SOS Bushmen

A group waging a legal war against Botswana's government over the rights of the Bushman people accused wildlife officials on Thursday of torturing traditional hunters, but a government official denied it.

The First People of the Kalahari said in a statement that wildlife officials in Botswana tortured seven Bushmen from the country's Central Kalahari Game Reserve early this month, after accusing them of hunting in the protected area.

Seven Bushmen have been tortured this month by wildlife officials in Kaudwane, a relocation camp close to the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. Some report that they were tortured a number of times over three days in early June.

In the Kalahari Desert, where the landscape stretches brown and dusty in every direction, water is power. So when the truckloads of men from the government rumbled up to this ancient Bushmen village three years ago, they found the steel drums that held the community's precious reserves. Then, said villagers, the men tipped the drums over, spilling the water into the sand.

Mongwegi Thabogwelo, a lean, hard-working woman who appeared to be in her forties, recalls their cruel words that day: " 'It's the water,' they said, 'that is keeping you from relocating.' "

The forced removal of the Bushmen was the culmination of what the Botswana government said was years of effort to bring development to southern Africa's most traditional people. The Bushmen have resisted at every turn, defying hunting restrictions, refusing to abandon their villages and battling the government in a court challenge they hope will reverse policies that, they say, have pushed them to the edge of extinction.