Early results show Botswana governing party losing six-decade rule

 

Electoral officials show a marked ballot paper as a process of counting the vote at the Sir Seretse Khama Community Junior Secondary School, counting centre of Gaborone-Bonington North constituency in Gaborone on October 31, 2024. [AFP]

Botswana President Mokgweetsi Masisi's party suffered a resounding defeat in general elections, according to preliminary tallies Friday, losing its nearly six-decade grip on power of the diamond-rich country.

Reporting from counting centres showed that three opposition parties had together won 31 of 61 seats in the national legislature at Wednesday's elections, according to an AFP tally, meaning Masisi's Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) had no chance of taking a majority.

The results are expected to be confirmed by the Independent Electoral Commission later Friday.

More than one million people were registered to vote on Wednesday, from a population of 2.6 million, with concerns about unemployment and mismanagement in Masisi's first term a leading complaint in the arid nation.

The BDP, which has ruled since independence from Britain in 1966, only won a single seat so far, according to AFP's tally of reporting early Friday, with counting still underway.

Leading the opposition camp was the left-leaning opposition Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC), headed by Harvard-educated human rights lawyer and presidential candidate Duma Boko, with 19 seats.

This was followed by seven for the Botswana Congress Party and five for the Botswana Patriotic Front.

Under Botswana's election system, the first party to take 31 of the 61 parliamentary seats will be declared the winner and install its candidate as president. In the lead-up to the vote, commentators had raised the possibility of Botswana's first hung parliament.

'New dawn'

"Botswana's new dawn as Boko, UDC rise," the independent Mmegi newspaper said in a version of its front page posted on Facebook.

"BDP faces crushing parliamentary, council defeat," it wrote.

The UDC swept a separate ballot at Wednesday's polls for the local councils in what was seen as an indication of the trend for the national vote.

Boko, 54, created the UDC in 2012 to unite parties against the bulwark of the BDP. It is the third time that he has run for the presidency.

"CHANGE IS HERE," he wrote on Facebook as his party's strong showing became clear.

A key concern of voters was unemployment which has risen to 27 per cent this year, with younger people most affected, and a slump in the economy due in part to weakened diamond sales, Botswana's single biggest revenue earner, with growth projected to slow to one per cent in 2024.

There have also been allegations of corruption, nepotism and mismanagement by Masisi's government, while the gap between the rich and poor is one of the largest in the world, according to the World Bank.

"It's been much too long to be operating under a system that has consistently produced the same, at best, mediocre results," Boko said in an interview with South African channel ENCA in July.

"The people in the country are clamouring for change, they are yearning for something refreshingly different," he said.

The BDP's popularity has declined over the decades, dipping to under 50 per cent for the first time at the 2014 elections when Ian Khama, son of Botswana's first president, Sir Seretse Khama, was president.

But the party had expected to retain control of the southern African nation, with Masisi, 63, saying on voting day "victory is certain".

The new government will need to focus on weaning the country off its diamond dependency, analysts said.

"The first priority for the next government or president would be to stabilise the economy, create a degree of strategic certainty in the mining sector," independent political commentator Olopeng Rabasimane said.

"The second has to be employment generation, especially for young people. The third one would be diversification of the economy away from dependency on diamonds."