INTRODUCTION

Botswana is the only country in Africa south of the equator to regularly execute prisoners, most recently in 2013. This is in marked contrast to the country's otherwise prominent history of free and fair elections, high economic growth, and low levels of corruption, especially as a near-neighbor to countries with a history of instability. In contrast to Zimbabwe, Botswana has a precolonial tradition of capital punishment without a significant history of political executions. Nonetheless, use of the death penalty since the country's independence in 1966 has waxed, waned, and waxed again. Although the country only carried out three executions between 1987 and 1996, since then it has carried out at least one every year except 2011 (though it carried out two in 2012), for a total of 47 since independence.2 However, Botswana has not carried out an execution in 2014 or 2015. These executions typically occur without prior notice. Despite a promising commitment to government transparency, unparalleled in Sub-Saharan Africa, the capital punishment regime's opaqueness has made it vulnerable to criticism on the international level.

Though limited by the scourge of HIV/AIDS, Botswana, a large and sparsely populated country, retains a strong democratic tradition and independent judiciary. Unsurprisingly, Botswana has a comparatively low crime rate. The sparseness of executions creates few opportunities for challenge, with little incentive to create firm guidelines for judges. The irony is that Botswana is a victim of its own success: unlike other countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, including those analyzed in this volume, Botswana has never had a clean break with its past that would reduce trust in government or reflect a desire to change course. The death penalty survives because of, not in spite of, the success of the postcolonial state.

An unusual aspect defines the death penalty in Botswana: the doctrine of extenuating circumstances, which it shares with Lesotho and Zambia and, in earlier times, with South Africa, Namibia, Swaziland, and Zimbabwe.