A small state, big pressures—Botswana built its army late and cautiously.

In this season finale, we sit down with Bafumiki Mocheregwa, a historian and academic at the University of Southern Mississippi who studies the Botswana Defense Force (BDF) and Southern African military history.

The conversation explores how Botswana built its armed forces late—only in 1977—after relying for years on the Police Mobile Unit. We cover how the BDF grew under financial and political constraints, its complicated role during the Rhodesian Bush War and apartheid, and its later peacekeeping deployments to Somalia, Mozambique, and Lesotho.

This isn’t a neat story. It’s a patchwork of half-forgotten history, regional pressures, and unanswered questions about how a small, cautious state tried to manage the chaos around it.

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The BDF in the Struggle for an African Environment - https://amzn.to/3IAvkor

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