Duma Boko’s social gathering, the Umbrella for Democratic Change, defeated the Botswana Democratic social gathering, which held uninterrupted energy since independence in 1966 — the yr earlier than De Beers found diamonds within the southern African nation. “Now we have to attempt to safeguard the goose that lays for us the golden egg,” Boko mentioned in his first speech as president on Saturday, of a as soon as unusually rock-solid partnership between a rustic and a miner that was thought-about among the many most equitable within the trade. Botswana, one in all Africa’s most affluent nations, owns the 15 per cent of De Beers that Johannesburg-listed Anglo doesn’t personal, and in addition has half of a three way partnership with the corporate Debswana, which supplies a lot of the group’s diamonds. However Boko is inheriting blemished ties after populist posturing by his predecessor over a renewal of phrases, a downturn within the world diamond market and Anglo’s plans to exit De Beers because it warded off a £39bn takeover supply from BHP earlier this yr.