attempted to block prospecting for minerals in
Bechuanaland because they knew that if Europeans
discovered precious metals or stones, their autonomy
would be over. The first big diamond discovery was under
Ngwato land, Seretse Khama’s traditional homeland.
Before the discovery was announced, Khama instigated a
change in the law so that all subsoil mineral rights were
vested in the nation, not the tribe. This ensured that
diamond wealth would not create great inequities in
Botswana. It also gave further impetus to the process of
state centralization as diamond revenues could now be
used for building a state bureaucracy and infrastructure and
for investing in education. In Sierra Leone and many other
sub-Saharan African nations, diamonds fueled conflict
between different groups and helped to sustain civil wars,
earning the label Blood Diamonds for the carnage brought
about by the wars fought over their control. In Botswana,
diamond revenues were managed for the good of the
nation.
The change in subsoil mineral rights was not the only
policy of state building that Seretse Khama’s government
implemented. Ultimately, the Chieftaincy Act of 1965
passed by the legislative assembly prior to independence,
and the Chieftaincy Amendment Act of 1970 would
continue the process of political centralization, enshrining
the power of the state and the elected president by
removing from chiefs the right to allocate land and enabling
the president to remove a chief from office if necessary.
Another facet of political centralization was the effort to
unify the country further, for example, with legislation
ensuring that only Setswana and English were to be taught
in school. Today Botswana looks like a homogenous
country, without the ethnic and linguistic fragmentation
associated with many other African nations. But this was an
outcome of the policy to have only English and a single
national language, Setswana, taught in schools to minimize
conflict between different tribes and groups within society.
The last census to ask questions about ethnicity was the
one taken in 1946, which revealed considerable
heterogeneity in Botswana. In the Ngwato reserve, for
example, only 20 percent of the population identified
themselves as pure Ngwato; though there were other