Lessons from Botswana

This is the heart of a very special Africa. It is the kind of place where an ex-head of state answers his own cell phone and rushes to the airport to greet an American visitor, displaying a modest decorum unusual among former African presidents.

Former President Sir Ketumile Masire's tactful underplaying of his own prominence and importance as Botswana's revered second president exemplifies the Botswanan difference. Unlike many of its neighbors, this gentle nation has always enjoyed and now actively expects honest, visionary leadership, good governance, and a macroeconomic regime conducive to economic growth. Because of such favorable conditions, the annual per capita GDP of Botswanans is at least 10 times greater than that of those who live in Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

This pattern of responsible leadership began with Botswana's founding president, Sir Seretse Khama and now continues under President Festus Mogae. He speaks straightforwardly to visitors, refuses motorcades, and eschews the expensive private jets favored by presidents Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, Sam Nujoma of Namibia, and King Mswati III of Swaziland.

Mr. Mogae even mused to a recent visitor about the possibility - remote, he thinks - that his ruling Botswana Democratic Party would refuse to renominate him for a second presidential term. Hardly any other serving African president could contemplate such a result, much less discuss it rhetorically. More often, African presidents attempt to rewrite constitutional provisions forbidding third and fourth terms (as in Malawi, Namibia, Togo, and Zambia), run roughshod over their political parties and their electorates, bribe oppositions, or blatantly rig elections, as last year in Zimbabwe. Mogae, however, makes it clear that if he should be reelected president in 2004, his term will have to end exactly on the 10th anniversary of his first presidential day, at the end of March, 2008.

Botswana is no paradise, except comparatively, but the rest of Africa can learn much from its practices. Indeed, Africa's most critical concerns are readily apparent here in the sleepy, stable capital of the continent's longest-enduring democracy. Once poor and uneducated, most of its people now receive eight years of schooling, know no hunger, and have been promised free retroviral medicines if they test positive for AIDS. It is a relatively contented oasis, with much to teach the rest of Africa, because of a firm adherence to the rule of law, the comparative absence of corruption, and a pattern of tolerant, benevolent rule.

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