Following comments about Botswana being a puppet of US imperialism, ANC Youth League President Julius Malema is appearing before the party’s disciplinary committee, writes Ronald Wesso.

Botswana is developing a policy to protect, preserve and promote its indigenous knowledge and mainstream it into the country's macro-economic framework. Development of the policy will involve identifying, documenting and gathering local traditional knowledge practices from areas including agriculture, health, culture and religious beliefs, and then feeding them into a legislative framework.

A report by US-Africa Command (AFRICOM) says despite the Botswana government's significant achievements since 1966, Botswana's prosperity and political stability are more fragile than is frequently recognised. Dated June 2011, the report says three current realities form the core of this fragility: a population that is highly-dependent on social welfare programmes provided by the state; a state that is heavily reliant on a single commodity (diamonds) that is highly sensitive to fluctuations in the global economy; and a narrow economic base that leaves the country deeply tied to that of neighbouring South Africa.

In many countries women’s rights have been abused for so long that many women long ago stopped fighting for them. Not so Unity Dow, a lawyer who challenged the unequal citizenship rights in her native Botswana and won. Her 1992 lawsuit was recognised last month as a landmark case in the fight for women’s rights when UN Women published its flagship report: 'Progress of the World’s Women 2011-2012: In Pursuit of Justice'. Dow succeeded in overturning the section of Botswana’s Citizenship Act that prohibited Botswanan women who married foreigners from passing on their Botswanan nationality to their children.

The ANC Youth league and its leader, Julius Malema, have been publicly rebuked by the ANC for calling for 'regime change' in Botswana and describing its president as 'a puppet'. In a harsh statement issued by ANC spokesman Jackson Mthembu, the ANC said: 'This insult and disrespect to the President [Ian Khama], the government and the people of Botswana, and a threat to destabilise and effect regime change in Botswana, is a clear demonstration that the ANCYL's ill-discipline has clearly crossed the political line.'

After being filed two weeks ago, it is now only a matter of time before the MP for Gaborone Central, Dumelang Saleshando, presents a motion of no confidence in President Ian Khama and his government. Because the motion is not likely to pass, Saleshando intends to use it to highlight the shortcomings of the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) government under Khama, whom he considers unfit for office. Speaking in an interview, Saleshando blamed the recent public service strike on Khama, saying as unions bargained with the employer, the president had seen fit to tour the country vowing that there would be no salary increase.

Reports that major opposition parties in the country have united to form an umbrella opposition coalition against the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) could be the beginning of an end to the ruling party's 45-year rule over this country. However, the level of support for the new coalition remains unclear. With negotiations still underway, the opposition coalition has not yet taken control of any political power base nor demonstrated its popularity. Leadership of the coalition might also prove a contentious issue.

Ian Khama, Botswana's president since 2008, has interests in a premium tourism company that benefited from the controversial relocation of Botswana's Bushmen from their ancestral land to resettlement camps in the 1990s and the early 2000s. Khama is a shareholder in Linyanti Investments, a subsidiary of Wilderness Holdings, a company criticised by the Bushmen and international pressure group Survival International for illegally occupying their ancestral land in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve.

Bushmen living in Botswana's Central Kalahari Game Reserve will receive a crucial new water supply next month after winning a lengthy court battle, the diamond firm mining the area said. Botswana's highest court ruled in January in favour of the Bushmen who had fought for years for the right to re-open a crucial water well that supplied their village.

The Botswana government said on 20 June that it had amended legislation classifying essential services workers to include teachers in an effort to prevent more civil servants from striking. Making the announcement through a government gazette, Minister of Labour and Home Affairs Peter Siele said that veterinary services, teaching services, diamond sorting, cutting and selling services and all supporting services connected to them have now been placed under the essential services.

The Okavango delta in Botswana has suffered 'catastrophic' species loss over the past 15 years, researchers have announced, in the latest sign of a growing crisis for wildlife in Africa. Some wild animal populations in the delta, one of the wonders of the natural world, have shrunk by up to 90 per cent and are facing local extinction, according to the most comprehensive aerial survey yet undertaken there.

Botswana’s government deployed heavy security in the capital Gaborone for the second day on Friday 10 June as despairing union leaders announced a suspension of a seven-week civil service strike that has driven the peaceful nation to the brink of full-scale violence. Armed police backed by the paramilitary Special Support Group (SSG) and a helicopter were out in force on Thursday 9 June to prevent the striking workers from engaging in acts of violence and destruction that have accompanied the strike.

A new sex workers initiative in Botswana has included an LGBTI component in its programme. African Sex Workers Alliance (ASWA) is a Pan African movement and alliance for the rights of sex workers which was established in 2009 in Johannesburg South Africa, with a number of 105 sex workers from different countries in Africa. Sisonke Botswana, a sex work group currently housed by Botswana Network on Ethics Law and HIV/AIDS (BONELA), joined ASWA and dedicated a week to the mapping of sex workers rights in Botswana with the aim to forming a coalition which will advance the human health rights of most key population (sex workers, transgender, MSM and drug users).

'In simple terms, the struggle of the workers of Botswana is a struggle against the neo-liberal restructuring of the public sector, which is about sustained attacks on worker's rights, their conditions and access to services by communities,' says Bongani Masuku, International Relations Secretary, Congress of South African Trade Unions, on 'It is a struggle we all support and continue to wage in our own countries and globally. We support them and call for global solidarity, particularly because for far too long, Botswana has paraded itself as a paragon of democracy on the continent and now that myth is being exposed and debunked. Workers have a right to defend their pay and conditions, as well as demand better services for communities.'

Botswana public sector unions said on Monday (30 May) they had conditionally accepted a three per cent pay rise but a six-week strike that has shaken the ruling party's 45-year grip on power would continue until all demands were met. A spokesman for the Federation of Public Sector Unions (BOFEPUSU) said the government must reinstate 1,500 sacked workers as part of a final settlement, and lift a 'no work, no pay' policy. The agreed average pay rise is a fraction of the 16 per cent first demanded by the 90,000 state workers, and less even than the five per cent on offer from the government of the landlocked southern African country, the world's biggest diamond producer.

Botswana's government closed all primary and secondary schools on Monday (16 May) after violent clashes between police and students angry over a strike by teachers and other public workers. The violence began last week at a secondary school in Molepolole, a village 60km south-east of the capital Gaborone, and spread to schools across the country. Students have missed most of their classes since teachers and other public-sector workers went on strike on 18 April. Public service employees are demanding a 16 per cent salary increment, while government is offering five per cent.

The ongoing public servants' strike in Botswana has seen that country's state-owned media cover only one side of the story, writes Thapelo Ndlovu on Free African Media. 'Despite being denied the opportunity to air their views in the state media, the striking Botswana public service workers have not effectively used the new media, especially social network sites. The Internet is largely available in Botswana, but workers and the public in general don’t yet fully use it. Facebook is the most popular, but largely among the savvy youth, most of whom are not interested in labour or political issues.'

An indefinite strike by public-sector workers in diamond-rich Botswana is threatening the ruling party’s 45-year grip on power and denting its image as the steward of one of Africa’s success stories. The main public employees’ union said more than 90,000 workers have joined the strike, which has ground public services to a near halt and forced schools, clinics and government offices to operate on skeleton staff. The country’s three largest opposition parties have moved to capitalise on the unrest.
Duma Boko, head of the opposition Botswana National Front, called on Botswana to replicate the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia.

reports on media freedom in Botswana, which it says has been 'steadily eroded' over the last decade. 'The controversial Media Practitioners Act, passed in 2008, calls for all media practitioners to register with the press council, while simultaneously defining a media practitioner as anyone who transmits information. Civil society groups have filed a law suit against the state, but it has yet to have its day in court.'

'The Botswana Caucus for Women in Politics has failed to realise the objectives it was intended for, but we will not give up on it just yet,' says Margaret Nasha. The BCWP is a platform established to enable women from all political parties to converge and support each other in their attempts to make their mark in a male-dominated field. When it was set up 15 years ago, its membership was initially restricted to women in parliament. Nasha, the first woman to serve as Speaker of Parliament in Botswana, explained that four years in, they realised that only women from the ruling Botswana Democratic Party were benefiting from it and they decided to open membership to any active woman member of a political party.