The rise of wealth and power within the cattle-owning economy of Botswana has been accompanied by the creation of poverty and weakness. The impoverishment of the San and ‘destitutes’ was a structured, comprehensive, and long-term process, caused less by phenomena such as periodic drought than by an elite of economic and political power, and the exploitation which they practised. The growth economy of recent decades has not ameliorated the situation, but has strengthened the wealthy while neglecting or worsening the plight of the San. The state possesses the financial resources and developmental capacities to alleviate poverty, but its controllers continue to prioritise other matters.