Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Saving and Serving the Nation: HIV Politics and the Emergence of New Professional Classes in Botswana

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Middle Classes in Africa

Part of the book series: Frontiers of Globalization ((FOG))

Abstract

This chapter discusses the fight against HIV/AIDS in Botswana as an ongoing state-driven process of social differentiation that has led to the consolidation of a new class of technocrats. With reference to the literature on humanitarian interventions, Bochow shows how international agencies forge new, sometimes informal, job economies that offer novel opportunities to educated professionals. The rise of HIV/AIDS activism among educated female professionals shows that the success of the country’s government in pooling foreign and domestic resources to fight the disease has been important to social differentiation. Stigmatization of HIV-positive individuals complicated the emergent structures and identities of middle classness in Botswana—they found their status associated with neediness and backwardness, and experienced various forms of social exclusion. This has inspired forms of ‘helping’ that build on existing social differences between the ‘fortunate’ and ‘unfortunate’, corresponding to a ‘sociology of pity’ that reshapes the class identity of those who help (Boltanski, Distant Suffering: Morality, Media and Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). Participation in the counter-HIV struggle thus contributes to a class-like status beyond one’s actual class position.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    The World Bank defines middle-income countries as having a per capita gross national income of US$1026 to $12,475 (The World Bank 2016).

  2. 2.

    For a critical discussion of ‘class’ in the African context compare Neubert (2014) and Neubert and Stoll (this volume).

  3. 3.

    The disillusionment experienced by many members of the embryonic middle class in post-colonial Africa has been reflected in African literature (see, e.g. the award winning novel The Beautiful Ones Are Not yet Born by Ayi Kwei Armah [1988]).

  4. 4.

    The Basarwa, a hunter-gatherer group in the Kalahari, were excluded from these benefits so long as they insisted on maintaining their traditional way of life. Today, they remain in conflict with the Botswana government because the state demands access to minerals found on ‘their’ land .

  5. 5.

    Wealth consisted in cattle . Some of the most wealthy farmers occupied vast areas of land with huge herds of more than 500 cattle (Gulbrandsen 2013, 25) . Labour migration to the mines in South Africa contributed to the accumulation of wealth as early as the 1930s (Schapera 1966).

  6. 6.

    To compare with Ghana, see Miescher (2005, 84–114).

  7. 7.

    I use the term ‘ elite’ to refer only to ruling groups and their subgroups. In this respect, I follow Bayart (1993, 157) who demands a functional use of the term to dissociate it from general levels of social differentiation .

  8. 8.

    This is a striking difference to educated professionals elsewhere in Africa. For instance, those in Ghana did stress their differences from the rural and uneducated in many ways (Newell 2002), and they sought to gain political influence through public displays of wealth (McCaskie 2000). Compare also Budniok and Noll in this volume.

  9. 9.

    One of Botswana’s greatest achievements was the introduction of two health insurance schemes in the 1990s. One was for government employees and the other addressed employees of private institutions (Bochow 2015, 26; Kroeker in this volume).

  10. 10.

    Antiretroviral (ARV) treatments enhance the immune system and enable HIV-infected people to live a long(er) life.

  11. 11.

    Women can reject the test, but this invalidates their right to free pre-natal treatment. Moreover, if the baby is infected, legal charges can be brought against the mother for bodily injury resulting from negligence.

  12. 12.

    They either indicated this themselves or I could deduce it from their medical symptoms.

References

  • ACHAP. 2014. Annual Report. Accessed 22 February 2017. http://www.achap.org/2014-annual-report

  • African Development Bank (AfDB). 2011. The Middle of the Pyramid. Dynamics of the Middle Class in Africa. Market Brief, April 20. Accessed 22 February 2017. http://www.afdb.org/fileadmin/uploads/afdb/Documents/Publications/The%20Middle%20of%20the%20Pyramid_The%20Middle%20of%20the%20Pyramid.pdf

  • Armah, A.K. 1988. The Beautiful Ones are Not Yet Born. Oxford and London: Heinemann Educational Publishers.

    Google Scholar 

  • Barnett, T., T. Fantan, B. Mbakile, and A. Whiteside. 2002. The Private Sector Responds to the Epidemic: UNAids Case Study September 2002 UNAids Best Practice Collection Debswana—A Global Benchmark. Geneva: UNAids.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bayart, J.-F. 1993. The State in Africa: The Politics of the Belly. London: Longman.

    Google Scholar 

  • Behrends, A., and C. Lentz. 2012. Education, Careers, and Home Ties: The Ethnography of an Emerging Middle Class from Northern Ghana. Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 137 (2): 139–164.

    Google Scholar 

  • BIDPA—Botswana Institute for Development Policy Analysis. 2014–2015. Botswana Government Budget: Briefing Note. Accessed 22 February 2017. http://dspace.africaportal.org/jspui/bitstream/123456789/34312/1/Botswana%20Government%20Budget.pdf?1

  • Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. 1999–2014. Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Website. Accessed 22 February 2017. http://www.gatesfoundation.org/home

  • Bochow, A. 2015. A Future Beyond HIV/AIDS? Health as a Political Commodity in Botswana. Africa Spectrum 50 (1): 25–47.

    Google Scholar 

  • Boltanski, L. 1999. Distant Suffering: Morality, Media and Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Boltanski, L., and L. Thévenot. 1991. De la justification. Les économies de la grandeur. Paris: Éditions Gallimard.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brada, B. 2011. “Not here”: Making the Spaces and Subjects of “Global Health” in Botswana. Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry 35 (2): 285–312.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brown, H., and M. Green. 2015. At the Service of Community Development: The Professionalization of Volunteer Work in Kenya and Tanzania. African Studies Review 58 (02): 63–84.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brown, H., and R.J. Prince. 2015. Introduction: Volunteer Labor—Pasts and Futures of Work, Development, and Citizenship in East Africa. African Studies Review 58 (02): 29–42.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Burchardt, M. 2013. Faith-Based Humanitarianism: Organizational Change and Everyday Meanings in South Africa. Sociology of Religion 74 (1): 30–55.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Comaroff, J., and J. Comaroff. 1991. Of Revelation and Revolution. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Dahl, B. 2009. The “Failure of Culture”: Christianity, Kinship, and Moral Discourse about Orphans during Botswana’s Aids Crisis. Africa Today, Special Issue 56 (1): 23–43.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2010. Left Behind? Orphaned Children, Humanitarian Aid, and the Politics of Kinship, Culture, and Caregiving during Botswana’s Aids Crisis. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Daloz, J.-P. 2003. “Big Men” in Sub-Saharan Africa: How Elites Accumulate Positions and Resources. Comparative Sociology 2 (1): 271–285.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Errington, F., and D. Gewertz. 1997. The Wewak Rotary Club: The Middle Class in Melanesia. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 3: 333–353.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Foster, P. 1980. Education and Social Inequality in Sub-Saharan Africa. The Journal of Modern African Studies 18 (2): 201–236.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gramsci, A. 2006. State and Civil Society. In The Anthropology of the State. A Reader, ed. A. Sharma and A. Gupta, 71–85. Malden: Blackwell Publishing.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gulbrandsen, Ø. 2013. The State and the Social. Oxford and Malden: Berghahn Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Heald, S. 2006. Abstain or Die: The Development of Aids Policy in Botswana. Journal of Biosocial Science 38: 29–41.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Health Policy Project. 2016. Botswana: How the Decline in PEPFAR Could Affect Key Populations. Policy Brief, March 2016. Accessed 19 May 2017. https://www.healthpolicyproject.com/pubs/462_HPPBotswanaBriefMarchFINAL.PDF

  • Hearn, J. 1998. The “NGO-Isation” of Kenyan Society: USAID & the Restructuring of Health Care. Review of African Political Economy 25 (75): 89–100.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Heiman, R., C. Freeman, and M. Liechty. 2012a. The Global Middle Classes. Theorizing Through Ethnography. Santa Fe, NM: School for Advanced Research Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2012b. Introduction: Charting and Anthropology of the Middle Classes. In The Global Middle Class, ed. R. Heiman, C. Freeman, and M. Liechty, 3–30. Santa Fe, NM: School for Advanced Research Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hillbom, E. 2012. Botswana: A Development-Oriented Gate-Keeping State. African Affairs 111 (442): 67–89.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lentz, C. 1995. “Unity for Development”: Youth Associations in North-Western Ghana. Africa 65: 395–429.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lofchie, M. 2015. The Political Economy of African Middle Class. In The Emerging Middle Class in Africa, ed. M. Ncube and C.L. Lufumpa, 34–59. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lufumpa, C.L., M. Mubila, and B. Aissa. 2015. The Dynamics of the Middle Class in Africa. In The Emerging Middle Class in Africa, ed. M. Ncube and C.L. Lufumpa, 9–34. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • McCaskie, T.C. 2000. Asante Identities. History and Modernity in an African Village 1850–1950. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Meinert, L., et al. 2009. Tests for Life Chances: CD4 Miracles and Obstacles in Uganda. Anthropology and Medicine 16 (2): 195–209.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Miescher, S.F. 2005. Making Men in Ghana. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mmegi. 2015. The Middle Classes in Botswana. 13 November 2015. Accessed 22 February 2017. http://www.mmegi.bw/index.php?sid=4&aid=801&dir=2011/May/Friday13/

  • Müller, T. 2005. The Making of Elite Women: Revolution and Nation Building in Eritrea. Leiden: Brill.

    Google Scholar 

  • Neubert, D. 2014. What is “Middle Class”? In Search for an Appropriate Concept. Middle East-Topics & Arguments 2: 23–35.

    Google Scholar 

  • Newell, S. 2002. Literary Culture in Colonial Ghana. “How to Play the Game of Life”. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nguyen, V.-K. 2009. Government-by-Exception: Enrolment and Experimentality in mass HIV Treatment Programs in Africa. Social Theory & Health, 7(3), 196–218.

    Google Scholar 

  • Oppong, C. 1981. Middle Class African Marriage. A Family Study of Ghanaian Senior Civil Servants. London: George Allen & Unwin.

    Google Scholar 

  • Prince, R.J. 2015. Seeking Incorporation? Voluntary Labor and the Ambiguities of Work, Identity, and Social Value in Contemporary Kenya. African Studies Review 58 (2): 85–109.

    Google Scholar 

  • Redfield, P. 2005. Doctors, Borders, and Life in Crisis. Cultural Anthropology 20 (3): 328–361.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rose, N. 2006. Governing ‘Advanced’ Liberal Democracies. In The Anthropology of the State. A Reader, ed. A. Sharma and A. Gupta, 144–162. Malden: Blackwell Publishing.

    Google Scholar 

  • Salamon, L.M. 1994. The Rise of the Nonprofit Sector. Foreign Affairs, 109–122.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schapera, I. 1966. Married Life in an African Tribe. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Smith, D.J., and B.C. Mbakwem. 2007. Life Projects and Therapeutic Itineraries: Marriage, Fertility, and Antiretroviral Therapy in Nigeria. Aids 21: 37–41.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2010. Antiretroviral Therapy and Reproductive Life Projects: Mitigating the Stigma of Aids in Nigeria. Social Science & Medicine 71 (2): 345–352.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • The World Bank. 2016. Middle Income Countries. Accessed 22 February 2017. http://www.worldbank.org/en/country/mic

  • Tlou, S.D. 1996. Empowering Older Women in AIDS Prevention: The Case of Botswana. Southern African Journal of Gerontology 5 (2): 27–32.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1998. Outcomes of a Community-based HIV/AIDS Education Programme for Rural Older Women in Botswana. Southern African Journal of Gerontology 7 (2): 23–26.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tlou, T., and A. Campell. 1997. History of Botswana. Gaborone: McMillen Bolwesa Publisher.

    Google Scholar 

  • Togarasei, L. 2010. Christian Theology of Life, Death and Healing in an Era of Antiretroviral therapy: Reflections on the Responses of Some Botswana Churches. African Journal of Aids Research 9 (4): 429–435.

    Google Scholar 

  • Treichler, P.A. 1999. How to have a Theory in an Epidemic. Cultural Chronicles of AIDS. Durham and London: Duke University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Vernazza, P., et al. 2008. HIV-infizierte Menschen ohne andere STD sind unter wirksamer antiretroviraler Therapie sexuell nicht infektiös. Schweizerische Ärztezeitung 89 (5): 165–169.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Weeks, S.G. 1993. Reforming the Reform: Education in Botswana. Africa Today 40 (1): 49–60.

    Google Scholar 

  • Werbner, R. 2002. Cosmopolitan Ethnicity, Entrepreneurship and the Nation: Minority Elites in Botswana. Journal of Southern African Studies 28 (4): 731–753.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2004. Reasonable Radicals and Citizenship in Botswana. The Public Anthropology of Kalanga Elites. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Georg-August Universität Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany

    Astrid Bochow

Authors
  1. Astrid Bochow
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Bayreuth Academy of Advanced African Studies, Bayreuth, Germany

    Lena Kroeker

  2. Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle, Germany

    David O'Kane

  3. Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle, Germany

    Tabea Scharrer

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2018 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Bochow, A. (2018). Saving and Serving the Nation: HIV Politics and the Emergence of New Professional Classes in Botswana. In: Kroeker, L., O'Kane, D., Scharrer, T. (eds) Middle Classes in Africa. Frontiers of Globalization. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62148-7_7

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62148-7_7

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-62147-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-62148-7

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation