The 1908-10 Campaign Against Incorporation Into South Africa :: Mmegi Online

The history of nationalism in Botswana, along with the other former High Commission Territories (HCTs) of Lesotho and Swaziland, differs from most African countries. At least until the last decade of colonial era nationalist sentiment in each of the jurisdictions was more often equated with the retention, rather than rejection, of the British occupation.

This was because there long existed a consensus among local Batswana that British overrule as a Protectorate was preferable to the likely alternative of incorporation into the white settler dominated states of the Union of South Africa and/or Southern Rhodesia.

Thus, for many decades, among nationalist minded Batswana one could find stronger advocates for the retention of imperial control than within the ranks the imperialists themselves who viewed the Bechuanaland Protectorate (BP) and a geographically strategic but economically marginal part of the Empire. This strategic significance was, moreover, reduced after 1914 with the end of German rule in Namibia.

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