Botswana’s political leadership has for decades been influenced not only by party politics but also by the power and reach of traditional leaders, opposition leader Dumelang Saleshando has said.
Saleshando, who is the Maun North MP and president of the Botswana Congress Party, said the country’s multiparty system had remained intact since independence, but chieftaincy played a major role in determining where political support was concentrated.
Speaking during an interview with Radio Generation, Saleshando said the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP), which governed the country for decades, benefited from the influence of former President Seretse Khama, who was also a chief.
“Chieftainship influence” was particularly important in the Central District, he said, where Khama was the traditional leader of a large geographical area.
According to Saleshando, the political influence of the Khama family also helped strengthen the BDP’s position over the years, with Seretse Khama’s son, Ian Khama, eventually succeeding him as president.
Saleshando said the influence of traditional leadership was not limited to the ruling party. The Botswana National Front (BNF), which is now part of the coalition governing the country, also benefited from the support associated with a prominent chief who joined the party and rose to become its number two.
That association helped the BNF establish a strong presence in constituencies where members of the chief’s community were concentrated, Saleshando said.
He argued that such regional and tribal connections have been an important factor in Botswana’s political contests, alongside party structures and national campaigns.
Saleshando also traced his own party’s origins to disagreements within the BNF, particularly over the question of internal democracy.
He said the BNF had at the time been led by a highly popular and charismatic figure whose education and leftist political outlook attracted strong support from trade unions and low-income groups.
However, Saleshando said the leader’s popularity eventually created tensions within the party because of the way leadership decisions were made.
He described a system in which the leader could approach party members with a predetermined list of people he wanted elected to help run the organisation.
“I would like you to vote for the following people to assist me in managing the party,” Saleshando recalled the leader telling party members.
Saleshando said such practices contributed to the decision by his group to break away from the BNF and establish the Botswana Congress Party.
Despite these political struggles, he said Botswana had avoided the one-party path taken by some African countries after independence.
He noted that leaders such as Kenya’s Jomo Kenyatta and Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah, as well as Zambia’s Kenneth Kaunda, operated in periods when one-party rule was seen by some African leaders as a viable political model.
“For Botswana, our leaders were not tempted to go down that route,” Saleshando said.
He argued that the country’s continued multiparty tradition had provided space for competing political forces, even as traditional authority, tribal loyalties and influential personalities continued to shape political outcomes.