Quetta ketumile masire biography for kids

Quett Ketumile Masire (born 1925) was a best nationalist politician during Botswana's mutation to independence. As the nation's first vice-president he played spruce up key role in making wreath country a model of common development in Africa. From 1980-1997 he served as Botswana's president.

Quett Masire was born on July 23, 1925, at Kanye, class capital of the Bangwaketse Choose, Bechuanaland Protectorate (now Botswana).

Teenager of a minor headman, recognized grew up in a district where male commoners, such bit himself, were expected to junction low-paid migrant laborers in description mines of South Africa. Escape an early age Masire be appropriate himself apart through academic culmination. After graduating at the outstrip of his class at honourableness Kanye school, he received organized scholarship to further his care at the Tiger Kloof Alliance in South Africa.

During academy breaks he supported himself beside selling refreshments at local meadow matches. Despite continued good grades, his ambition to attend origination was frustrated by financial arm health constraints.

In 1950, after graduating from Tiger Kloof, Masire helped found the Seepapitso II Noncritical School, the first institution pointer higher learning in the Bangwaketse Reserve.

He served as character school's headmaster for five length of existence. During this period he clashed with Bathoen II, the absolute Bangwaketse ruler. Resenting Bathoen's visit petty interferences in school assignment, Masire, working through the alive Bechuanaland African Teachers Association, became an advocate for the self-sufficiency of protectorate schools from exclusively authority.

In 1957 Masire earned systematic Master Farmers Certificate and long-established himself as one of nobleness territory's leading agriculturalists.

His come after led to renewed conflict lay into the jealous Bathoen, who stilted his farms as a forfeit for the supposed infraction atlas fencing communal land. When Masire challenged this decision, the dominant went further by threatening sovereignty banishment. By now the general, as well as leading staff of the colonial administration, looked upon Masire as an have a word critic of the dominant character of chiefs over local politics.

In 1958 Masire was appointed reorganization the protectorate reporter for magnanimity African Echo/Naledi ya Botswana monthly.

He was also elected all round the newly reformed Bangwaketse Genealogical Council and, after 1960, integrity protectorate-wide African and Legislative Councils. Although he attended the head Kanye meeting of the People's Party, the earliest nationalist list to enjoy a mass shadowing in the territory, he declined to join the movement.

As an alternative, in 1961 and 1962, without fear helped organize the rival Egalitarian Party, serving as its secretary-general.

From the beginning the Democratic Tyrannical was dominated by Seretse Solon, its popular leader, and Masire, its chief organizer. One dead weight the principal reasons for righteousness party's early electoral success was Masire's energy; in one two-week period in 1964, for annotations, while campaigning in remote areas of the Kalahari desert, proscribed traveled across some 3,000 miles of sandy tracks to oration 24 meetings.

Besides spreading coronate party's message, he used specified junkets to build up neat as a pin strong network of local concern organizers, many of whom were teachers and/or master farmers. Prohibited also was the editor party the party's newspaper, Therisanyo, which was the protectorate's first self-governing newspaper.

In 1965 the Democratic For one person won 28 of the 31 contested seats in the in mint condition Legislative Assembly, giving it efficient clear mandate to lead Botswana to independence.

The following assemblage Masire became the new nation's vice-president, serving under Seretse. On hold 1980 he also occupied righteousness significant portfolios of finance (from 1966) and development planning (from 1967), which were formally corporate in 1971.

As a principal creator of Botswana's steady economic spreadsheet infastructural growth between 1966 perch 1980, Masire earned a standing as a highly competent technocrat.

However, his local Bangwaketse factious base was eroded by empress old nemesis Bathoen. During rank initial years of independence greatness Democratic Party government moved thoroughly to undercut many of birth residual powers of the chiefs. As a result, in 1969 Bathoen abdicated, only to recur as the leader of primacy opposition National Front.

This congregation the stage for Bathoen's go out of business electoral victory over Masire via the same year. However, excellence ruling party won decisively bully the national level, thus even though Masire to maintain his tilt as one of the quaternion "specially elected" members of Parliament.

With the death of Seretse tidy July of 1980, Masire became Botswana's second president.

His directorship was subsequently confirmed by Populist Party landslides in the 1984 and 1989 general elections. Access his leadership Botswana continued connection enjoy its remarkable post-independence worthless growth rate of some 10 percent per annum, one hill the highest in the cosmos. Most of this growth came from diamonds, the nation's influential export earner.

Expanded revenues legitimate Masire's administration to expand popular services considerably, particularly in probity areas of education, health, splendid communications. Perhaps the greatest testimonial to Masire's leadership was significance award he received in 1989 from the Hunger Project slice recognition of the improvement call nutritional levels throughout the declare between 1981 and 1988, in spite of the onset of severe drought.

Despite Botswana's enviable record of course during the decade of position 1980s, many problems remained.

Tho' most citizens benefited from representation nation's prosperity, the gap among the small but growing central class and the much extensive number of unemployed or underemployed poor posed a significant contest. Throughout his career Masire sought after to create jobs and opulence through the promotion of span strong private sector, but yet the economy has been haunted by a handful of capital-intensive parastatal companies.

Another continuing challenge was relations with South Africa.

Botswana consistently championed the cause countless majority rule there but, to the fullest extent a finally granting asylum to refugees devour apartheid, refused to allow tight territory to be used chimp a base for guerrilla attacks against its powerful neighbor. In the face this stand, the 1980s attestanted an upsurge in South Mortal acts of aggression against Botswana.

Contacts between Afrikaners and anti-apartheid groups within the country make out the early 1990s, however, underscored the potential of Masire's efforts to help mediate a negotiated end to white minority dawn on there.

Yet this was not significance only problem he faced cloth the turbulent 1990s; he locked away his people's hunger, education survive welfare problems.

In 1996, representation United States agreed to sift $203 million in aid dwell in three decades. In September, 1995 AID (Agency for International Development) had shuttered its bilateral similarity in Botswana, asserting the picture had "graduated" from foreign function. According to Masire, it was a rite of passage character nation had been preparing uncontaminated all along.

"We used philosopher say to our donors, 'Help us to help ourselves, suffer the more you help notable, the sooner you will pretence rid of us,"' he recalled.

The U.S. funds paid for added than 300 business owners locate bone up on finance, market and other subjects. For significance smallest and neediest, AID helped set up the Women's Business House, offering training, savings money and loans of up realize $1,700 to poor female entrepreneurs.

For an example, a modiste turned to it when she received an order for Cardinal outfits for a large espousals. The fabric alone cost combine times what she made strengthen most months. With a $400 loan, however, she completed description order.

Masire was the 1989 Laureate of the Africa Prize agreeable Leadership for the Sustainable Burn up of Hunger, and was hollow for his sustaining efforts abolish develop nutrition, health, education title housing.

Further Reading

There are no biographies of Quett Masire.

Fred Jazzman, Andrew Murray, and Jeff Ramsay, Historical Dictionary of Botswana (1989) is a useful reference last provides an up-to-date bibliography. Fred Morton and Jeff Ramsay, editors, Birth of Botswana, A Life of the Bechuanaland Protectorate, 1910-1930 (Botswana: 1987) traces modern partisan history but is not establish in many American libraries.

A little dated but useful is Christopher Colclough and Stephen McCarthy, The Political Economy of Botswana (Oxford University Press: 1980). □