If you are with ten, only two will be Batswana

Nation-making and the public discourse of paranoia in Botswana

Bibliographic Data

ID2140443
AuthorsStephen Marr (0000-0001-6058-072X, Malmö University, corresponding author), Stephen David Marr (a Global Political Studies , Malmö University , Växjö , Sweden , Malmö , Sweden)
Year2012
Volume46
Issue1
Pages65-86
Publication date2012-04-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueCanadian Journal of African Studies / Revue canadienne des études africaines (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0008-3968 • E-ISSN: 1923-3051
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/00083968.2012.659579
OpenAlexW1625237139
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited47

A recurrent anxiety in contemporary Botswana is the perception of an immediate threat from external forces: strangers, livestock, and disease. How do the state and its citizens react under these conditions? The following article explores this question in the context of globalization, discourses of autochthony, and the blood-based politics of population management in Botswana. In recent years, Batswana increasingly see themselves as a nation under siege from foreigners, and in particular, newly arrived migrants from Zimbabwe. Under pressure from outside, Botswana citizens fear the loss of their physical homeland and the denigration of their collective identity and sense of morality. Through a reading of publications in the print media, I examine the articulation of the rhetoric of invasion and national paranoia that has taken root in Botswana. Although the presumption of assault by outsiders is said to threaten the existence of the Batswana nation through the erosion of the supposedly distinct boundaries between citizen and stranger, these apprehensions also carry a potent creative potential. I argue that, in an environment of economic uncertainty and ethnic instability, the specter of the stranger/Zimbabwean is used to reconfigure the content and emphasis of citizenship in Botswana

Context (archaeology) · Geography · Homeland · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Population · Resentment · Sociology · African history and culture studies · African studies and sociopolitical issues · Gender Studies · Law · South African History and Culture

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