Botswana’s political landscape has been reshaped as the ruling party, the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP), suffered a historic defeat after nearly 60 years in power. In a media conference held on the morning of 30 October, the incumbent president and BDP leader, Mokgweetsi Masisi, conceded defeat even before the final results were announced.
As of 7 am local time, the BDP had only won one out of all the 36 parliamentary seats whose results had been announced. The main opposition party, the Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC), led by lawyer and longtime opposition leader Duma Boko, had amassed 25 seats and was on track to hit the 31 seats threshold needed to form a government.
Masisi said he had called Boko to inform him that he was conceding defeat and ready to start the transition formalities at Boko’s convenience. While many had anticipated a close race, the BDP’s defeat was a shock. The party’s lengthy reign over the diamond mining nation, coupled with Botswana’s relative economic stability, had led to expectations of a different outcome.
Many can only speculate on the reasons that could have led to Masisi’s humiliating defeat. One of the most apparent reasons is the downturn in the economy due to falling global demand for diamonds. Between January and September 2024, there was a 52 per cent decline in the sales of Botswana, partially attributed to the rising popularity of lab-grown artificial diamonds.
This has reduced government revenue, forcing it to cut social spending and struggle to create employment for its growing population. Masisi’s fallout with his former mentor and predecessor, Ian Khama, in 2019 led to the ruling party split that saw several BDP heavyweights move to Khama’s new party, the Botswana Patriotic Front (BPF). This has taken away a significant number of votes from the BDP. Disagreement over the sharing of diamond revenue led to a protracted feud between the Masisi administration and the London-headquartered diamond miner and trader, DeBeers which has presided over Botswana’s diamond industry since its inception in the late 60s through Debswana-a 50-50 joint venture between the two sides.
Masisi’s list of foes went beyond Botswana’s borders; earlier this year, he threatened to send 20,000 elephants to Germany in protest against that country’s opposition to his decision to lift a ban on elephant trophy hunting. In 2019, Masisi lifted the ban that the Khama administration had put in place five years earlier. The decision set him on a collision course with conservation groups and Western governments, claiming the move would result in more poaching; Masisi countered that the country’s elephant population had exploded to unsustainable numbers, increasing human-wildlife conflicts. His embrace of Zimbabwe’s ruling Zanu-PF party, a longtime nemesis of Western countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom, also earned Masisi more enemies in the West.
At this stage, it is hard to tell which of these factors was the straw that broke the camel’s back.