Read from March 2022. Botswana. Quotation from: "BOTSWANA INDEPENDENCE BILL DEBATE [Lords], UK PARLIAMENT. 26 July 1966.
Speaker. The Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies (Mr. John Stonehouse) I beg to move, that the Bill be now read a Second time.
There are certain similarities between Botswana and Lesotho. It was 17 years after Moshoeshoe called for British protection that the Bechuana tribes followed his example. That was in 1855, and for the last 81 years the United Kingdom has had responsibility for Bechuanaland.
Mr. John Stonehouse. As in the case of Lesotho, it has been suggested that Britain has done hardly anything to help Botswana to develop. I would agree that up to ten years ago not much was done, and this is something for which both sides of the House must accept responsibility. Too little was done by both sides. But since then a great deal of assistance has been given and a great deal of money provided to help the budget. The figure we are providing in grant-in-aid rose from £140,000 in a budget of £1.3 million in 1956–57 to £2.6 million in a budget of £5.4 million in 1965–66. The final figure for 1966–67 is likely to be higher still. The total budgetary aid over this period, including the current year, will amount to over £11 million. In addition, just under £7 million has been allocated under the Colonial Development and Welfare Act, the most recent allocation being £2.6 million to spend in the two year period 1965–67.
In the period since 1961, Exchequer loans totalling about £1.9 million have been granted, and Bechuanaland has also received £400,000 under the Overseas Service Aid Scheme and £250,000 in technical assistance. The total of this direct aid in the last decade amounts to about £23 million, which is about £50 per head of our population. If we had provided a similar amount per capita to India and Pakistan in the last ten years, it would have amounted to about £20,000 million, or 10 per cent. of our gross national product.
Although I accept that up to ten years ago the United Kingdom did not do enough, I do not think that we need be ashamed of the assistance per capita provided since then, but there is no disguising the fact that Botswana faces immense problems after independence. It has to recover from the effects of famine. There has been this disastrous drought for five years, and then this year the famine. I would like to take this opportunity to go over some of the facts, because it is right that we should get on the record what has been done." End of quotation.
You may wonder why the United Kingdom should be held responsible for the development of Bechunaland since 1855. After all, it was protection that was asked for.

Read from 5 March 2022.
Bechuanaland became Botswana. Basutoland became Lesotho. Swaziland became Eswatini. Botswana. Around 2012 I came into contact with a South African woman of Dutch origin. She wondered why in South Africa the black people wanted to kill the white people. "Maybe because you took their land?" "But when we came here, the land belonged to no one." I could not find an answer to this. Of course the land belonged to someone. In a report of a debate in the House of Commons in London on June 30, 1966, (Concerning the Botswana Independence Act, London, page 98), it was mentioned that there were delegates who were concerned about the place of the San in the Botswana society. They insisted on measures being taken to protect them from the oppression of the other tribes and the established colonialists. Reference was made to the report which, if I am correct, was commissioned by the United Kingdom Government, was written by the anthropologist and sociologist George B. Silberbauer on the situation of the San and their way of life, the wildlife and animals in the Kalahari. Most speakers agreed that Dr. Seretse Khama, at the time Prime Minister in the government of what was then called Bechuanaland, was the most qualified person to be appointed as President of Botswana. Dr. Seretse Khama is said to have had frequent consultations with all Botswana tribes about how to rule Botswana after the entry into independence. In a general election, all residents were asked whether they would like to continue as an independent nation. As for the indigenous people, he declared all residents of Botswana to be indigenous. In practice, most San were and still are seen as inferior. This was evident from a statement by a young San for whom we paid the school fees around 2014: "I am so happy that there are also people who see me as a human being and not as an animal." Ask a Botswana to tell you about the San, and the answer is likely to be: "they hunt, and ehhh, dress in skins". The Children's Frontiers report dated March 2020 on supporting Social Workers to prevent violence against children revealed that many of them did not understand why San children hated school and thus left school. That not all tribes were happy with the leadership of Dr. Seretse Khama and his tribe, Bangwato, shows the article in the Botswana newspaper Mmegi on March 11, 2022: "Mochudi: Bakgatla-ba-Kgafela have reiterated their Kgosikgolo's plea for the Constitution to allow their tribe to establish an independant homeland in the country ruled by their chief. Bakgatla are also resolute that chiefs should be given more powers, amongs others."