The Botswana Defence Force, the military of Botswana, formed in 1977. The commander-in-chief is Mokgweetsi Masisi. The main force is the army; there is also an air wing, but no sea-going navy, although there is a river contingent attached to the ground forces, with 10 Panther airboats and 2 Boston Whaler Raider class.
By the late 1970s, the pariah southern African state of Rhodesia was in its death throes. The white minority regime was fighting grimly for its life against two large and growing insurgent armies. Rhodesia’s small, potent military, increasingly strained by the magnitude of the conflict, was endeavoring to maximize the advantages of its mobility and combat power by striking its enemies in their external bases.
Neighboring Botswana was caught in the spillover of the Rhodesian civil war, as insurgents flowed across its borders and Rhodesian security forces regularly crossed into Botswana pursuit of their opponents, often catching uninvolved local bystanders in the crossfire. Citizens living near the border were outraged by their government’s incapacity to deal with the foreign intruders. Their outrage was encouraged by Botswana’s political opposition seeking advantage against the ruling party.
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