Botswana gained independence from Britain on September 30, 1966, emerging from 81 years as the Bechuanaland Protectorate established in 1885. Seretse Khama became the first president, governing until his death in 1980. At independence the country possessed three paved miles of road and fewer than one hundred university graduates. The discovery of diamonds at Orapa in 1967 transformed a cattle economy into what became Africa's longest continuous multi-party democracy and one of its fastest-growing economies over the subsequent five decades. Quett Masire succeeded Khama and served from 1980 to 1998, followed by Festus Mogae from 1998 to 2008, then Ian Khama from 2008 to 2018. This peaceful succession through constitutional processes stands distinct on a continent where coups and strongman rule dominated the same decades.
The Tswana constitute approximately eighty percent of the population and arrived in the region during the Bantu migrations that reached southern Africa between the third and seventh centuries. The Kalanga represent the second-largest group, concentrated in the northeast. The San people, known locally as Basarwa, are the region's indigenous inhabitants with archaeological evidence of continuous habitation extending at least twenty thousand years. The Herero arrived as refugees from present-day Namibia during the German colonial genocide between 1904 and 1908, settling primarily in the northwest. The Mbukushu inhabit the Okavango region. Each group maintains distinct languages, with Setswana functioning as the national language while English holds official status in government and education.
Tsodilo Hills in the northwest Kalahari contain more than 4,500 rock paintings created over approximately twenty thousand years, making the site sacred to the San and a UNESCO World Heritage designation. The paintings depict animals, hunting scenes, and geometric patterns using red ochre, white calcium, and charcoal pigments applied to quartzite rock faces across four main hills rising 410 meters above the surrounding plain. Archaeological excavations have recovered stone tools, beads, and evidence of ritual activity spanning millennia. The San believe the hills are the location of first creation and the resting place of ancestral spirits. Access requires permission from local communities who continue to perform ceremonies at specific panel locations.
Khama III ruled as paramount chief of the Bamangwato from 1875 until his death in 1923, transforming governance by abolishing bogadi bride price payment in cattle, restricting alcohol, and establishing the first primary schools. He traveled to London in 1895 with chiefs Bathoen I and Sebele I to successfully petition Queen Victoria against the British South Africa Company's attempt to incorporate Bechuanaland into what became Rhodesia. His grandson Seretse Khama married Ruth Williams, a white Englishwoman, in 1948, provoking a crisis that led to his exile by the British government under pressure from apartheid South Africa and white-minority Rhodesia. He returned in 1956 after renouncing the chieftainship, then founded the Botswana Democratic Party and won the pre-independence election in 1965.
Seswaa is the national dish, prepared by boiling beef, goat, or chicken with salt until the meat falls apart, then pounding it to shreds with a wooden pestle in a three-legged iron pot called a potjie. The dish appears at weddings, funerals, and national celebrations served alongside bogobe, a stiff porridge made from sorghum or maize meal mixed with boiling water and stirred until it forms a solid mass that is torn into pieces by hand for eating. Morogo refers to wild spinach varieties gathered during the rainy season and cooked with onions and tomatoes. Mopane worms are the caterpillar stage of the emperor moth Gonimbrasia belina, harvested from mopane trees, gutted, boiled, and dried in the sun, providing protein particularly in rural areas where they are fried or added to stews.
The Makgadikgadi Pans cover 12,000 square kilometers of salt flats in the northeast, remnants of an ancient lake that dried approximately ten thousand years ago. During the rainy season from November to March, the pans flood to shallow depths attracting tens of thousands of flamingos and migratory waterfowl. Kubu Island rises as a granite outcrop from the western pan, featuring baobab trees estimated at several thousand years old and stone walls built by ancestors of the Kalanga during the fifteenth or sixteenth century. Archaeological excavations have uncovered stone tools and fossils indicating hominin presence dating back forty thousand years when the lake still existed.
The Maitisong Festival takes place annually in Gaborone over nine days, typically in March, featuring theater productions, dance performances, poetry readings, and visual art exhibitions at multiple venues including the Maitisong Theatre established in 1987. President's Day falls on July 15 and 16, commemorating the birth of Sir Seretse Khama on July 1, 1921, with the date shifted to mid-month for convenience. Independence Day on September 30 features military parades at the National Stadium in Gaborone and district-level celebrations throughout the country.