ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the perceptions and attitudes of the postcolonial petty bourgeois state elite about the role of the trade unions in development. This perception of and attitude to the role of trade unions in development should be placed against the class character and form of the Botswana state as a capitalist state. The state, as the guarantor of private capital accumulation, seeks to control labour and to maximise surplus value extraction through the control of wages. When Botswana became independent in 1966, there were only four registered trade unions: the Francistown African Employees Union, the Bechuanaland Protectorate Workers’ Unions, the Bechuanaland Trade Union Congress and the Bechuanaland General Workers’ Organisation. The state also exerted considerable pressure on the trade unions to come together in a federation. For instance in 1971, Seretse Khama, the first President of Botswana, argued very strongly for the restructuring of the trade unions in Botswana.
