» View our adventures to Botswana
The earliest known inhabitants of what is now Botswana were the San (Bushmen), who continue to wander the Kalahari Desert today. Their origins are unknown, but they are estimated to have lived here for some 30,000 years. The San were followed by the Khoi-Khoi (Hottentots); and then the Bantu tribes, who migrated from the northwestern and eastern regions of Africa, probably around the first or second century AD. In the centuries that followed, southern African tribes like the Basotho made incursions into Botswana, and there was much fragmentation (mostly peaceful) among the tribes until the end of the 18th century.
By 1652, Europeans had arrived on the Cape and had begun their inexorable spread northwards. By 1817, Botswana had its first English Christian mission. But the face of Botswana was more significantly altered with the 1818 unification of the Zulu tribes under the fierce warlord Shaka, in what is now South Africa. His military machine conquered or destroyed all tribes in his path; by 1830, many tribes in southern and eastern Botswana had either fallen or been absorbed into the Shaka Zulu Empire.
Meanwhile, as the European missions and settlements grew, the Dutch Boers and British colonists began their own partitions of southern Africa, basically taking advantage of the shifting alliances between fragmented tribes. Tension between the British and the Boers finally erupted in war in 1887. Its geopolitical result was the withdrawal of Britain from the Transvaal in exchange for Boer allegiance to the British Crown. But the Boers continued to push into Tswana territory in the north, in what was then called Bechuanaland (later to become Botswana).
The Tswana people lobbied for British protection, and in 1885, their territory became the Bechuanaland Protectorate, administered by Britain. Britain’s interest in the Bechuana colony was scant until Cecil Rhodes and his British South African Company began trying to wrest control of it. A delegation of three powerful Tswana chiefs, with backing from Christian missionaries, appealed to London for more direct government control in an effort to stop Rhodes. The government agreed, consolidated administration of its southern African colonies, and thereby aggravated the simmering tensions with the Boers. War again erupted in 1899.
After the Boer War ended in 1902, the Union of South Africa was established with provisions for the incorporation of Bechuanaland. Self-rule advanced within Botswana when advisory councils of African and European residents were set up in 1920. Complete independence as a republic came on Sept. 30, 1966. Despite these political developments, Botswana remained among the poorest of nations. Then, in 1967, diamonds were discovered, and the entire economic base of Botswana changed overnight. Botswana now has one of the fastest growing economies in the world. It is one of the few African nations to specifically guarantee freedom of speech, press, and religion in its constitution.