Mozambique's uncertainty: Implications for Botswana's place in the region

This conflict-driven development and prospect of instability in the region challenges Botswana’s interests.

President Mokgweetsi Masisi’s persistent adamance on immediate intervention is almost a revival of former president Sir Ketumile Masire’s doctrine under which, together with South Africa, they sent troops into the Kingdom of Lesotho in 1998. The glaring difference is that the late Masire’s intervention was not sanctioned by SADC. His presidency was the ‘golden era’ of military deployments of the BDF to peacekeeping missions in Somalia, Sudan and Rwanda. Twenty-three years later, Masisi’s foreign policy as a key player in the SADC bloc is under similar pressure to rally SADC troops to intervene in the rising terrorist insurgency in the Cabo Delgado province.