Duma Boko

Duma Boko (born December 31, 1969, Mahalapye, Botswana) human rights lawyer and politician who became president of Botswana in 2024. His stunning victory ended nearly 60 years of rule by the Botswana Democratic Party, which had governed the landlocked country in Southern Africa since Botswana gained independence in 1966. He has served as president of the Botswana National Front (BNF) political party since 2010 and the Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC) coalition since 2012.

Personal life, education, and career

Boko grew up in Mahalapye, a village in eastern Botswana, about 125 miles (200 km) northeast of the country’s capital, Gaborone. He studied law at the University of Botswana, graduating in 1993, and then went on to attend Harvard Law School, where he received his Master of Laws degree in 1995. Boko also lectured at the University of Botswana from 1993 to 2003. He was a practicing attorney while teaching and in 2008 opened his own law firm, where he focused on human rights and public interest litigation, among other issues. Some of his human rights advocacy efforts, including a high-profile case (2004–06), were on behalf of the Indigenous Basarwa (San) people, who had been evicted from their homeland. Boko was also active with the Botswana Network on Ethics, Law and HIV/AIDS and served two terms as the chair of the board. Boko has been married to attorney Kaone Mokganedi since 2015. Boko and his wife have children and guard their privacy.

Entry into politics

Boko became involved in the BNF party when he was young. In 2003 some BNF members left to form a new party, in which Boko was involved. He later returned to the BNF and in 2010 was a candidate to be the party’s president. His bid for the presidency was challenged, first by the party’s central committee, which disqualified him in June for not having met the requisite length of time as a member because of his time with the other party, though that was later reversed. Then, in July, some BNF members filed a lawsuit seeking to bar Boko from being eligible to be a candidate for party president, also citing his time with the other party. The case was quickly dismissed, however, and later that month he was elected president of the BNF. Boko was later credited with rejuvenating the party, which had seen a decline in popularity before he was elected.

Umbrella for Democratic Change

Noting the need for Botswana’s opposition to unite in order to better challenge the ruling BDP, in 2012 Boko spearheaded the formation of the UDC coalition, which originally comprised the BNF, the Botswana Movement for Democracy, and the Botswana Peoples Party. He was also named president of the UDC. “We are here to provide an alternative,” he said at the time. “Botswana might be a middle-income country, but the majority of its people are poor. We need to change.” The UDC targeted young and poor voters, as well as those who believed that Botswana needed to reduce its dependence on diamonds, which has long provided the biggest share of the country’s gross domestic product.

Boko was the UDC’s presidential candidate in the October 24, 2014, elections. Although the UDC did not win enough National Assembly seats to secure the presidency for Boko, it did win the second largest number of seats after the BDP. The UDC became the official opposition party, and Boko, who had won a seat, became the leader of the opposition. The UDC also was the largest opposition faction ever seen in the legislative body—in all, an impressive debut for the coalition. In the next elections, held on October 23, 2019, Boko was once again the coalition’s presidential candidate. Although the UDC saw its share of seats drop slightly—Boko being among those who were not reelected—the coalition again came in second to the BDP and retained its status as the official opposition. There were concerns over the electoral process, however, and the next month, Boko and the UDC challenged the results of some constituencies at the High Court, alleging that voting had been rigged in favor of the BDP. Among their claims were reports that some supporters of the BDP had been able to cast ballots in more than one constituency and had been organized to vote in constituencies that were UDC strongholds. The case was dismissed for a lack of evidence and for technical reasons in December, and a subsequent petition at the Court of Appeals was dismissed on technicalities in January.

The next elections were scheduled for October 2024. Boko, who ran as the UDC’s presidential candidate for the third time, found the populace was finally ready for a change. The unemployment rate had risen to almost 28 percent and the economy was stagnant. The growth rate projected by the International Monetary Fund was just 1 percent in 2024, slowed by a decrease in the global demand for diamonds. Just two years earlier, that rate had been 5.5 percent. Boko campaigned on doubling the minimum wage, curtailing unemployment, providing universal health coverage, and finding other sources of economic growth besides diamonds, such as tourism and agriculture. He also attacked the ruling BDP for being “connected in a grand scheme of self-enrichment.”

In the October 30 elections, the UDC more than doubled its number of seats in the National Assembly, thereby securing a majority in the body as well as the presidency for Boko; he was sworn in on November 1. “I pledge with every fiber of my being that I will do everything I can, not to fail, not to disappoint, appreciating always the enormity of the responsibility bestowed upon me by the people of this republic,” Boko said after he was sworn in as president. His public inauguration, which was held in Gaborone on November 8, drew thousands of people. During his inaugural address, he praised former president Mokgweetsi Masisi for having conceded the election and letting Botswana set an example with the peaceful transfer of power.

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Presidency

In the weeks after his victory, Boko voiced some of his plans for the country. He said he would seek to legalize undocumented people from neighboring Zimbabwe, providing them with temporary residence and work permits. That would mark a stark contrast in fortunes for the Zimbabweans, who had been subject to daily deportations. “They do jobs that would otherwise not get done,” Boko told the BBC’s Africa Daily podcast. He outlined his ideas for diversifying Botswana’s economy, which included exploring the use of solar energy, entering the medical cannabis and hemp markets, and supporting other sectors, such as information technology and manufacturing—all of which would create much-needed jobs. Boko also quickly fulfilled a campaign promise of allowing a Basarwa family to bury a family member in their ancestral land, which was in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve; the previous government administration had blocked their efforts. Boko furthermore pledged to restore rights that had been taken from the Basarwa people, reflecting his history of being a human rights advocate as well as his previous advocacy on behalf of the Basarwa.