ABSTRACT
Historical scholarship on human rights is divided on the question of whether anticolonialism was a human rights movement. One interpretation argues that anticolonial activists were exclusively concerned with gaining state sovereignty rather than protecting individual freedoms. This essay, as part of newer scholarship, challenges that viewpoint by spotlighting the role of African actors in human rights activism, diplomacy, and law. It examines the case of Botswana in the1960s and 1970s to show how the anticolonial and human rights movements overlapped in significant ways. The government, led by President Seretse Khama, used human rights principles to address three challenges: first, securing a peaceful postcolonial transition; second, seeking aid from North America and Western Europe; and third, striving for acceptance within the Organization of African Unity. In international forums like the United Nations, Seretse built an image of success in human rights to help ensure the survival of the state. Botswana not only found legitimacy and support from human rights networks in the West, but also among agents for national self-determination in the colonial and postcolonial world. New perspectives from non-Western localities like Botswana allow for a more nuanced understanding of the place of decolonization and the global South in human rights history.
