and the BDP, and

many people within the social democratic opposition have

moved among parties, much of which can be seen as “normal”

attempts to sort out political alliances, strategies and

ideological commitments, given the constraints imposed by

the BDP’s lock on government resources and Botswana’s

political and economic history.

Selolwane and Shale (2007) describe the continuing

attempts by opposition parties to form electoral non-

competition pacts, with the goal of winning a majority of

parliament and forming a government of national unity. In

this continuing process, two main options reappear, an

umbrella group in which each party retains its own identity

and a more formal merging into a new and newly named party,

45

with the smaller parties favoring a merger and the larger

BNF favoring the umbrella group, or the merging of other

parties into the BNF itself, not a popular option to the

other parties. Despite 2004 seeming unpropitious for the

success of coalitions, given the hostility remaining between

the BNF and the BCP, it was in fact the first general

elections year when some opposition parties, the BNF and two

smaller parties, the Botswana People’s Party and the

Botswana Alliance movement, forged and stuck to an election

pact. Although the pact produced minimal electoral success,

Selowane and Shale argue that it had a significant impact on

voter confidence in opposition parties’ credibility,

demonstrating the capacity to work out problems needed for

competent governance.

In 2005 an agreement was signed by the Botswana

National Front, the Botswana Congress Party, and the

Botswana Alliance Movement, joined by the Botswana People’s

Party in 2006. Although it covered only by-elections

between 2005 and 2009, it significantly brought together the

BNF and BCP, who between them had taken 42% of the popular

46

vote in 2004, the two parties most able, together, to

challenge the BDP, and the two parties most able to inflict

serious electoral damage on each other.(Selolwane and Shale:

2007:38) The pact had an immediate benefit, as joint

support brought the BNF leader, Otsweletse Moupo, into

parliament, where he became the Leader of the Opposition. A

division between the party leader and MPs lay at the root of

the 1998 BNF split, so the pact had the effect of

strengthening the BNF and its commitment to opposition

coalitions. The pact was unfortunately ended in 2006 by a

breakdown in negotiation talks for 2009, but increased

public criticism of the BDP and political necessity will

likely start them up again. Joint participation in broad-

based political coalitions on particular issues also offer

“safe” space in which BNF and BCP activists can work

together and develop networks and trust. The BCP and the

BNF Youth League in March 2007 joined a coalition of more

than 30 groups, organized to urge stronger SADC action on

Zimbabwe and better treatment of Zimbabwean refugees in

Botswana. (Echo 2007: 8)

47

Even a successful pact and the winning of a

parliamentary majority would still, of course, give the BDP

the opportunity to attempt to hive off enough individual MPs

or a small party and form its own “national unity”

government. But in the absence of an actual merger of the

BNF and BCP, the national unity strategy seems the only

possibility. The BNF and BDP make similar criticisms of

BDP corruption and incompetence at diversifying the economy,

and on its favoring the wealthy and ignoring the poor, and

they advocate gender policies that differ more in degree of

detail than basic concept. But there remain ideological

distinctions between the two parties that are clear in left

political terms, perhaps best indicated by the alliance of

the BNF with the Socialist International since 1986, and the

alliance of the BCP specifically with New Labour, and its

receipt of funding and training support from New Labour’s

Westminster Foundation. The BNF tends to characterize

itself as more left than the BCP, more critical of

capitalism, more “socialist.” The BCP tends to characterize

itself as more moderate than the BNF, and its party

48

materials are less ideological toward capitalism. But both

define themselves as social democratic parties. Both

clearly state their opposition to “the free rein of

capitalism” and their commitment to state intervention in

the economy, support of parastatals and cooperatives, and

restructuring of the rural economy, as well as extensive

social provision. Parties with less agreement have formed

workable coalition governments.

What Emang Basadi could gain from a “left” infusion

into its analysis of women’s problems and proposals for

their solution is, perhaps most importantly, an

understanding of the ways in which capitalist

“development” in Botswana generates many of the problems

they want to solve. In their Political Education Project

handbook and in much of the Manifesto, women’s poverty is

identified as a crucial problem. But the proposals to

reduce women’s poverty are primarily proposals for

incorporating women into existing patterns of

“development” rather than questioning the patterns of

capitalist “development” itself, an approach extensively

49

criticized by left feminists since it was introduced in

1970 (Van Allen 1976; Beneria and Sen 1992). There are

serious problems in focussing on demands for “gender

equality” in an economy with such great inequality among

men. Certainly Emang Basadi is not purposely proposing

“equal poverty” between poor women and men and “equal

wealth” between rich women and men, but without a

perspective critical of capitalist “development,” many of

its proposals could work out that way. The BNF provides a

more comprehensive political analysis of inequality,

combining critiques of inequality between women and men,

between classes, and between ethnic groups, in the context

of capitalist-generated economic inequality.(BNF 1995)

The BNF and BCP and other left parties have

incorporated “gender issues” into their platforms,

responding to the Women’s Manifesto and the continuing

work that Emang Basadi has done with women activists in

political parties. The BNF was unwilling to participate

in the Inter-Party Caucus organized by Emang Basadi in

1996 because of the dominance of BDP parliamentarians (4

50

to 0) and BDP councillors (55 to 10, plus 4 from other

parties). But BNF and, after 1998, BCP women have been

part of Emang Basadi’s other conferences, workshops and

seminars, and through women’s wings both policies and

structures have been affected.

But there still needs to be more “gender

consciousness” in the formulation of party positions and

integration of gender issues throughout all sections of

party programs. Both the BNF and the BCP have moved

seriously toward recognizing that male power over women,

rooted in culture, must be addressed in order to create

“gender equality” and “discrimination” against women. The

BNF refers to the “social relations of a male-dominated

society” and urges the abolition of discriminatory laws

“in whatever guise”; the BCP proposes the abolition of

“all laws modern and customary that discriminate against

women in our society.” (BNF 1994: 10; BCP 1999b: 41) Both

specify that policies on gender must deal with both the

private and public realms, and strongly oppose male

violence against women; and their support for abolishing

51

discriminatory laws—especially customary as well as

statutory law—would include the abolition of the marital

power, which both formally and symbolically challenges

male power over women. But both could benefit from

adopting Emang Basadi’s clear positing of women’s rights

as opposed to “culture” and customary law, that core

position expressed in the Citizenship Case.

In other sections of their programs, the parties—

understandably in the current political context of

political claims by (“minority”) ethnic groups—express

support for “cultural rights” that could pose conflicts

with women’s rights. The BNF’s statement is the most

cautious, supporting the right of “each linguistic and

cultural entity…to preserve the best of its cultural

heritage.” (BNF 1995: 6) The BCP makes the stronger

statement that they will guarantee “all people the right

to practice their culture, language, beliefs and customs…”

(BCP 1999: 34, 2004: 23) The problem with this language

is one raised by feminist critics of multiculturalism: if

“cultures” are said to have rights, who in the “culture”

52

decides what customs are to be followed? Even if it’s the

right to “the best” of a cultural heritage, who decides

what’s “the best”? The answer is too often those who

already have power in the “culture,” and that means men,

often senior men. If the social democratic parties are

going to oppose customary law that discriminates against

women, some serious rethinking of the relationship between

“culture” and individual rights is needed.

At the moment such thinking is most likely to take

place among women in the social democratic parties, in

women’s wings and youth wings. With their combined

connections with Emang Basadi and their parties, they are

at the nexus of feminism and socialism. During the U.S.

debates about the meaning of “socialist feminism,” Barbara

Ehrenreich remarked that a socialist feminist is someone

who goes to twice as many meetings. That seems to be a

commonality of socialist feminism that crosses

international boundaries. Whatever effective action Emang

Basadi engages in to carry EB ideas into the opposition

parties will strengthen the women in those parties in

53

their struggle to push a socialist feminist perspective more

thoroughly into the formulation of social democratic party

programs, and social democratic women more effectively

into the leadership and electoral slates of their parties.

It is not at all clear how much social democratic

women can, in turn, influence Emang Basadi’s political

analysis and policy proposals, given its organizational

commitment to reach out to all parties, the current

dominance of the Botswana Democratic Party, the neoliberal

context in which it must operate, and the reductions in

international aid to Botswana NGOs since 2000.

Even if Emang Basadi stays on its current liberal

feminist path, it remains central to the democratic

project—the “struggle to redefine the content, form and

practice of democracy and political life.” (Selolwane 1998

:409) Emang Basadi, and other women’s NGOs, are not,

after all, parties—they are a women’s movement. Emang

Basadi isn’t trying to take power, but to influence the

powerful. To continue effective connections with social

democratic women, Emang Basadi must retain its autonomy

54

from the Botswana Democracy Party. But in a future social

democratic government of national unity, that autonomy

would also be crucial, as feminists inside “progressive”

governments and parties in many countries have learned.

Today in South Africa with its much praised Constitutional

gender rights, its gender machinery and its high women’s

representation levels, ANC feminists still find it

difficult without the existence of an autonomous women’s

movement to confront the refusal of the left—the Congress

of South African Trade Unions and the South African

Communist Party, to listen to them about Jacob Zuma—to take

gender as seriously as class. Important as it is for feminists

within socialist or social democratic parties to contest

party programs and work to make them genuinely feminist,

trust in your comrades is not enough: you need that

autonomous women’s movement at your back.

55