Political parties in Botswana: Some observations
Date
1973-02
Authors
Wiseman, John A.
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Abstract
Perhaps I could begin by stressing the tentative nature of the
paper which I shall be presenting to this seminar. In the main this
is due to the inadequacy of source material, relating to Botswana,
available in Britain. The country is small (in terms of population)
and poor, a situation which does not encourage the generation of much
in the way of primary material, especially outside the governmental
sector. With one or two exceptions the secondary material concerning
Botswana seems to be based on the promise that the most important
factor concerning the country is its relationship with the rest of
Southern Africa. Thus it is regarded as a rather small pawn in the
wider struggle with usually little more than a cursory glance at its
internal politics. I am at the moment planning a trip to Botswana
for the purposes of field work later in the year, but for the present
I acknowledge that there are serious gaps in the paper I shall put
before you. In most cases I shall attempt to point to the omissions
myself. In spite of this I believe that the paper may be of interest,
not only to those few who have a particular interest in Botswana, but
to the much wider number who accept that the study of new states is
of vital relevance to our understanding of politics.
This account rejects the notion of any "single explanation" of
the party system in Botswana: it rejects single variable determinism
or even dominancy as a core explanatory factor. Thus it regards as
simplistic any attempt to use one variable (e.g. tribe, class, region
etc.) as a sensible method of understanding the nature of political
parties or their interactions, analytically positioned as "party
system". What is more, this account argues that the same method
cannot be used to explain all the parties, even after allowance has
been made for different content variables.
Description
African Studies Seminar series. Paper presented February 1973
Keywords
Political parties. Botswana, Botswana. Politics and government