The Southern African nation, with a population of just over two million, made sure of one of the two berths from Group K as they kept up their unbeaten run in the qualifiers.They are the first side to emerge from the preliminaries, which only reached the halfway stage this weekend and join co-hosts Equatorial Guinea and Gabon in the 2012 field.
Striker Jerome Ramatlhakwana, who has not played club football for more than a year, kept up his goal-scoring run in the qualifiers with a second-half winner. It was his fifth goal in six games.But while Botswana emerge onto the continent's top stage, defending champions Egypt and former winners Cameroon face the stark reality of missing out. Both lost away on Saturday to injury-time goals with Egypt beaten by the last kick of the match against South Africa in Johannesburg and Cameroon going down to Senegal.Katlego Mphela scored three minutes into additional time to give South Africa a fortunate 1-0 home win after Egypt had proved stronger and created the better chances.But the north Africans, who have won the last three Nations Cup titles, remain winless and bottom of Group G, six points behind the South Africans.
