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Ed Webb

Botswana, Where Elephants Are Key Election Stakeholders | Fast Forward | OZY - 0 views

www.ozy.com/...96303

Botswana wildlife tourism economy conservation politics

shared by Ed Webb on 07 Sep 19 - No Cached
  • Masisi’s government has concluded that allowing controlled hunting of elephants — initially a quota of 400 annually will be allowed — will assist the president in retaining power in the country’s October elections without hurting conservation efforts. With somewhere between 130,000 and 160,000 elephants, Botswana has the largest elephant population in Africa and the animals have a significant impact on the nation’s economy. Tourism contributed nearly 12 percent of the country’s GDP in 2017. Hunting brought an eighth of the tourism revenues before the ban, which has grown unpopular among Botswana’s rural inhabitants. A single elephant can destroy a field of crops in a night. And last year, 15 Botswanans were killed by elephants.
  • The vote share of the BDP, which has ruled the nation since independence in 1966, dipped below 50 percent for the first time in the last national elections in 2014
  • several regional conservationists and researchers point to evidence from Kenya, South Africa and Botswana itself that suggests that controlled hunting gives local communities an economic incentive to look after their wildlife
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  • while experts agree that hunting 400 elephants per year will not doom the species, there’s also no evidence, says Chase, that this will reduce human-animal conflict, though Mokgalo hopes for “increased efforts by communities in fighting poaching due to benefit realization from wildlife.”
  • The current president and Khama, his mentor who handed over power to Masisi only last year, are now bitter rivals. Khama has accused Masisi of betraying his trust, continues to support the hunting ban and has broken from the BDP, threatening to support opposition candidates. Khama’s father was a former president, and the family continues to wield political and social influence in Botswana.
Ed Webb

The enduring appeal of liberation movements | News | Africa | M&G - 0 views

mg.co.za/...appeal-of-liberation-movements

Namibia Zimbabwe SouthAfrica Zambia Mozambique parties politics movement decolonization

shared by Ed Webb on 02 Dec 19 - No Cached
  • This week, Namibians voted for a new president and Parliament in the country’s sixth general election since independence in 1990.The South West African People’s Organisation (Swapo) has won every single one of those elections
  • Angola, Botswana, Mozambique, Tanzania and Zimbabwe are all governed by the liberation movement that ushered in their independence, whereas in South Africa the party that helped to end apartheid is still in charge
  • Even the least popular among them, Zimbabwe’s Zanu-PF, was returned to power with a parliamentary majority of 52.35%
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  • “Liberation movements in Southern Africa cultivated a heroic narrative translating into a patriotic history: we liberated you, therefore you owe us,” he says. “Based on such liberation gospel, they occupied the political commanding heights and used this initial dominance to promote the equation that the party is the government and the government is the state.”
  • A new generation — the so-called “born-frees”, who did not grow up during their country’s respective struggles — does not feel the debt of gratitude to their liberators quite so strongly, and is much more likely to punish the ruling party for service delivery failures. They are, however, also more likely not to vote, which can have the effect of reinforcing the strength of a liberation movement.
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