Botswana's politics: a president chosen by parliament

How a parliamentary vote chooses the president

The constitution, in force since independence on 30 September 1966, declares Botswana a sovereign republic and creates a Parliament made of two parts: the President and the National Assembly. There is one legislative chamber. Freedom House's report for 2025 gives the Assembly 69 seats: 61 members elected directly in single-member constituencies by first past the post, six specially elected members nominated by the president and approved by the Assembly, and the president and the speaker as members by virtue of office. The constitution as amended to 2016, in the text published by the Constitute Project, lists 57 elected members; 61 is the number Freedom House gives for the election of 2024.

The president is chosen indirectly. Freedom House describes the office as elected by the National Assembly for a five-year term with eligibility for a second, and section 34 of the constitution limits any president to an aggregate of ten years. Wikipedia's article on the country's politics explains how the choice is made in practice: when one party wins a majority of seats its leader becomes president, and only in a hung parliament, which has never happened, would the members vote between candidates. Wikipedia's article on Seretse Khama records an older form of the same rule, under which every candidate for the Assembly declared on nomination which presidential candidate he or she supported, and the candidate with a majority of those endorsements was elected.

A referendum in 1997 brought three changes that still shape the office. The vice-president became the automatic successor when a president leaves early, the voting age fell from 21 to 18, and an Independent Electoral Commission took over elections from an office under the president. Under automatic succession the presidents who left office in 1998, 2008 and 2018 each handed it to a chosen vice-president ahead of the next election, a pattern Freedom House says the result of 2024 ended. The president holds a suspensive veto. Wikipedia's politics article describes the procedure: a bill the president refuses to sign goes back to the Assembly, and if the Assembly passes it again by a simple majority within six months the president must sign within 21 days, resign or face a dissolution and a new election. The president also commands the armed forces and appoints the vice-president and the cabinet, all of whom must sit in the Assembly.

Why the executive outweighs the National Assembly

The sources agree that Botswana's president is strong and the legislature weak, and they explain it in the same terms. Wikipedia's politics article points to a first-past-the-post system that manufactures large majorities and a high ratio of cabinet posts to members, which leaves a small backbench bound by collective responsibility. Britannica describes the record as free elections every five years since independence, a relatively uncorrupt bureaucracy and judicial respect for the rule of law, under a president who heads both state and government.

The 2026 country report of the Bertelsmann Transformation Index, the BTI, describes the separation of powers as implied and not absolute. Parliament depends on the executive for its budget and its staff, and Freedom House notes that it is situated within the president's office for those purposes. The Electoral Commission is overseen by the Office of the President in matters of staffing and resources. The director of the Directorate on Corruption and Economic Crime, set up in 1994, is appointed by the president and reports to the president, and the BTI records that dockets on alleged grand corruption have waited at the Directorate of Public Prosecutions without charges being brought.

A test of that balance came in 2024. A Constitution (Amendment) Bill, which grew out of a review launched in 2022, would have let the president appoint key civil servants, among them the secretary of the Electoral Commission, and would have barred former presidents from seeking office. Freedom House reports that protesters clashed with police while the Assembly voted in September 2024 and that the bill was rejected.

What role the chiefs keep in a modern state

Botswana kept its chiefs inside the state and gave them no legislative power. The Ntlo ya Dikgosi, called the House of Chiefs until a commission set up in 2000 recommended keeping it under a Setswana name, must be consulted on any bill touching the constitution or tribal law, and it passes a resolution on each without power to amend or block it. Section 77 of the constitution fills it with the person performing the office of kgosi in each of twelve named areas, from Ga Mmangwato in the Central District to Tlokweng in the South East, five members appointed by the president and up to 20 more selected under section 78.

At village level the kgosi chairs the kgotla, the public assembly that predates the protectorate, and presides over customary courts, which Wikipedia's politics article says settle most cases because people find them simpler. Tribal land is allocated by land boards, created under the Tribal Land Act of 1968, whose members are partly chosen by the community and partly appointed by the minister. Wikipedia's history records that a court in 2010 rejected a claim of immunity by Kgafela II of the Kgatla over floggings and held that chiefs lack sovereignty and are subject to the constitution. The kgotla also became a point of tension between 2018 and 2024. The BTI records that police at times dispersed Bangwato kgotla meetings in the Central District, which the government suspected of discussing the dispute between two former presidents, and that the law makes it unlawful to discuss party politics in the kgotla. A 2020 Afrobarometer survey cited by Freedom House found that most respondents did not consider chiefs influential over how they vote.

Why one party won every election after independence

The Bechuanaland Democratic Party, founded by Seretse Khama in 1962, won 28 of the 31 seats in 1965, and as the Botswana Democratic Party it won every general election from then to 2019. Britannica attributes its majorities to rural support, while the opposition drew on the towns. The Botswana People's Party led the opposition in the 1960s; the Botswana National Front, founded by Kenneth Koma, became the main opposition from the 1969 election and grew on urban councils from the 1970s. The electoral system and the opposition's splits did much of the work. Wikipedia's politics article notes that first past the post divided the opposition vote and let the governing party win many seats on a plurality, and that no party received public funding. The BTI records a bill to fund parties for the first time, with 34 million pula announced in February 2024, which was not implemented before the election.

Splits ran through both camps. The Kgabo Commission of 1991 left the governing party divided between factions known as the Big Two, later Barata-Phathi, and the Big Five, later the A-Team. The opposition National Front won thirteen seats in 1994. In 1998 a faction left it to form the Botswana Congress Party. In 2010 the Barata-Phathi faction left the governing party to found the Botswana Movement for Democracy. In 2012 the National Front, the Movement for Democracy and the People's Party formed the Umbrella for Democratic Change as an electoral alliance. A rivalry between Ian Khama and his successor after 2018 produced a second splinter, the Botswana Patriotic Front, and made 2019 the first election Wikipedia's politics article calls competitive; the governing party still took 52.7% of the vote and 38 of 57 seats.

What changed when the governing party lost

The BTI reports turnout above 80%. The governing party, in power since independence, won four seats, down from 38. Freedom House gives the result as follows.

First past the post cut both ways. The BTI notes that the Democratic Party received a higher share of the vote than the Congress Party and still won fewer seats. The outgoing president conceded quickly, SADC observers reported a peaceful vote, and the new Assembly and president were inaugurated in November 2024 in the first transfer of power between rival parties since independence. Freedom House raised Botswana's score on the question of whether the opposition could realistically gain power from 2 to 4 out of 4, and its total for 2025 stands at 72 out of 100, with a status of Free.

The BTI describes early signs after the change: demonstrations and petitions that had been uncommon, the revival of a Budget Pitso and of the All-Party Conference, and a burial in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve for a San man, Pitseng Gaoberekwe, whose body had been kept in a mortuary for two years after the previous government refused it.

How the courts and civil liberties hold up

Above the customary courts stand magistrates' courts, industrial courts, the High Court and the Court of Appeal. Wikipedia's politics article records that High Court judges were expatriates on short contracts until the first citizen judges were appointed in 1992, and states that the judges of the Court of Appeal are expatriates drawn from elsewhere in the Commonwealth. The High Court sits in Lobatse, Gaborone and Francistown.

Courts have decided several of the country's main rights questions. A case brought by Unity Dow led to a ruling in 1991 that children may take citizenship from their mothers. The Court of Appeal found the refusal to register Lesbians, Gays and Bisexuals of Botswana, LEGABIBO, unlawful, and Wikipedia's history records the decriminalisation of homosexuality in the years after 2018. The BTI also records that the Law Society of Botswana boycotted the opening of the legal year in 2024, citing judges writing judgments for colleagues, default judgments and reports of bribery.

Freedom House's 2025 report names the remaining limits. State media dominate broadcasting, private outlets depend on state advertising, and a section of the penal code criminalises statements likely to cause public alarm. In 2023 the intelligence service raided the offices of the newspaper Mmegi and briefly detained its editor and a reporter. There is no freedom of information law, though an Access to Information Bill was under consideration from August 2024. The Public Order Act requires police permission for demonstrations. The BTI recalls that Freedom House rated the country Partly Free for a time during the Khama presidency of 2008 to 2018 over the harassment of journalists.

Who Botswana stands with abroad

Botswana entered independence surrounded by hostile or unstable neighbours, in Wikipedia's account, and had no army until the Botswana Defence Force was formed in 1977. It did not open formal relations with South Africa while apartheid lasted. In 1980 it was one of the nine states that founded the Southern African Development Co-ordination Conference in Lusaka, and the Southern African Development Community, its successor, has its headquarters in Gaborone, as does the SADC Electoral Commissions Forum Office. The record beside this article lists nine memberships, among them the United Nations, the African Union, the Commonwealth, the Southern African Customs Union and the African Continental Free Trade Area. The BTI records that trade under the free trade area began on 20 March 2024, after Botswana published its tariff concessions and rules of origin. Botswana contributed troops to the SADC mission in Mozambique, and the BTI notes that citizens of Botswana and Namibia can now cross between the two countries with an identity card.

Foreign policy has shifted with presidents. Wikipedia's politics article describes a long tradition of realpolitik interrupted under Ian Khama, from 2008 to 2018, when Botswana criticised governments for human rights violations and was often the only African Union member to support the International Criminal Court. The country signed the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in 2019. Wikipedia's country article records that the United States has been the largest single foreign contributor to the Defence Force and that much of its officer corps has trained there.