The Centre for Social Sciences Research (CSSR) and the  Institute for Democracy, Citizenship and Public Policy in Africa  (IDCPPA) at the University of Cape Town invite you to join us for a lunchtime seminar on 23 January 2024 at 12:45pm. The seminar will be presented by Jorich Johann Loubser.

About the Seminar:

Success and Failure in (Twentieth Century) Botswana: Diamonds, state-building and the threats of South(ern) African Politics and Business

 

The contemporary literature is divided, with some presenting Botswana as a growth ‘miracle’, focussing on its high economic growth levels and ‘sound’ macroeconomic management. While increasingly critics point to the country’s interconnected challenges of i) persistently high inequality ii) high unemployment iii) lack of structural transformation and iv) democratic backsliding, all of which I argue are connected to Botswana’s hierarchical and static socio-political order. Presenting preliminary findings of archival work, I contend that this unresolved contradiction exists alongside insufficient exploration of historically Botswana’s primary business-state relationship, with De Beers, and it’s primary geopolitical relationships, particularly apartheid South Africa. By studying Botswana’s early post-colonial political project, this presentation aims to provide a coherent political account explaining both Botswana’s successes and failures, while integrating new factors associated with regional white supremacist political projects and South African mining capital. I argue that both sets of outcomes in Botswana can be explained by how domestic political elites, particularly those in the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP), responded to threats in the early post-colonial era. Their political project, responding to significant external threats but few domestic threats, co-evolved alongside diamond mining expansion and state-building.

Speakers

Jorich is a PhD candidate in International Development at the London School of Economics (LSE). His doctoral thesis studies the evolution of the relationship between states and mining TNCs in Southern Africa’s mining sector. He has previously studied at the University of Cape Town, Oxford and the LSE. Jorich hopes to move back to South Africa soon and work in the intersection between the African academy and African policymaking.

 23 January 2024
 12:45 - 14:00 SAST
  CSSR Seminar Room, 4.29 Robert Leslie Social Science Building, UCT

Hosted by the Centre for Social Science Research and the Institute for Democracy, Citizenship and Public Policy in Africa