Unique Botswana

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

Botswana is unique. It 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 with the vast plains and cobalt blue skies that stretch to the horizon. The traveller can identify with those 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 leaving 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 2000 archaeological sites have already been identified yet only a hundred have been excavated. And history lives on through the San people (previously known as Bushmen) who left their delicate art on rock faces in many parts of the Kalahari.

The Tsodilo and Lepokole hills reveal a profusion of ancient tools, pottery and 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, upmarket 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 Botswana people 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 Batawana 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.

UNIQUE BOTSWANA Botswana is a vast country differing from any other in Africa Its attractions range from the Okavango to the Kalahari It is relatively unexploited and unexplored 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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