Botswana Presidents in times of crisis

Dr Teedzani Thapelo | Tuesday August 26, 2025 11:50

From Sir Ketumile Masire’s lonely vigil over a young, drought-stricken republic, to Festus Mogae’s defiant spending in the face of the Great Recession, and now to Duma Boko’s battle with a waning diamond age, the story is one of decisions taken in fear and hope, choices that tethered survival to prudence, imagination, or sheer political nerve.

Masire: The first trial of austerity



When Masire inherited the presidency in 1980, Botswana was still a fragile state barely two decades into independence and shackled to the twin fortunes of diamonds and cattle.

The early 1980s recession hit like a hammer. Global demand for diamonds collapsed, leaving De Beers and Botswana to sit on unsold stones worth over half a billion dollars.

At the same time, foot-and-mouth disease and a withering drought reduced the national cattle herd by nearly a third.

For a society where agriculture was not just an economy but a way of life, this was disaster written into the soil and skies.

Masire’s genius was not flamboyance but steadiness. He reached for the reserves carefully built during the boom years, insisting that Botswana must first depend on its prudence before seeking aid.

Austerity was introduced, but unlike in many African states, it was not the bitter prescription of the IMF. Instead, it was tempered with open dialogue seminars with officials, parliamentarians, and even ordinary citizens.

The public was invited into the difficult arithmetic of survival.

Masire forged what some would later call a “social contract of trust”: Batswana tightened belts not because they were coerced, but because they understood the necessity.

This experience left enduring marks. It showed the importance of saving in good years, the folly of over-reliance on diamonds and beef, and the moral weight of communication in governance.

Even as Jwaneng mine came online in 1982, returning growth to the economy, the drought relief projects Masire oversaw food-for-work, livestock support, and water drilling became models of humane crisis management.

Masire proved that survival was not only a matter of fiscal prudence but also of political wisdom: a leader’s voice had to carry both authority and empathy.

Sir Seretse Khama:



The First reckoning with scarcity

The story of crisis leadership does not begin with Masire, however, but with Sir Seretse Khama, Botswana’s founding president.

When independence came in 1966, Botswana was the third poorest country in the world, with no paved roads, no university, and a national treasury that could scarcely fund more than a few months of administration.

The crisis of the time was not recession or liquidity, but the sheer absence of a viable economy. Seretse’s response was pragmatic state-building. He secured international aid, but crucially paired it with careful diamond agreements that placed Botswana as a joint partner with De Beers rather than a passive supplier.

This singular decision gave the young nation a revenue stream that would later serve as a lifeline during every economic downturn.

Seretse faced droughts throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s, with cattle dying in the hundreds of thousands. His government launched early versions of relief works and food distribution programmes rudimentary, but life-saving.

Unlike Masire later, Seretse lacked reserves to draw upon, yet he still managed to build trust by using whatever little resources Botswana had to keep people alive.

His greatest legacy in crisis was institutional rather than fiscal: building a constitutional order, a disciplined civil service, and a reputation for clean governance.

These became Botswana’s invisible reserves trust capital that later presidents would draw upon when droughts or recessions came knocking.

Mogae: The great recession



and the courage to spend

Fast forward three decades, and Botswana was no longer a fragile state but a celebrated “African miracle.”

Festus Mogae, the austere technocrat turned president, had built a reputation for discipline, stability, and anti-corruption.

Yet in 2008, as the world drowned in the global financial crisis, diamonds again betrayed their friend. Mines were shut down, inventories swelled, and GDP contracted by nearly 8% the steepest fall in Botswana’s history.

This time, however, the crisis was not answered with caution but with bold Keynesian intervention.

Mogae, followed by his successor Ian Khama, decided that Botswana would run its first major deficits since independence.

Billions of pula were drawn from foreign reserves; a P12 billion deficit budget was passed; and, for the first time in 17 years, Botswana went cap in hand to the African Development Bank for a $1.5 billion loan.

It was a conscious gamble: better to bleed fiscally than to allow the economy to suffocate.

Civil servants endured salary freezes and tax hikes, but infrastructure projects from power plants to water works continued unabated.

Mogae’s government reasoned that bridges, schools, and electricity lines were not luxuries but lifelines.

This counter-cyclical spending cushioned jobs in construction and gave the nation a rebound path once global demand returned.

And indeed, by 2010, growth surged above 8%, reserves began to refill, and Botswana avoided the social breakdowns that plagued less disciplined economies.

Yet, the political costs were real. Discontent brewed, culminating in a historic civil service strike in 2011.

For the first time, cracks appeared in the ruling Botswana Democratic Party (BDP), leading to a factional split that birthed the Botswana Movement for Democracy, which later coalesced with the Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC).

Mogae’s economic courage thus had unintended political consequences: it kept the economy alive but also shook the political order that had seemed untouchable for decades.

Ian Khama:



The politics of paternalism in hard times

Festus Mogae’s chosen successor, Lieutenant General Ian Khama, inherited the aftermath of the 2008–2009 crash.

For Khama, the crisis was not only economic but political: the 2011 civil service strike, the largest in Botswana’s history, had shaken the social contract.

Khama responded to economic pain not with fiscal boldness but with paternalistic populism. His flagship programme, Ipelegeng, expanded into one of the largest public works schemes in the region providing short-term employment to tens of thousands of unemployed citizens through menial jobs such as roadside cleaning.

While it offered income to desperate households, it also entrenched dependency and did little to foster long-term productivity.

Khama’s economic philosophy was shaped less by structural reform and more by handouts and symbolic gestures.

Drought relief continued, but diamond dependency deepened.

His administration drew from the reserves Mogae had left, but failed to refill them adequately when the recovery came. For a time, Khama’s paternalistic approach bought him popularity, especially in rural areas where food baskets, subsidies, and Ipelegeng wages meant survival.

Yet it hollowed out the foundations of fiscal prudence.

When the next crisis came, the state would have fewer cushions. Khama’s rule revealed the limits of charisma in economic storms. Unlike Masire’s prudence or Mogae’s technocratic daring, his response relied on short-term populism. It was survival politics, not long-term resilience.

Masisi: The unravelling of a model



When Mokgweetsi Masisi took office in 2018, the illusion of plenty was already cracking. The global diamond market was softening, the fiscal reserves were thinner, and discontent within the ruling BDP was rising.

The crisis of Masisi’s presidency came in multiple waves: sluggish growth, collapsing state-owned enterprises, ballooning public debt, and finally, the COVID-19 pandemic, which hit Botswana’s economy harder than any external shock since independence.

Borders closed, tourism collapsed, and diamond sales plummeted.

Masisi’s government turned to borrowing, raising debt to levels unseen before. The reserves that had carried Masire, Mogae, and even Khama through storms were now largely depleted. Hospitals buckled under pressure, and corruption scandals around COVID-19 procurement eroded public trust.

Masisi’s response was piecemeal.

He spoke of diversification into tourism, agriculture, and manufacturing but his government lacked both the discipline of Seretse and Masire and the technocratic daring of Mogae. For many, Masisi’s crisis management exposed the fragility of Botswana’s once-praised “miracle economy.”

By the first and second quarters of 2024, a liquidity crisis gripped the state: suppliers were unpaid, medicines in short supply, and whispers of insolvency were spreading through the public service.

Masisi’s era revealed the cost of decades of postponing diversification. The diamond goose, already ageing, could no longer feed the entire nation. His crisis management was reactive, defensive, and politically costly helping pave the way for the fall of the BDP in the 2024 elections.

Boko: Inheriting a sunset commodity



Now, in the mid-2020s, Botswana faces another storm.

Duma Boko, the first president from outside the BDP, has taken power not with the comfort of diamond-fed reserves, but with the shadows of debt, liquidity shortages, and a diamond industry possibly facing structural decline.

Unlike the 1980s or 2009, the problem is not only cyclical. Lab-grown diamonds threaten to rewrite the rules of global consumption, and no one can say with certainty that Botswana’s “golden goose” will ever regain its shimmer.

Boko’s government inherits a thinner cushion. Debt has climbed, deficits have lingered, and the COVID-19 pandemic has already sapped reserves.

The liquidity crisis of 2024 -25 when suppliers went unpaid and hospitals strained under funding shortages revealed how brittle the state’s finances had become.

Unlike Masire, Boko cannot simply lean on reserves; unlike Mogae, he cannot afford to spend his way out with impunity.

His challenge is to reimagine the economy altogether.

Boko has spoken of safeguarding diamonds in the short term, but also of urgent diversification into green energy, digital services, and regional trade.

His rhetoric channels the lessons of history: prudence from Masire, boldness from Mogae, but also something new reinvention. The structural threat of a waning diamond age demands not just resilience but transformation.

The political stakes are higher, too. For Masire and Mogae, the crises were storms weathered under the long dominance of the BDP, whose legitimacy was rarely questioned.

For Boko, the crisis is also a baptism of fire: his mandate comes from voters weary of the BDP’s failures, impatient for change, and ready to withdraw support if promises falter.

In this sense, the economy is no longer only an economic problem it is a test of democracy itself, a trial of whether performance and delivery can sustain a fragile new political order.

Patterns, contrasts, and the thread of continuity What unites these presidential eras is the recognition that Botswana’s fate could not be left to market forces alone.

Each president, in his way, placed the state at the centre of crisis management.

Sir Seretse with his pragmatism, Masire with his cautious consensus, Mogae with his counter-cyclical daring, Ian Khama with his benevolent paternalism, Masisi with his indecisiveness, and now Boko with his promise of reinvention. Each crisis reveals the peril of diamond dependence and the stubborn resilience of the Botswana state, and a nation too tough to die.

But what separates them is equally telling. Masire governed with reserves but little political competition. Mogae governed with reserves and took political risks that later weakened his party.

Boko governs with fewer reserves, a fractured economy, and the burden of fragile political legitimacy, a pattern harking back to the vulnerability of the Sir Seretse postcolonial government.

His challenge is not only to rescue Botswana from immediate distress but to write a new economic story that does not rhyme with the old refrain of diamonds and droughts.

Conclusion: Between memory and possibility

Botswana’s crises have always been more than statistics; they have been existential reckonings with scarcity, hope, and survival. Masire taught the art of saving and the power of dialogue. Mogae showed the courage to spend against the tide and keep faith in recovery.

Boko must now prove that reinvention is possible, that a nation once defined by a single stone can imagine prosperity beyond its glitter.

The past whispers, but the future demands new music. Botswana stands at a crossroads where resilience is not enough. It must dare, under Boko’s leadership, to move from survival to transformation, from dependence to diversity, from memory to possibility.

Masire saved a nation not by fear, but by building a social contract of trust. In 1981, Botswana learned its best friend, diamonds, could also be its cruellest enemy. Mogae chose to bleed fiscally rather than let the people suffocate. Infrastructure was not a luxury in 2009; it was a lifeline.

The civil service strike of 2011 was the political ghost of the financial crisis. Boko does not inherit a rainy day; he inherits the storm itself. This is no longer resilience we need; it is reinvention.

Diamonds may never shine as they once did Botswana must find new music. Masire’s prudence, Mogae’s boldness, Boko’s challenge: together, they tell our economic story. Each president placed the state at the centre of crisis, never leaving survival to chance.

When the IMF came knocking in 1981, Botswana had already saved itself. By 2009, even the miracle economy needed a $1.5 billion loan.

The new government does not carry the past, but it carries our impatient hopes. Performance now matters more than liberation legacy. The diamond magic is fading and that truth scares even the old hands of history.

Botswana cannot simply survive this crisis it must be reborn from it. Masire’s weapon was prudence; Mogae’s was courage; Boko’s must be imagination. History whispers lessons but the future demands bold new music. Reserves saved us in the past; reinvention must save us now. The past gave us resilience.

The future demands reinvention.

With all six post-independence presidents in view, a clearer pattern emerges. Seretse Khama faced the crisis of nothingness and built the first reserves, institutions, diamond agreements, and public trust.

Masire faced drought and recession, relying on prudence, savings, and consensus to carry the people through. Mogae confronted the steepest collapse and chose bold Keynesian spending, cushioning the blow but shaking political certainties.

Ian Khama turned to paternalism and handouts, offering immediate relief but eroding the long-term fiscal base.

Masisi presided over a decline, with reserves thin and debt mounting, his reactive measures failing to stem both fiscal and political collapse.

Boko inherits not only a fragile economy but also the urgent demand for reinvention in an age where diamonds may never recover their primacy.

The continuity is clear: Botswana’s crises have always forced presidents to place the state at the centre of economic survival.

But the differences are telling: where Seretse built, Masire saved, Mogae spent, Khama pacified, Masisi floundered, Boko must now reimagine.

*Dr. Teedzani Thapelo* is a novelist, poet, biographer and author of ten recent books on Botswana’s development under the UDC government.