Botswana–Zimbabwe border

Rivers, a circle and a road

Britain declared jurisdiction over Bechuanaland in 1885, and in 1889 Cecil Rhodes’s British South Africa Company was chartered to operate in the loosely defined area between the Zambezi and Bechuanaland. An Order in Council of 20 October 1898 set the boundary between Southern Rhodesia and Bechuanaland, which is today’s Botswana–Zimbabwe border.^[1]

From the Limpopo the line follows the Shashi River, swings out around a circle of ten miles’ radius centred on Fort Tuli, which stayed Rhodesian, then follows the Ramaquabane River to its source and a watershed. From there it follows the old Hunter’s Road, or Pandamatenga road, north towards the Zambezi. Joint commissions marked the road sector in 1907 and again in 1959.^[1]

Following a road was not simple. The 1959 commissioners found a barbed-wire fence that did not match the old road, tracked lost stretches with the help of aerial photographs and local guides, and concluded that one trading store the owners thought was in Rhodesia actually stood in Bechuanaland.^[1]

“thence by that road to the River Zambezi”^[1]

An electric fence

Botswana became independent on 30 September 1966; Southern Rhodesia had declared independence unilaterally in 1965.^[1] In 2003 Botswana began building a 2.4-metre electric fence along the border. Its foreign minister, Mompati Merafhe, cited Zimbabwean illegal immigrants and cattle spreading foot-and-mouth disease; an outbreak that authorities traced to Zimbabwe had led to about 3,800 cattle being slaughtered that year, and Botswana’s beef exports depend on controlling the disease.^[2]

Zimbabwe’s high commissioner said Botswana was trying to create a “Gaza Strip”, a remark Botswana officials called malicious. Merafhe replied that the border was not being closed, and police reported the fence being cut.^[2]