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JOHANNESBURG — The Pentagon has only one permanent base in Africa, on the coast of Djibouti, a former French colony the size of West Virginia placed strategically where the Red Sea begins its journey north to the Suez Canal.
Russia and China have troops in Djibouti and have grown closer to its president, Ismail Guelleh, so the appeal of another location for U.S. forces on the vast, strategic continent is on the rise.
Whether Botswana emerges as a Pentagon option could depend on an upcoming election in the southern African country.
Botswana routinely votes with Washington in international forums on critical issues, including every United Nations debate criticizing Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. In June, when the U.S. military mission for Africa brought together the continent’s army chiefs, the conference was held in Gaborone, Botswana’s capital city.
Meanwhile, the U.S. military presence elsewhere in Africa is complicated, delicate and under a cloud.
Gen. Michael E. Langley, the head of the Pentagon’s U.S. Africa Command, told Congress a year ago that, in addition to Djibouti and a logistics hub on Ascension Island off the continent’s south Atlantic Ocean, the U.S. military operates out of a dozen “posture locations” that offer “low-cost facilities and limited supplies for these dedicated Americans to perform critical missions and quickly respond to emergencies.”
Critics say the U.S. military is understating the number of sites housing U.S. forces in Africa, but the American military presence is undoubtedly under pressure and retreating on some key fronts.
Africom withdrew the last American forces from two bases in Niger this month after the Biden administration clashed with the military junta that ousted the country’s pro-Western president last year. The two sites were not large but were seen as critical to U.S. and other Western efforts to monitor and contain jihadi militant movements that have been gaining power in the region.
Adding to the concerns are reports that Wagner Group mercenaries, now operating under the direct control of the Russian Defense Ministry, have been deploying in Niger and other countries of the Sahel as U.S., French and other Western personnel are leaving.
Pentagon officials dispute the extent of Russian military influence in the region but acknowledge that the loss of a sophisticated listening post for U.S. forces in Niger was a setback.
“Niger has been really an anchor for our counterterrorism efforts over a decade,” a senior U.S. defense official told reporters in a background briefing in May.
Botswana’s appeal
In the South African press, analysts frequently point to this former British territory as the obvious choice should the U.S. need more muscle on the continent. Military coups are back in style, anti-Western sentiment is on the rise in many former colonial states, and Islamist terrorist movements have yet to be contained.
Botswana is landlocked and slightly smaller than Texas, with the population of Houston, about 2.3 million. Most of the country is desert.
Although Botswana’s global profile is low, it is the only one of Africa’s 54 U.N. members not to have undergone a period of autocratic rule in the past half-century. It leads the global trade in diamonds but is perhaps better known as the setting for Alexander McCall Smith’s popular novels, which chronicle the cases of “The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency,” about a local woman who solves mysteries in Gaborone.
In addition to diplomatic support, Botswana’s armed forces have experience working with American troops. Pentagon officials said U.S. Special Forces held joint combined exchange training maneuvers in July with the Botswana Defense Force at Thebephatshwa Air Base, the third such exercise in three years. The U.S. Army is also planning joint exercises this month.
If the Pentagon does have its eye on this part of southern Africa, things could change with elections in October.
The Botswana Democratic Party has prevailed in every vote since founding President Seretse Khama led his nation to independence in 1966.
His eldest son and former army commander, Gen. Ian Khama, went on to lead the BDP and serve two five-year terms as head of state as allowed by the constitution. He struck up a notable friendship with President Obama. Both were the sons of a Black African father and a White Western woman.
In 2019, Mr. Khama’s vice president, Mokgweetsi Masisi, took office and accused his predecessor of stealing billions of dollars from the treasury and trying to overthrow the state. He also accused Bridgette Motsepe, a mining magnate from Johannesburg whose sister is married to South African President Cyril Ramaphosa.
Mr. Masisi provided no evidence on either count, but fearing arrest, Mr. Khama, now 71, moved to South Africa, where he remains in exile. He and Ms. Radebe have denied any wrongdoing. The government even issued a list of banks in Europe and South Africa where the stolen funds had been stashed, but an independent audit has not found the suspect deposits.
A coalition known as the Umbrella for Democratic Change, led by 54-year-old Harvard-trained lawyer Duma Boko, is challenging Mr. Masisi’s bid for a second term in October.
In 2002, the respected polling firm Afrobarometer found that almost three-quarters of those surveyed in Botswana were “satisfied with how our democracy is working.” A decade later, the positive support had fallen to just 30%.
In an interview, Mr. Boko said his country was “desperate for change,” but he added that he saw no reason a new government would alter relations with the U.S. He noted that both countries are in the middle of hotly contested campaigns.
“We both have elections coming up, and no one can predict who will be in power by Christmas,” he told The Washington Times. “But I was educated at Harvard and have great affection for America.”
Botswana’s problems, he said, were not about foreign policy: “Thousands are unemployed, there is a drought, the cost of living here is out of control and the price of diamonds, our major export, is falling. The task of my government will be to fix things at home.”
Mr. Boko said democracy needs “a regular change at the top” to work correctly. “A single party in power for more than half a century is just not healthy.”
He and Mr. Masisi, 62, have been staging massive rallies, and the president has been more visible since reports surfaced in the media questioning his health.
In 2013, his brother died from kidney failure. Mr. Masisi has made frequent trips out of the country, but his office describes him as “fit as a fiddle.” In June, he was guest of honor at the world’s largest diamond expo in Las Vegas and moved freely among the crowds.
Diamonds and pressure
Regardless of who wins the election, a future Gaborone government may be under pressure.
Botswana is the world’s largest supplier by value of gem-quality diamonds, mined and sold in conjunction with the London-based Anglo-American (AA) via its subsidiary, De Beers. In April, Australian mining giant BHP made a $49 billion bid to buy Anglo American, whose board declined the offer and then put the company’s South African platinum mine on sale along with De Beers.
Earlier this year, AA wrote down the value of its gem company by more than $1 billion. The parent company allowed De Beers to enter the market for artificial diamonds under its storied brand, but this only made the problem worse. On realizing the mistake, the company has reverted to trading in rocks taken from the ground rather than a lab.
Mr. Masisi wants his government to hold a larger share in De Beers. Mr. Boko would go even further, promising to assemble a consortium including AA and BHP and then buy the company outright and relocate its headquarters to Gaborone.
Sold on the open market, De Beers risks being bought by investors hostile to the West, who would then control most of Botswana’s economy. Relations with the West and the U.S. — not to mention talk of a permanent American military base — could be exceedingly complicated.
In Congo, 15 of the country’s 19 valuable cobalt mines are now owned by Chinese interests.
Any sale would likely take well over a year to complete. By then, both the U.S. and Botswana may have new leadership.
Duma Boko said the task for Washington is to make sure the October election is free and fair. “Send big teams of observers so there are no doubts over the outcome.”
He noted that the Biden administration had not asked for a military base, “so let’s not waste time on hypothetical issues. In what should be a rich country, we have thousands who live in shacks, hungry and unemployed, and that is a recipe for trouble. The problems at Anglo American are not helping.”
He called on U.S. investors to assist with the purchase of De Beers. “We’re not asking for charity. Run properly, this diamond company still has a lot of potential. Work with us to bring it home to Gaborone and back into profit.”
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