Botswana has found her voice about elephants - but will we listen?

Among their recommendations, they suggest that the hunting ban be lifted, efforts are taken to confine elephants to the protected areas and/or reduce the population through culling, and that the government should focus on reducing human-elephant conflict. These statements are highly controversial among urbanised people in Western societies who are concerned about the rights of animals they don’t live with, whereas many Batswana welcome the statements – as is evidenced by the many comments on Facebook threads from people with Setswana-sounding surnames.

My purpose here is not to defend the list of recommendations, because a White Paper is in effect not final – it is merely a list of issues for further discussion. The social media furore of outraged people that predictably followed the White Paper announcement is largely driven by those with little understanding of the context in which these recommendations have been made. And so, I would like to provide that necessary context. Hopefully this context will give you a deeper understanding of what is going on in Botswana since former President Khama handed over the reins to President Masisi.