Historians would not be surprised at the recurring sabotage theme relating to dealings of some Britons and Afrikaners with the Botswana Meat Commission. After all, this is a replay of what has been happening for more than 100 years and may be the reason Professor Monageng Mogalakwe at the University of Botswana hints at the possibility of the country's beef industry being in the clutches of "an Anglo-Boer mafia." Beyond that, the evidence from history points to the fact that apartheid-style development is a mistress that the British and Afrikaners have long shared.
One of the most successful Batswana capitalists in the last quarter of the 19th century was Khama III, ruler of the Bangwato, who plied his trade from Shoshong. In Khama's Country In Botswana, Neil Parsons says that this town was "the crossroads between Central and Southern Africa, the Missionaries Road, the 'Suez Canal' of colonialism, the bottle-neck and 'bowling alley' of Rhode-sians, the Road to the North for capital and to the South for labour." Present-day Gaborone is not even close to this.
