Botswana and Pivotal Deterrance in the Zimbabwe 2008 Political Crisis

Abstract

This article seeks to explain the pivotal role that Botswana played in the light of the Zimbabwe political crisis after the 2008 election. It argues that Botswana was able to apply pivotal deterrence in Zimbabwe between the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) that claimed to have won the March 2008 presidential election and the Zim- babwe African National Union (ZANU PF) that claimed to have won the June 2008 presidential re-run election in which Robert Mugabe stood alone. This article deploys the theory of 'pivotal deterrence' to investigate the influence that Bot- swana had over the MDC and ZANU PF.