SOS Bushmen

 In the middle of Botswana lies the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, a reserve created to protect the traditional territory of the 5,000 Gana, Gwi and Tsila Bushmen (and their neighbours the Bakgalagadi), and the game they depend on.

  The Bushmen, and many other observers believe that the Bushmen have been evicted because their land is rich in diamonds.

Their reserve lies in the middle of the richest diamond-producing area in the world. There is known to be at least one major diamond deposit in the reserve, at a Bushman community called Gope. Many other ‘kimberlites’ (volcanic rock in which diamonds are found) are present in the reserve.

All Botswana’s diamond mines are operated by De Beers in a 50:50 partnership with the government. De Beers hold a licence to ‘retain’ the Gope deposit, and have said they plan to mine it in the future. There is an active search under way for more deposits.

De Beers and the Botswana government are so intimately linked that the President has described them as ‘Siamese twins’. De Beers’s local managing director backed the Bushmen’s forced removal.

Other companies are also involved. Petra Diamonds is exploring throughout the reserve and has identified the Gope and Kukama areas – two former Bushman villages – as priorities.

The Bushmen have appealed to the actor Leonardo DiCaprio, star of the new film ‘Blood Diamond’, for help, through a full-page advert in Variety magazine.

The project is located in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, where Botswana's High Court ruled last December that hundreds of San bushmen had been wrongly evicted and should be allowed to return.