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| Title: | Electoral Trends in Botswana: A Geographical Perspective |
| Author: | Rule, Stephen P. |
| Year: | 1995 |
| Periodical: | Africa Insight |
| Volume: | 25 |
| Issue: | 1 |
| Pages: | 21-30 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | Botswana |
| Subjects: | elections 1994 political parties Politics and Government |
| Abstract: | The October 1994 elections in Botswana ended three decades of political domination by the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP). For the first time an opposition party, the Botswana National Front (BNF), received more than one-third of the votes cast. This article examines the patterns of support for the political parties of Botswana in the light of the country's population and geography. It first briefly discusses the social and economic geography of Botswana at the time of the election. Then it analyses the election results by looking at the percentage distribution of votes received in each of the 40 constituencies by the main political parties. It shows that Tswana ethnic affinity played an important role in keeping the BDP in power and that the majority of BDP support came from the rural peasantry; that the BNF achieved its greatest successes in urban areas; and that the other opposition parties depended largely on ethnic bases. The conclusion is that not so much ethnicity as the potential loss of allegiance of the major Tswana-speaking chiefs and their rural clients is the greatest threat to BDP hegemony. Notes, ref. |
