An Account of the Botswana Election Research Network, the Historic 2024 General Elections, and the Production of the Botswana Notes and Records Special Issue

Abstract

Your Excellencies, Honourable Members of Parliament, Distinguished Guests, Dumelang. This volume of Botswana Notes and Records, on the 2024 elections, is the result of a remarkable team effort. It has been a great privilege for me to work with an outstanding group of scholars, most of whom are at the University of Botswana, one with the Centre for Public Integrity. These scholars have contributed diverse disciplinary expertise, methodological skills and analytic insights. This volume originates in the expectation, prior to the election, that the 2024 elections would be more competitive than any previous elections in Botswana. It was widely anticipated, correctly, that the then long ruling Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) would fail to retain a majority in parliament. We should acknowledge that we did not anticipate that national support for the BDP would drop to as little as 30 per cent and that it would be relegated to being a minor party in parliament. We did not anticipate that the Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC) would win an outright majority (and was therefore able to form a new government without negotiations with either the BDP or Botswana Congress Party (BCP)). Nor did we anticipate that the BCP would win fifteen seats and become the official opposition.