Why Botswana is different

Botswana is a unique tourist destination. It is relatively unexploited and unexplored offering majestic scenery and a profusion of wildlife. It is a peaceful and stable country with a friendly government and people welcoming the discerning tourist—yet it is determined to preserve its animals and environment so that they can be enjoyed by future generations.

Botswana is diverse and different from any other tourist destination in Africa. It is a huge country, roughly the size of France, covering over 581,000 sq kilometres. Most of the vast landscape is uninhabited and for thousands of years nature has been undisturbed. A huge variety of game, birds and fish live in a magical, unspoilt wilderness.

Unlike many other African countries where game viewing is over exploited, Botswana is remote from the tourist rush and the hustle and bustle of modern life. The traveller in his four-wheel drive vehicle often feels that he is alone, part of nature under the vast plains and cobalt blue skies that stretch to the horizon. The traveller can identify with the first explorers who saw this remote part of Africa for the first time, revelling in scale and majesty of the great continent.

Botswana's tourist ecology is more diverse than any other African country. All Africa's game and birdlife can be found in the Okavango delta, along the majestic waterways or across the giant Kalahari. Most human habitation and farming is concentrated in the east; this leaves the rest of the land area free for the animals. More than a third of the whole country is given over to wildlife conservation. Game is not restricted to the national parks and reserves but can roam freely between official reserves and the huge private concession areas that surround them. The operators do everything they can to preserve the ecology and animals entrusted to them.

Botswana is also an archaeological treasure trove. Its history goes back to the Stone Age and beyond. More than 2,000 archaeological sites have already been identified, yet only a hundred have been excavated. History lives on through the San people (earlier known as Bushmen) who left their delicate art on rock faces in many parts of the Kalahari.

The Tsodilo hills in the northwest and Lepokole hills in the extreme east, reveal a profusion of paintings dating back to the Stone Age and continuing until comparatively recent times. Flint tools and artefacts can be found almost anywhere in the windswept sediments of the Kalahari desert.

In the 16th century the Tswana speaking, Bantu cattle herders arrived, absorbing the earlier people and living a peaceful existence with their cattle. Tswana kings later secured protectorate status for their people, which insulated them from much of the turmoil that afflicted neighbouring South Africa.

This peace is characteristic of Botswana today, while some of its neighbours are still suffering from social and political upheaval and war. Botswana is a safe destination; an oasis of peace and tranquillity.

Botswana, with its population of only 1.5 million, has enjoyed stable and democratic government since it gained independence from Britain in 1966 under Sir Seretse Khama, its first president. His Botswana Democratic Party has held power continuously since independence. Under his benevolent presidency and that of his successors, the country discovered its immense diamond riches, which have been progressively exploited in the post-independence decades.

This has made Botswana into one of the most prosperous economies anywhere in Africa, with the standard of living of the people multiplying many times. Economic dependence on the diamond industry has prompted the government to diversify the economy and give its wholehearted support to sustainable, up-market tourism.

Government policy is to encourage high-value, low-density tourism while protecting its animals and environment. It also wants local communities to benefit directly from tourism in their areas so that they can appreciate the advantages that tourism brings. It aims to bring the greatest possible net social and economic benefit to the Batswana people while preserving the scenic beauty, the wildlife, the local ecology and culture.

Hence the government expectation that investors in lodges and camp sites cooperate with the local communities by assisting them with projects that are of direct benefit to the local people.

The people of Botswana have got the message. They are generally friendly towards tourists and understand the advantage of protecting their animals and environment though their interests as cattle farmers often conflict with the free movement of game over more than a third of the surface of the country.

The Batswana people have actually given increasingly large areas of their tribal land to wildlife management. The wife of the late Chief Moremi III dedicated part of the Moremi Game Reserve, containing a third of the Okavango delta, to conservation in 1963. More land was dedicated to the reserve in 1970 and 1991. In 1971 tribal land was surrendered in another part of the country to establish the Khutse Game Reserve. This was recognition by the local people that cattle encroachment and uncontrolled hunting would otherwise gradually drive out the animals from an ecologically sensitive area.

Government policy is to encourage only the top-quality tourist market in order to protect the animals and environment against the over-exploitation that has occurred in many of Africa's other tourist destinations—where game vehicles often outnumber the animals themselves. The government recognises the enormous potential of the growth of world tourism that is expected in the first decade of the new millennium but it wants all development to go ahead on an environmentally sensitive basis.

Tsodilo's treasure trove

About 50 km from Shakawe on the Okavango Panhandle are the Tsodilo hills rising dramatically out of the Kalahari desert. For the original San (bushmen) they are sacred—full of mystery, legend and spiritual significance. The San believe that the four hills were where God first dropped his people and their cattle from the heavens. Since then the ancestors of the San have lived in the region leaving their stone tools, bone implements and, above all, their rock paintings.

The name Tsodilo in the original San language means "sheer". The four hills rise in a rough line out of the shimmering desert, their colour changing according to the time of day. None of the hills are more than 400 metres high but they rise from a flat terrain that stretches to the horizon as far as the eye can see. The summit of the "male hill" is the highest point in the Kalahari.

When Laurens Van der Post first arrived in the 1950s he did not show sufficient respect for the "spirits of the hills", by failing to sacrifice a warthog and a steenbok. As a result his vehicles broke down, his cameras and tape recorders failed to function, he was attacked by a swarm of angry bees and his workmen abandoned the safari. Van der Post was so shaken that he buried a hand-written apology in a bottle beneath a panel of paintings that now bears his name. The spirits "accepted" his apology and allowed him to complete his journey without further mishap.

Archaeological remnants show that man has lived around the hills for up to 30,000 years. More than 4,000 paintings have been identified at over 350 sites—the best ones are found on the "female hill". Walking trails allow visitors to see the most important panels of rhino, giraffe, eland, tortoise and dancing humans. Part of the Kalahari was originally covered in a large inland lake, accounting for other paintings of fish and birds that look like penguins.

The older paintings are thought to date back to the late Stone Age, probably painted by the ancestors of the San's Mbukushu people. They deny that they painted the really early pictures claiming that the spirits themselves created them. The Bantu arrived in the area around 500 AD and continued the artistic tradition, copying and adapting the ancient paintings. There is even one buffalo picture that has been proved to be a forgery of recent origin.

UNIQUE BOTSWANA Botswana is a vast country differing from any other in Africa Its attractions range from the Okavango to the Kalahari It is a peaceful and stable country The people are friendly and welcoming The government is supportive, encouraging high-value tourism Tourists benefit because the ecology is unique, protected and exclusive

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