A South African woman who said Botswana’s president ‘looks like a Bushman’ was arrested, detained for two days and fined for ‘insulting Botswana’.

Dorsey Dube was arrested after commenting on a portrait of President Khama at a control post on the Botswana-South Africa border. She said the President looked like her friend’s father, who has Bushman features.

The deeply-entrenched racist attitudes of many people in authority in Botswana towards the Bushmen were starkly revealed, however, when the authorities assumed it was meant as an insult. Survival International is sending a report on the incident to the UN Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

Ms Dube says she was held at the police station and not allowed to call anyone in South Africa for assistance, though her friends did eventually reach help. She was released after spending a night in a prison cell and a further full day in custody.

President Khama (who is himself half-British) has referred to the Bushmen’s way of life as an ‘archaic fantasy’. The government has banned them from hunting for food or accessing water on their land, in a bid to force the Bushmen to abandon their land and lifestyle.

A tourist lodge built on the Bushmen’s land is allowed to use all the water it needs, on condition that it does not provide the Bushmen with any.

President Ian Khama, who was returned to office after elections in October, is a board member of Conservation International.

Survival’s Director Stephen Corry said today, ‘You couldn’t have clearer evidence of the racism towards Bushmen in Botswana than this incident. A South African person thought resembling a Bushman was complimentary, but Botswana officials took it as an insult. It’s doubly tragic when you consider that President Khama’s father, the country’s first President, himself endured a great deal of racist abuse from the colonial authorities for marrying a British woman, and that he promised the country’s Bushmen that their rights would always be protected.’

Botswana's persecution of the Bushmen has continued under President Khama.

Survival International said the “attempt by the Botswana government to punish San for hunting to feed their families has backfired”, BBC Africa reports.

The San of the Kalahari have faced years of legal rows for the right to live on their ancestral lands.

The six men were arrested in 2007 in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve.

A year earlier, San had won a landmark legal victory against the government allowing them to return to land in the reserve and hunt without permits.

Many returned to the reserve, but Survival said they had struggled with access to water and still had to obtain permits to hunt, although “not a single permit has been awarded”.

“The Bushmen are not allowed access to their own water, they’re refused hunting permits, and they’re arrested when they do hunt, which is the only way they can feed their families,” the group’s director, Stephen Corry, said.

Six San bushmen have been found guilty of hunting without permits on their ancestral land, but were not jailed after a Botswana magistrate freed them with a warning, a rights group said Wednesday.

"An attempt by the Botswana government to punish Bushmen for hunting to feed their families has backfired after a magistrate let them off with a caution, and ordered their release from prison," read a statement from Survival International, which campaigns for the rights of indigenous people.

Three bushmen were convicted for hunting a gemsbok in April and acquitted on a charge of hunting a giraffe. In a seperate case, also on Monday, three bushmen were convicted of hunting an eland in a game reserve.

It is considered unusual for convictions on these charges not to lead to a jail term or fine, the group said.

The San bushmen, southern Africa's first inhabitants, have faced an uphill battle in Botswana where government has forced them off their ancestral land.

"The Bushmen are not allowed access to their own water, they’re refused hunting permits, and they’re arrested when they do hunt, which is the only way they can feed their families," said Survival's director Stephen Corry.

The Central Kalahari Game Reserve was set up to protect their way of life, but after diamonds were discovered there, the bushmen were resettled outside the reserve.

As the traditional way of life is lost they are unable to hunt, dependent on government aid and have fallen prey to alcoholism and HIV.

Despite a 2006 ruling in the Botswana High Court that their eviction was unlawful, Survival International says some 50 bushmen have since been arrested for hunting.

Only some 100,000 bushmen remain in Southern Africa, spread across Botswana, Namibia and South Africa.

It's my first night at Xaranna, a safari lodge on an island in the Okavango delta. We eat outdoors at a long table, as the shape of a hippo ploughs the moonlit water and tiny reed frogs make their xylophone music. I find myself watching the face of the guide sitting opposite me. Tight black curls, high smooth cheeks, laughing and avid as he relates how two hyenas mugged an impala off a cheetah. As the story unfolds, his excitement builds, and he morphs into each of the animals in turn. I can smell the ant hill where the cheetah hid her cubs; I can see the plain where the impala cried out. It's as though the storyteller shape-shifts as he sniffs the air. When he becomes the victorious hyenas — each tearing one side of the impala — it seems his face is covered with blood.

I have come to Botswana to search for the San Bushmen, with Laurens van der Post's unsettling book The Lost World of the Kalahari under my arm. Writing in 1956, Van der Post says most of the Bushmen have been wiped out. I recall his lyrical description of how the Bushman "seemed to know what it felt like to be an elephant, a lion, an antelope, a steenbok, a lizard, a striped mouse, mantis, baobab tree, yellow-coated cobra or starry-eyed amaryllis... his world was one without secrets between one form and another". Van der Post describes the San people as "gallant, mischievous, unpredictable and defiant", and laments their passing as he journeys through the swamps of the Okavango and into the Kalahari desert. Huh.

The storyteller across the table from me is a Bushman, and anything but wiped out. He introduces himself: Ketshabile "TJ" Thamago.

"You know," teases one of the other guides, "when TJ first came to work here, he thought you had to hit the canoes like donkeys to get them going."

"Yes," retorts TJ, "but when you need some difficult tracking done, who do you ask? Remember how I tracked that python in the sand...?" The story starts up once more.

THE DELTA is all about light — light flashing off butterfly wings, pied kingfishers and shiny frogs; the hammocks of spiders' webs trailing from reeds; pink lilies opening out to the sun. It's a gorgeous place, and water camps such as Xaranna and Xudum make the most of it, with their terraces, outdoor showers and plunge pools overlooking the emerald swamps.

After four days in these watery paradises, I moved down to the Kalahari. It was here that Van der Post found Bushmen living in loincloths, but you don't see that now. Many have become guides and trackers, like TJ, dressed in smart safari outfits, maintaining their traditions as hunters while working in conservation. Others live in their own villages. About 100,000 Bushmen remain, and those I met were clever, dignified people, who took pride in their culture.

After the opulence, colour and noise of the Okavango, the Kalahari is all browns, blacks and silence: brown hyenas, black vultures, immense stretches of emptiness. The austere landscape refreshes the overloaded western soul as much as the waters of the delta soothe it.

At Camp Kalahari I meet Cobra, one of the "salt Bushmen", and a group of his friends. My time with them is a revelation. They take me out into the scrub, and within seconds their knowledge has transformed this vacant area into a teeming Wind in the Willows of secret moles and scorpions and porcupines, as they interpret the animals' stories from their tracks or droppings.

The creatures have no secrets. This porcupine had eaten brandy berries; this jackal had eaten grass to make itself sick because it wasn't feeling well. An indentation means a scorpion lives below, and within seconds the boys are calling the scorpion by name — "Corcan, Corcan" — and digging her out. And there she is, yellow, pregnant and angry.

The Bushmen teach me how to set traps for guinea fowl; how to sit when shooting a poisoned arrow; and how to catch a spring hare with a hook on a spear, which you slide into its burrow — the latter was recorded by Van der Post, too. All useful skills if climate change and the end of oil mean we ever return to being Bushmen. After all, experts tell us all mankind is descended from a group of about 150 African Bushmen who travelled out to populate the world some 50,000 years ago. Thank goodness for their nomadic lifestyle.

I learn which leaves to eat if you want to cure gonorrhoea; which ones to go for if you have malaria; and all about the hoodia plant, which looks like a cactus and suppresses hunger and thirst — in the developed world it is used in a slimming pill. The Bushmen eat the hoodia on hunting trips, and I watch Cobra and his friends dig for its roots, squeezing the bitter liquid into their mouths.

THERE IS a loneliness about the desert, with its outcast male wildebeests etched black on the horizon. The wet season runs roughly from November to April, when there is plenty of game, while the dry season fills the rest of the year, when you can sleep out on the saltpans under the bright stars.

Locals fear going into the pans, for they believe it is a place where people disappear. Indeed, the sparse trees are heavy with black vultures, and the insolent eyes of jackals turn to stare, as if wondering why you're not dead yet.

The animals that survive here are the desert oryx, with its elegant horns; the beguiling, shuffling aardwolf, looking for termites; the eagle; the ostrich, the kori bustard, and the diminutive meerkat — only about a foot high, like so many film stars they're surprisingly small in the flesh. A man from the camp stayed with them during the day so they were accustomed to humans and happy to use me as an anthill, climbing over my knee. We also find the tracks of Kalahari lions in the sand, beautiful and soft, curiously without menace.

"Our senses were totally immersed in sounds and colours... it was as if a great physical burden had been lifted from us," wrote Van der Post. I feel this way, too. And while it has been exhilarating to see lions, elephants and cheetahs, it is also exciting to spend time with our ancestors. I liked our species rather more after getting to know the Bushmen, and finding them, just as Van der Post promised, gallant, mischievous and defiantly clinging to their old ways.

Sally Emerson was a guest of Audley Travel and British Airways. Her latest book, New Life, An Anthology for Parenthood (Little, Brown €12.50), is published on Thursday

Travel details: Audley (00 44 1993 838000, audleytravel.com) has a 10night trip from €5,424pp, staying at the Xudum or Xaranna safari camps (andbeyond.com), and Camp Kalahari (unchartedafrica.co.za), with BA flights from Heathrow to Maun (via Johannesburg), meals, drinks and guided activities. Or try Expert Africa (00 44 20 8232 9777, expertafrica.com) or Scott Dunn (00 44 20 8682 5000, scottdunn.com).

Under clear, starlit skies in a remote corner of Botswana's Kalahari Desert, the orange reflection of the fire illuminated the medicine man as he danced. Bare to the waist and moving in short, measured steps, he was nearing a state of altered consciousness.

With every move, the sound of the rattles attached to his ankles echoed through the night. Suddenly, his footing became less sure; his breathing more erratic. He appeared in pain, perhaps in response to the spirits that had entered his body. The healer had slipped into a trance.

Slowly circling the flames, he methodically placed his hands on those seated around the fire. With a sudden shriek, he expelled sickness from some while protecting others from evil spirits. His face, beaded with perspiration, glared in the firelight.

When his rounds were finished, he slowly approached the fire's edge. Falling to his knees, he leaned over the flames, almost touching them. Finally, utterly exhausted, he stumbled backwards, collapsing into the sand.

Just a few days earlier, I had travelled by bush plane to the far western edge of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. I had come to visit the Grassland Safari Lodge, an attractive remote outpost that would be our base for the first several days of our adventure.

This same area was also home to some of the few remaining Bushmen clans that continue to pursue a traditional hunter-gatherer lifestyle. The way of life for these incredibly resilient people is made possible, in large part, by the wild and undeveloped state of this part of western Botswana.

But it's also increasingly aided by the fact that, each year, a small but growing number of tourists, like myself, pay to observe and partake in a once-in-a-lifetime cultural experience.

Formally recognized by the United Nations as the "First Peoples of the Kalahari," the Bushmen have successfully inhabited one of Africa's most unforgiving and arid regions and, as the world's oldest culture, they have a history that dates back almost 30,000 years. They are the ultimate survivors.

Yet, of the 90,000 Bushmen that remain in all of southern Africa, only 1,500 or so continue to follow the old ways. A growing interest in cultural tourism is providing some hope that their traditions and customs will survive to be passed down to future generations.

Shortly after arriving, I met the owner of the lodge, Neeltjie Bower, who has developed a very special relationship with the nearby San. She is renowned for dealing with locals in a sensitive and respectful manner. As a result, they are all too willing to give visitors like me a special insight into their world.

During my time there, local villagers taught me much about their daily life. I learned about dozens of plants used for various culinary or medicinal purposes. I was shown how bush foods are prepared using the most basic of tools and how to make a fire by rubbing sticks together in a bed of dry grass.

Before I knew it, it was time to head to my second destination so I bid a sad farewell to both my San hosts and the owners of Grassland Lodge. I then hopped on a bush plane bound for the legendary Jack's Camp.

Located on the edge of the Makgadikgadi Pans (the largest salt pan in the world), Jack's is renowned as a classic desert safari camp combining a bit of 1920s west African panache along with a host of activities focusing on desert-adapted wildlife, stone-age archeology, scientific exploration and Bushmen anthropology.

Comprising several lavishly appointed walk-in tents in a stunning palm grove surrounded by more than 60,000 square miles of sand and grass, the camp is run by Ralph Bousfield, whose father, Jack, lived among the San people for many years. Several Bushmen continue to live and work at the camp, playing a key role in various cultural activities centering on the San's traditional ways.

I had come here in the hope of learning from them. After getting settled in my tent, I met Xuma, Xixae, Nxexao and Xaashe, all related Bushmen who would act as my guides. Just as I hoped, my time with them turned out to be a great journey of discovery.

As I walked with Xuma and the others, I learned much about their ancient traditions and ways. During our rest stops, I even learned some Bushmen games, including one that reminded me of our own rock-paper-scissors.

I was also fascinated to learn that the eland, the largest of all African antelopes, is considered the most important animal to the Bushmen, not only for its meat and skin, but also as a spiritual symbol.

To the Bushmen, the eland has attained a deity-like status; so much so that the rite of passage from boyhood to manhood was once sanctified by a successful hunt of this beautiful antelope. When a kill was made, the hair from between the eyes of the animal was removed and inserted into incisions cut between the hunter's eyes, instilling within him the power of the eland.

For those remaining Bushmen that choose to pursue the old ways, my hope is they will be given the space and freedom to do so. And I took some comfort knowing that cultural tourism, if done in a dignified and sensitive way, could provide an additional means and incentive by which the incredible culture of San might be preserved and passed on to future generations.

IF YOU GO

Most visitors travel to the Kalahari in the peak months of June through August. But the best time to visit may be the months of April and May, when temperatures are not as hot and the desert retains a glint of green from the earlier rains. Details on the lodges mentioned in this article can be found at www.grasslandlodge.comandwww.unchartedafrica.com.

Photo: Mark Angelo, Special To The Vancouver Sun, Canwest News Service / A village medicine man kneels over the fire during the end of the healing trance dance in Botswana's Kalahari Desert. ;

Locations for the Garden of Eden have been offered many times before, but seldom in the somewhat inhospitable borderland where Angola and Namibia meet. A new genetic survey of people in Africa, the largest of its kind, suggests, however, that the region in southwest Africa seems, on the present evidence, to be the origin of modern humans. The authors have also identified some 14 ancestral populations.

The new data goes far toward equalizing the genetic picture of the world, given that most genetic information has come from European and Asian populations. But because it comes from Africa, the continent on which the human lineage evolved, it also sheds light on the origins of human life.

"I think this is an enormously impressive piece of work," said Alison Brooks, a specialist on African anthropology at George Washington University.

The origin of a species is generally taken to be the place where its individuals show the greatest genetic diversity. For humans, when the new African data is combined with DNA information from the rest of the world, this spot lies on the coast of southwest Africa near the Kalahari Desert, the research team, led by Sarah Tishkoff of the University of Pennsylvania, said in last week's issue of Science.

Brooks said that it had some trees but that it also had deep sand and was not garden-like. The area is a homeland of the Bushmen or San people, whose language is distinguished by its many click sounds.

Language clues

But the San in the past might not have been restricted to where they are now, she said. The San are thought to have once occupied a much larger area, one that probably stretched from southern Africa up the east coast to as far as present-day Ethiopia.

Because the geneticists' calculations refer to people, not geography, the San - and therefore the site of greatest human diversity - might have been located elsewhere in the past.

Christopher Ehret, an expert on African languages at the University of California, Los Angeles, and a member of Tishkoff's team, has detected traces of words borrowed from click languages in East African languages. This suggests that proto-Khoisan, the inferred ancestral language of all click-speakers, may have originated in East Africa, Brooks said.

The language of the first modern humans may have undergone a very early branching, Ehret said, with the Khoisan click languages on one branch and the other three language groups of Africa - Nilo- Saharan, Niger-Kordofanian and Afroasiatic - on the other branch. Another finding of the Tishkoff-Ehret team is that African languages tend to be correlated with the genetics of their speakers, a finding that helps indicate cases of language replacement. The various Pygmy groups in Africa, the team has found, show genetic relationships to the San and other click-speakers, suggesting the pygmies, too, once spoke Khoisan languages but have now adopted those of their neighbors.

The San people of southern Africa, who have lived as hunter-gatherers for thousands of years, are likely to be the oldest population of humans on Earth, the biggest and most detailed analysis of African DNA has found. The San, also known as bushmen, are directly descended from the original population of early human ancestors who gave rise to all other groups of Africans and, eventually, to the people who left the continent to populate the rest of the world. A study of 121 distinct populations of modern-day Africans has found they are all descended from 14 ancestral populations and the differences and similarities of their genes closely follows the differences and similarities of their spoken languages. The scientists analysed the genetic variation within the DNA of more than 3000 Africans and found the San were among the most genetically diverse group, indicating that they are probably the oldest continuous population of humans on the continent and on Earth.

The study, published in the journal Science, took 10 years of research involving trips to some of the most remote and dangerous parts of Africa to collect blood samples. Lead researcher Sarah Tishkoff said the project found modern Africans had the most diverse DNA of all racial groups in the world, confirming the idea that Africa is the birthplace of humanity.

The scientists also found genetic markers in the DNA of the present-day inhabitants of East Africa living near to the Red Sea, which indicated that they belonged to the same ancestral group who migrated out of Africa to populate Asia and the rest of the world. West Africans were found to share many genetic traits with African-Americans, indicating they were the ancestors of most of the slaves sent to the New World. One of the main findings was the genetic similarity between groups who shared similar languages despite living thousands of kilometres apart. The Sandawe and Hadza of Tanzania shared common ancestors with the Khoisan speakers of southern Africa: all three groups speak click languages.

The study helps narrow the location where humans first evolved, probably near the South Africa-Namibia border.

Vanderbilt University specialists in human population genetics Professor Scott M.Williams said constructing patterns of disease variations could help determine which genes predisposed a group to a particular illness.

This study ''provides a critical piece in the puzzle'', he said. A researcher in molecular biology at the University of Khartoum, Sudan, Muntaser Ibrahim said, ''Now we have spectacular insight into the history of the African population ... the oldest history of mankind.

Botswana: Diamond Mine On Bushman Land Gets Government Approval – On Condition Bushmen Receive No Water

The Botswana government has given its approval to a controversial diamond mine on the land of the Kalahari Bushmen – on the condition that the mining company Gem Diamonds does not provide the Bushmen with water. The government has, however, reserved the right to use water boreholes drilled by Gem for wildlife.

The government has approved the Environmental Impact Assessment presented by Gem Diamonds for its proposed mine.

The Bushmen living in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve face severe water shortages. The government has banned them from operating a disused borehole which was their main source of water before the government unlawfully evicted them from their land.

Gem Diamonds claims that the Bushmen are in favour of the mine, but the Bushmen have had no independent advice on its probable impact.

A consulting firm visited the Bushmen earlier this year, supposedly to obtain their views on diamond mining on their land. The company’s project manager joined the board of Gem Diamonds soon after the project ended, calling the impartiality of the consultation process into serious question.

Survival’s director Stephen Corry said today, ‘It’s absolutely scandalous that the Botswana government is insisting that Gem Diamonds does not provide the Bushmen with water. The government is clearly determined to go to any lengths to keep the Bushmen off their land. As to whether the Bushmen are in favour of the mine – the lack of information provided to them means they are in no position to be able to say. It is likely that they don’t even know they will not be able to access water from the mine site.”

Rights champions and diplomats gathered in Paris Wednesday to mark the 60th anniversary of the UN human rights declaration, arguing its ideals remain as relevant as ever six decades on from its adoption.

Born out of the trauma of World War II, the principles enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights shaped modern concepts of human dignity and served as a template for international rights conventions that followed.

Ninety-year-old Holocaust survivor Stephane Hessel was to read out its preamble before a gathering of European and United Nations officials, artists and rights groups at 8:00 pm (1900 GMT), in a solemn ceremony at the Palais de Chaillot near the Eiffel Towel, where it was adopted on December 10, 1948.

"Still today, it is a text worth reading. It is perfectly relevant. All the more so because it has not been upheld -- and it is asking us to fight for it," Hessel, who helped draft the declaration, told AFP.

"We live in a world that tramples on human rights all the time."

Based on France's 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and the 1776 US Declaration of Independence, the 30-point non-binding text was adopted by 58 UN states, with the atrocities of World War II fresh in their minds.

Article 1 of the text proclaims: "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights."

Hessel said that the election of Barack Obama as US president was an indicator of the progress on the equality front.

"Pessimists say things are getting worse and worse, that the world is a terrible place but there has never been so much progress in 60 years," he said.

"We created a united Europe, we got rid of apartheid, we ended the Soviet Union and its gulags, we set up the International Criminal Tribunal to try rogue heads of state.

"Just look at Obama, a black man at the head of the United States."

Amnesty International, which was marking the anniversary with a rally in Paris, is looking to Obama to put human rights back at the top of Washington's agenda, urging him to close the Guantanamo Bay military prison in his first 100 days in power.

"I hope very much that the US really take a strong stand on human rights in the future," Amnesty's head Irene Khan said in a recent interview with AFP to mark the 60th anniversary.

"And there is every reason for the US to do so. As the world's largest power, everyone looks at the US as a role model."

Rights advocates list the sufferings of Palestinians, the atrocities in Sudan's Darfur, humanitarian disaster in Democratic Republic of Congo or the US rights record in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks, as continuing affronts to human rights.

"What the 9/11 attacks did was expose the hypocrisy of Western democracies that until then had been champions of human rights abroad," Khan said.

The UN declaration did not prevent a new genocide from occurring, in Rwanda in 1994, and basic rights continue to be violated on a daily basis around the globe.

To coincide with the anniversary, the campaign group Survival International issued a plea for the rights of indigenous peoples around the world, from the Ayoreo-Totobiegosode indians of Paraguay to the Kalahari Bushmen in Botswana.

And the ACAT anti-torture group called for a stepped-up efforts to eradicate torture, still thought to be used in half of all countries around the world, as well as outlaw the death penalty.

The address by Hessel, who helped draft the declaration, kicks off an evening of music, speeches and film projections chaired by French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner.

As part of the celebrations, five foreign NGOs working to uphold the rights of women and children in Uzbekistan, Tunisia, Lebanon, Morocco and Somalia were to receive a special human rights prize.

Human Rights Declaration Reaches 60 – But Only 20 Countries Have Signed Tribal Peoples’ Law

The 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights will be celebrated tomorrow, 10 December – but only 20 countries have signed up to the international law on tribal peoples, whose rights are routinely violated.

The very existence of many tribal peoples is under increasing threat. In Paraguay, the last uncontacted Ayoreo-Totobiegosode are running for their lives as bulldozers rapidly raze their forest.

In India, the Jarawa tribe came into fatal conflict last month with poachers invading their land, leaving one Jarawa and one poacher dead.

In Botswana, the Kalahari Bushmen are being destroyed by a government which denies them access to water but is forging ahead with plans to mine diamonds on their land.

International Labour Organisation Convention 169 (ILO 169) is the strongest international legal instrument safeguarding tribal peoples’ rights. It recognises their rights to own their land and to make decisions about projects that affect them, and it is legally binding on governments that sign it.

Survival is campaigning for all governments to ratify ILO 169, strengthening it and giving tribal peoples the best chance of a future.

Survival’s director Stephen Corry said today, ‘Sixty years after the world acknowledged the sanctity of human rights, entire tribes are facing extinction. There is no excuse for this. Every government must take responsibility and ratify the law to help ensure their survival.’

A Bushman spokesman said today, 'We beg the Pope to help, to pray for us so that government changes its attitude towards us and respects our rights as indigenous peoples of this land.'

The establishment of diplomatic relations was initiated by Botswana's former president Festus Mogae. He was the architect of the government's controversial policy to forcibly evict the Bushmen from their ancestral land in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve.

Despite Botswana's High Court having affirmed the Bushmen's rights to live in the reserve in 2006, the government of the new president Ian Khama continues to violate their rights. It has also given the company Gem Diamonds permission to mine diamonds on their land.

Not one Bushman has received a hunting permit, despite the High Court ruling that it was unlawful for the government to withhold permits. Nor are the Bushmen allowed to access the water borehole on their land. The lack of hunting and water has made life extremely difficult for the Bushmen.

Dom Erwin KrSutler, Bishop of Xingu, Brazil, said today, 'In the 21st century it is more vital than ever that the Catholic Church support indigenous peoples throughout the world in the struggle for their rights.'

On 1 July, the Pope Benedict XVI expressed his solidarity and support for the indigenous peoples of Raposa-Serra do Sol in Brazil when he met them in the Vatican and declared 'We will do everything possible to help protect your land.'

Botswana: Bushmen Appeal To Pope As Vatican Establishes Relations With Botswana

The Kalahari Bushmen have appealed to the Pope to support them in their struggle to return to their land, as the Vatican established diplomatic relations with Botswana earlier this month.

A Bushman spokesman said today, ‘We beg the Pope to help, to pray for us so that government changes its attitude towards us and respects our rights as indigenous peoples of this land.’

The establishment of diplomatic relations was initiated by Botswana’s former president Festus Mogae. He was the architect of the government’s controversial policy to forcibly evict the Bushmen from their ancestral lands in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve.

Despite Botswana’s High Court having affirmed the Bushmen’s rights to live in the reserve in 2006, the government of the new president General Ian Khama continues to violate their rights. It has also given the company Gem Diamonds permission to mine diamonds on their land.

Not one Bushman has received a hunting permit, despite the High Court ruling that it was unlawful for the government to withhold permits. Nor are the Bushmen allowed to access the water borehole on their land. The lack of hunting and water has made life extremely difficult for the Bushmen.

Dom Erwin Kräutler, Bishop of Xingu, Brazil, said today, ‘In the 21st century it is more vital than ever that the Catholic Church support indigenous peoples throughout the world in the struggle for their rights.’

On 1 July, the Pope Benedict XVI expressed his solidarity and support for the indigenous peoples of Raposa-Serra do Sol in Brazil when he met them in the Vatican and declared ‘We will do everything possible to help protect your land.’

Kalahari Bushmen who were evicted from their land by the government of Botswana’s former President Festus Mogae today condemned African billionaire Mo Ibrahim and his Foundation for giving Mogae their ‘Achievement In Africa Leadership Award’. The Award will be given to Mogae at a ceremony in Alexandria, Egypt, on Saturday 15 November.

A Bushman spokesman said today, ‘We don’t think he should receive this award because of how he treated us when he was President of Botswana. He evicted us from our ancestral land and that has really affected our lives. He put us into poverty, HIV-AIDS and alcoholism.’

Festus Mogae's government evicted the Bushmen from their ancestral land in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve in 2002, and banned them from hunting and gathering.

Bushman hunters were arrested and tortured; those protesting peacefully against the evictions were arrested and shot at; and at least one woman died of starvation and thirst when Mogae's government shut down the borders of the reserve.

The global credit crunch has had little impact on Botswana's financial system, which has been cushioned by the diamond-rich African nation's foreign reserves, President Ian Khama said on Monday. In his first state of the nation address since taking over from former President Festus Mogae earlier this year, Khama told parliament he was confident international financial volatility would not lead to major changes in the government's budget. "Our own financial sector remains strong and has not yet been much affected by the credit crunch. Our foreign exchange reserves have also not been compromised and can cushion any immediate impact on our balance of payments," Khama said.

"Due to past savings government spending can be sustained in the face of any short-term revenue downturn." With growth rates averaging at least 8 percent over the last two decades, Botswana has been Africa's best performing economy and a model of political stability on the continent. Diamond production -- the southern African nation is the world's biggest producer -- has sustained growth, providing jobs and a crucial source of foreign earnings for the government. Khama, however, warned that the country must diversify its economy because of an expected drastic decline in the diamond sector in the next decade. He listed tourism and agriculture as two of the most attractive areas for investment. The new Botswanan leader faces a challenge following Mogae, who was praised by Western governments for making the country one of the most attractive investment destinations in Africa and for tackling the nation's AIDS epidemic. Critics, however, said Mogae curtailed freedom of speech and violated the rights of San Bushmen when his government forced them off ancestral lands. Analysts expect Khama, a former military man, to continue Mogae's policies. Khama's Botswana Democratic Party (BDP), which has won every election since independence from Britain in 1966, is widely expected to retain power after the next general election, expected in late 2009.

Botswana: Bushmen And Survival Force De Beers Withdrawal From Kalahari Reserve

Following pressure from Survival International, De Beers says it has stopped operations on the land of the Kalahari Bushmen in Botswana because those it consulted, including Bushmen living inside the reserve, did not agree with its plan to explore for diamonds near a Bushman community.

De Beers began its latest operations in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve only last month. The company says it has no intention of carrying out any further activity there, and will not do so unless and until a sustainable, long-term management plan is agreed.

This is a huge victory for the Bushmen – but diamond mining still threatens their survival. De Beers retains a number of prospecting licences in the reserve.

Another diamond company, Gem Diamonds, is also prospecting inside the reserve. Although it claims to have some local support, it is operating while Bushmen are still being bullied and harassed and are unable to get any proper legal advice. This puts the Bushmen in no position to agree fairly to anything. Despite the Botswana High Court's 2006 ruling affirming the Bushmen's rights, the government is still preventing them from accessing their water borehole and forbids hunting.

Bushmen have told Survival that until all those unlawfully evicted are allowed back on their land with access to water and hunting permits, they consider diamonds mined by Gem to be tainted. One said, ‘It is a lie that Gem is doing anything for the Bushmen. They do not care about us – they only work with the government.’

Survival’s director Stephen Corry said today, ‘Any talks between diamond companies and the Bushmen under current conditions make a mockery of the concept of free, prior and informed consent, which is the cornerstone of both the UN declaration on indigenous peoples and the international law.’

The president of Botswana, General Ian Khama, whose government continues to oppress the Bushmen and allow mineral prospecting on their land, is a board member of the environmental NGO, Conservation International – adding further insult to the Bushmen’s predicament.

Botswana's former president Festus Mogae was yesterday named the winner of a US$5-million prize for good governance in Africa, winning praise for putting his country's mineral wealth to good use.

Announcing the Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership in London's City Hall, former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan also praised Mr. Mogae's efforts in fighting AIDS in the southern African nation.

"President Mogae's outstanding leadership has ensured Botswana's continued stability and prosperity in the face of an HIV/AIDS pandemic which threatened the future of his country and people," Mr. Annan said.

"Botswana demonstrates how a country with natural resources can promote sustainable development with good governance, in a continent where too often mineral wealth has become a curse."

Botswana is one of Africa's most stable countries, with a high credit rating and one of the best standards of living on the continent.

Festus Mogae, who was named Monday the recipient of the 2008 Mo Ibrahim prize for good governance in Africa, stood down as Botswana's president in March after a decade in which his country cemented its status as one of Africa's success stories.

Mogae, 69, who handed over the reins of power to his long-time heir apparent Ian Khama, styled himself as the "chief executive" of a nation of around two million which enjoys one of the highest standards of living in Africa, despite fears over the spread of AIDS in the country.

The southern African nation's wealth is due in large part to it being the world's largest producer of diamonds by value and by volume, yielding 34.3 million carats of the gemstones from its four open-cast mines in 2006.

Former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, who chairs the prize committee, said Mogae had used the mineral wealth to develop Botswana in the face of an AIDS pandemic.

De Beers Returns To Central Kalahari Game Reserve: Survival International Relaunches Campaign

Revealed: De Beers diamond prospectors at work in Bushman reserve in Botswana

Survival International is relaunching its campaign against De Beers after the discovery that the company has returned to the Central Kalahari Game Reserve in Botswana. Its new diamond exploration programme will be devastating for the Bushmen, and the reserve’s ecology. The area it is investigating is around the Bushman community of Metsiamenong.

De Beers’s previous attempts to mine for diamonds in the reserve led to a massive international campaign. Survival called for a boycott of De Beers, successfully persuaded supermodels Iman and Lily Cole to stop working with the company, and protested outside the openings of its stores in London and New York.

The campaign ended when the company sold its $2.2 billion deposit to Gem Diamonds for $34 million.

Survival’s Director Stephen Corry said today, ‘We are dismayed that De Beers feels that it can now return to the reserve whilst the situation with the Bushmen is still unresolved. Presumably it hoped no-one would notice. Hundreds of Bushmen still languish in relocation camps, unable to return home because the government won’t let them hunt or use their water borehole.

‘We intend to do everything in our power to help them, which will include targeting De Beers and trying to persuade people to boycott De Beers until the Bushmen have access to their lands and water. The Bushmen cannot conceivably give their free and informed consent to mining whilst most of them cannot even go home.’

Two years ago the Bushmen won a landmark court case over their right to live in the reserve, which is their ancestral land. They had been evicted by the government. The court recognized they have the right to live there, and to hunt and gather.

The rich diamond deposits in the reserve were widely thought to be behind the government’s determination to evict the Bushmen. The boom in diamond mining and exploration in the reserve threatens one of the largest game reserves in Africa, despite the fact that Botswana’s President, Ian Khama, is on the board of US-based Conservation International.

A FAMILY of Kalahari Bushmen are to give a special performance of traditional trance music and dance in a bid to raise awareness of threats to their culture.

The !Gubi family from Namibia will perform alongside Ocean Terminal on Tuesday as part of the Mela festival.

Their music is usually played through the night to bring players into an altered state of consciousness, when they perform healing rituals on other members of their tribe.

The family of six, from Namibia, are touring the UK to bring attention to the plight of their people. Originally nomadic hunter-gatherers, they have now been officially assigned land in the Kalahari Desert, which is poor in natural resources, and are no longer allowed to roam the land. They must also share it with other tribes, which has resulted in conflict and competition for resources. The family, who range in age from 18 to 80, hope the tour will help them raise money to set up a community development project for their tribe.

Using traditional instruments such as the mouth bow and the mbira - also known as a thumb piano - they will entertain audiences at the Mela in a performance which will also include a film.

In a letter to Sen. John W. Warner, R-Va., Debra Heien, chief of the consular section for the U.S. in Nigeria, said one applicant "could not articulate anything about the project. . . . The only thing he said was that he built his own house."

A second applicant, she said, "had not filled out his form properly. He was told to correct the errors and return before the morning intake was completed at 10:30 a.m. He did not come back."

She advised: "Should the applicants decide to apply again, they must make appointments using our on-line appointment system."

John Avoli, director of the museum in Staunton, said yesterday, "After a monumental effort, we identified three bush people who actually lived in mud huts. You can't imagine how difficult it was to get them out of the bush and bring them to Lagos. We were heartbroken."

The museum has been planning to build a mid-1700s West African Igbo compound to illustrate the history of the slave trade as well as the early American frontier. Many slaves brought to America and to Virginia came from Nigeria in West Africa.

"They were denied because they were considered poor dirt farmers who lived in mud huts and can't speak English and supposedly have no business in America," Avoli said. "They couldn't articulate fully why they were coming here."

But Avoli said the whole point of recruiting the bushmen -- who would of course be poor farmers with no English skills -- was that they built and lived in mud huts and so possessed the skills to construct a real Igbo compound.

At the American consulate in Lagos on June 17, the three bushmen -- Thomas Chukwujekwu Ikegbunam, Pius Chukwunwike Anigbogu and Ambrose Nwancho Nkwuda -- failed to convince an examiner that they only wanted to stay temporarily in the U.S.

Despite efforts by the Warner's staff, the decision was not reversed. In her letter last week to Warner, Heien, wrote that Ikegbunam "has no regular income" and that Nkwuda "is a farmer who ekes out a marginal living" while Anigbogu didn't fill out the application forms properly.

Material to construct the Igbo village is currently on its way to Virginia via ship, Avoli said. The material includes raffia palms for roofing and landscaping as well as pottery, tools and wood carvings that will decorate the mud huts.

An Igbo compound of the mid-1700s usually contained several houses enclosed by a fence of closely planted trees or a wall of compacted earth. Igbo houses were generally rectangular to square in shape, with walls of either solid earth or wattle and daub, and with roofs of palm or grass thatch, according to the museum.

Historically, the Igbo were yam farmers, and the compound of every successful Igbo included a yam barn where the harvested root crop was stored.

Avoli said that despite the setback, the West African village will be built. Umembe Onyejekwe, a former Nigerian government museum curator, will spend four months helping to build the village. She helped recruit the three bushmen.

Two other Nigerians, including an architecture professor from the university in Lagos, will also come to Staunton to help.

SPECIMENS OF BUSHMAN FOLKLORE

BY

W. H. I. BLEEK AND L. C. LLOYD

[1911]

The Botswana government has banned Central Kalahari Game Reserve bushmen from accessing their own water but has given permission for a tourist lodge to do so, Survival International said on Monday.

"Who does the government think will want to sip their drinks and gaze at the Kalahari sunset while desperately thirsty Bushmen look on?" the worldwide organization's director Stephen Corry said.

"As long as the Bushmen are kept off their land, refused the right to hunt for food, and even refused water, the government's efforts to promote tourism will be tainted with injustice," he said.

The organization said South African company - The Safari & Adventure Company - had been awarded a concession in the reserve which was close to the bushman community of Molapo.

The concession had been promoted at the Indaba tourism fair in Durban last week.

"But despite the Botswana High Court ruling that the Bushmen have the constitutional right to live in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, the Botswana government is doing everything it can to keep them out, denying them access to water and the right to hunt for food," the organization said.

It said the company had been granted permission to sink boreholes to obtain water for its staff to drink, shower, and cook with - but the Botswana government had refused to allow the Bushmen to use even a single borehole inside the reserve.

"It has instead told them to make a 400km round trip to fetch water."

According to Survival International, the bushmen had not been consulted about the tourist lodge that would be built on their land.

The Botswana embassy in Pretoria could not immediately comment.

BOTSWANA Changing of the guard With little fanfare, Botswana's President Festus Mogae last week handed over the reins of government to his vice-president, Seretse Ian Khama, almost a year and a half before the next elections.

Despite claims by some opponents that the change of leadership is constitutionally illegal a view dismissed by analysts and some calls for direct presidential elections, there seems no reason Khama will not govern as intended. Botswana has a history of smooth leadership succession since the country's first president, Sir Seretse Khama, who ruled the country from independence in 1966 until 1980, groomed his successor, Quett Ketumile Masire.

Under Masire and Mogae, Botswana has grown from one of the poorest African countries to one of its wealthiest.

British-based charity Survival reported that transnational corporation Gem Diamonds had created the exploratory boreholes as part of an environmental assessment before constructing a £1.1 billion diamond mine at Gope, a traditional Bushman community within the reserve.

Bushmen have been petitioning the government to allow them to reopen a single borehole within the reserve ever since the government dismantled it to put pressure on people to relocate in 2002.

Survival director Stephen Corry said that the decision highlighted "the cruel vindictiveness of a government determined to keep the bushmen out of their ancestral lands and intent on making them pay for their victory in the High Court."

Representatives from the consultancy firm Marsh Environmental Services today begin a whirlwind twelve-day consultation programme in and around the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR), in Botswana. The move is part of plans to develop a $2.2 billion diamond mine within the reserve.

In what has since been ruled an unlawful and unconstitutional act, in 2002 the Botswana government removed more than 600 Bushmen from the CKGR without their consent. These evictions followed the previous removal of hundreds of Bushmen from the reserve in 1997. Although a small number have been able to return, the majority languish in resettlement camps outside the reserve. It is in these camps that most of the Bushmen will be 'consulted' about the mine.

The proposed mine would be built near Gope, a Bushman settlement in the reserve. If it goes ahead, it will irrevocably alter both the land and the lives of the Bushmen. Survival International does not believe that the Bushmen are in a position to give their free, prior, and informed consent to the construction of a mine in their homeland whilst they continue to be unable to access it.

The Bushmen won the right to return to their homes in the reserve in 2006, but the Botswana government has effectively prevented them from doing so by refusing to allow them to hunt in the reserve, or to reopen their old water borehole. The majority cannot even enter the reserve without first applying for a permit.

Survival's director Stephen Corry said today, 'It is a well recognised principle of international law that development on indigenous peoples' land should not proceed without the free and informed consent of the indigenous communities living there. But how can the Bushmen give their consent freely when most of them cannot even live there, and those who have managed to return cannot get food or water?'

These sentiments are echoed by First People of the Kalahari (FPK), the grassroots Bushman organisation. In addition to demanding that consultations occur only after the Bushmen have been able to return to their homes in the reserve, FPK are pushing for an independent mining expert to be made available to the Bushmen, to give them impartial advice on the impact the mine would have.

SINCE 1996 we have regularly charted the tragic and shocking saga of the Botswanan government's forcible eviction of the last Bushmen from their ancestral homeland in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, fully supported by British ministers and the EU.

Initially the EU threatened to withdraw aid from Botswana unless persecution of the Bushmen was halted, but it was persuaded by our Foreign Office to back an eviction policy enforced by torture and shootings.

Last December, the Bushmen won a historic legal victory, thanks in part to the London-based campaigning body Survival International. Botswana's high court ruled that the evictions were illegal and in breach of a constitutional guarantee given them (at British insistence) when the country became independent in 1966. The court further ruled that the Bushmen must be allowed access to water and to continue their traditional hunter-gathering.

Since then the Botswanan government has consistently flouted the court's judgment, denying the Bushmen water and the right to hunt, and forcibly preventing most of them from returning home. Not a peep of protest from the Foreign Office, which has also over the years echoed Botswana's denials that part of its motive for forcing out the Bushmen was to permit diamond mining in the reserve.

It has just been announced that a pounds 2 million diamond mine is planned for the reserve, backed by the Botswanan government - and presumably our Foreign Office.

To mark UN Human Rights Day (10 December) Survival has named the 'terrible ten': the key abusers of tribal peoples' rights in 2007. Indonesia, Australia, Canada, the USA, New Zealand, Botswana, Brazil, Peru, Paraguay and Malaysia are all highlighted.

Tribal peoples in West Papua face appalling violence at the hands of the Indonesian military, experiencing killings, arbitrary arrests, rape and torture while their lands are exploited by the Indonesian government and foreign companies.

In Botswana, the government evicted the Bushmen from their land in the Central Kalahari in 2002, and continues to prevent them from returning home, despite a landmark court ruling in 2006 that declared the evictions 'unlawful and unconstitutional'.

Cattle ranchers occupying Guarani Indian land in Brazil are hiring gunmen to target the Indians. This year two Guarani leaders have been murdered and two Guarani women raped in land conflicts, while at least 26 Guarani have committed suicide.

Peru is home to an estimated 15 of the world's last uncontacted tribes and all of them are facing extinction as the government opens up their territories to oil companies and illegal loggers flood in. The Peruvian president recently suggested the tribes didn't exist.

The Ayoreo-Totobiegosode in Paraguay are the last uncontacted Indians south of the Amazon basin. But powerful logging companies are destroying their forest at breakneck speed, and the government is failing to protect them.

In Malaysia, the tribes of Sarawak have had their land taken to make way for logging, dam construction and oil palm plantations. The government has told the nomadic, hunter-gatherer Penan that they have no land rights until they 'settle down' and start farming.

Despite supposedly being liberal democracies, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the USA were the only countries to vote against the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which was approved by the General Assembly in September this year. 143 countries voted in favour.

The Kalahari Bushmen applied in Botswana's High Court on November 5th for leave to appeal for the Botswana government to pay their legal costs.

Last December, the Bushmen won their landmark case against the government. The court ruled that the government's eviction of the Bushmen was 'unlawful and unconstitutional'.

Two of the three judges presiding over the eviction case ruled that the Bushmen and the government must share the costs, despite the Bushmen's win. The judge in today's hearing has reserved his decision, but if he decides in their favour, the Bushmen will appeal for the government to pay all the costs.

The government has failed to uphold the 2006 ruling, and one year after the Bushmen's historic victory, most remain stranded in resettlement camps. The Bushmen have announced that they will launch a new case against the government if it continues to prevent them from returning home.

One year after court victory, Bushmen still far from home

13th December marks the first anniversary of the Kalahari Bushmen's landmark victory in Botswana's High Court. But the Botswana government has failed to uphold the court's ruling, and most of the Bushmen remain stranded in resettlement camps.

The court ruled that the Botswana government's eviction of the Bushmen was 'unlawful and unconstitutional', and that they have the right to live on their ancestral land in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve and hunt and gather there.

But the government refuses to let the Bushmen hunt, and has stepped up its persecution of those who do. At least 53 Bushmen have been arrested for hunting in 2007, and many have been tortured.

The government has also refused to let the Bushmen access their water borehole inside the reserve.

The Bushmen were trucked out of the reserve with their dismantled huts and all their possessions. But the government has offered them no assistance to make the long journey home through the Kalahari desert.

Since the court ruling, the government has backed plans for a massive diamond mine worth $2.2 billion on the Bushmen's ancestral land.

Survival's director Stephen Corry said today, 'The Botswana government is in effect saying the Bushmen have the right to eat and drink in the government camps but not on their ancestral lands. It is effectively condemning them to death.'

NEXT week marks the first anniversary of the Kalahari Bushmen's landmark victory in the Botswana High Court to be allowed to return to a game reserve that had been their home for centuries, but they still languish in resettlement camps outside the park.

The Botswana government did not uphold the court's judgement, which ruled that the eviction of the Bushmen or San was unlawful and unconstitutional, and that they have the right to live on their ancestral land in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, a rights organisation for indigenous people said yesterday.

"The court further ruled that the San may and hunt and gather in the Reserve," said the London-based group Survival International.

"The government refuses to let them hunt, and has stepped up its persecution of those who do.

At least 53 San have been arrested for hunting in 2007, and many have been tortured," said the group in a statement.

The Botswana government denied them access to a borehole inside the reserve after the court case.

Since the court ruling, the government has backed plans for a massive diamond mine worth US$2,2 billion on the Bushmen's ancestral land, Survival's director Stephen Corry said.

"The Botswana government is in effect saying the Bushmen have the right to eat and drink in the government camps but not on their ancestral lands.

It is effectively condemning them to death," Corry added.

Survival International ensured that the eviction of the Gana and Gwi Bushmen in Botswana received unprecedented publicity in the world's press.

It also supported the groundbreaking court case which resulted in the Bushmen's rights being upheld, and which saw the legal concept of 'native title' recognised for the first time by an African court.

Applauded by many, particularly by the Bushmen themselves and other tribal peoples, Survival has also been subject to fierce criticism: by the Botswana government and De Beers, which was inevitable, but also by some NGOs and their allies, anthropologists, and even UK parliamentarians.

Elizabeth Marshall Thomas was 19 years old when she moved to Africa with her parents, who went there to study the Bushmen of the Kalahari.

That was in 1950, and the Bushmen were considered one of the last hunter-gatherer societies in the world. The experience was to influence Thomas' entire life.

She became an anthropologist and author, and wrote about the Bushmen in her 1959 book "The Harmless People," which has never gone out of print. She's written other books on a wide range of topics as well, including "The Hidden Life of Dogs."

Thomas' latest book is another look, 50 years later, at the Bushmen. It's called "The Old Way: A Story of the First People" (Picador, $15).

Botswana's government denied Friday accusations it was preventing bushmen from returning to their ancestral lands despite a court ruling last year granting them that right.

The San bushmen, who were evicted from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR) in 2002, have accused the government of refusing to transport them back, let them hunt, or supply them with water.

"Every bushman is free to go home, we have always made our stance clear," said foreign ministry spokesman Clifford Mariba.

"Those who have opted to remain at their current settlements have remained behind to enjoy a wide range of social amenities offered by the government."

Maribe said bushmen living in the reserve were "at liberty to make their own arrangements to bring in unlimited amounts of water," as the court decision did not compel the government to provide it.

He also said special game licenses had been issued to the hunter-gatherers.

The San were evicted from the game reserve in 2002 and placed in six settlements just outside the CKGR, but some 210 bushmen then took the government to court with the assistance of British NGO Survival International.

The San's attempt to return to the reserve resulted in Botswana's longest ever court case, which ended last year when a judge ruled they were driven out of the Kalahari desert unlawfully.

The First People of the Kalahari (FPK), a non-governmental organisation campaigning for the rights of the bushmen, has previously threatened the government with a return to court if their latest demands are not met.

FPK spokesman Roy Sesana could not be reached for comment after Friday's government statement.

Once numbering millions, roughly 100,000 San are left in southern Africa, with almost half of them -- 48,000 -- in Botswana. Others are spread across Angola, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

On November 20th, 2007, Bushmen in Botswana announced they plan to return to court within a matter of weeks if the government continues to prevent them from returning home.

The Gana and Gwi Bushmen were evicted from their lands in the central Kalahari in 2002, but last year won a landmark court case affirming their right to go home.

Hundreds of letters signed by Bushmen were today handed to Botswana's department of wildlife, detailing their concerns. They say the government is refusing to let them hunt to feed their families. Fifty-three Bushmen have been arrested for hunting since the court victory in December.

The government is also preventing the Bushmen from using their water borehole, and is insisting that only a limited number of them can return to their land. It has refused to provide transport for the Bushmen to go home, despite the court's finding that they were evicted illegally and against their will.

A representative of the Bushman organisation, First People of the Kalahari, today stated, 'We do not want to keep fighting in the courts. That is not the way to resolve problems. But we feel we have no other option. We are desperate.'

Survival has placed a full-page advert in the UK's Independent newspaper today, condemning the torture of Bushmen evicted from their land in the Kalahari in Botswana and appealing to the British public to support them.

The ad shows pictures of ten of the men arrested and beaten, tortured or assaulted in Kaudwane resettlement camp in September, and asks, 'What does it take to let these people live in peace?'

The ad reads, 'Last year, the Bushmen of Botswana won an historic victory. Expelled from their ancient homeland, the Bushmen took the government to court - and won. Botswana's High Court ruled that the Bushmen have the right to return to their land, and to hunt and gather there. That's all they've ever wanted.' The ad highlights the fact that since the court victory, the government has arrested more than 50 Bushmen for hunting to feed their families, banned them from using their water borehole, and backed plans for a massive diamond mine worth $2.2 billion on the Bushmen's land.

Survival's director Stephen Corry said today, 'The Botswana government has had nearly a year to implement the court's ruling. It's now clear it has no intention of doing so, so the Bushmen's campaign has been reignited. Hundreds of thousands of people have already voiced their support for the Bushmen. Now, tortured and persecuted, they need this support more than ever.'

Botswana police and wildlife guards are torturing bushmen arrested for hunting, Survival International claimed on Wednesday.

They made three bushmen  run through the desert in blistering heat for hours, while chasing them in vehicles, Survival said in a statement.

It is easy!  

Please write to the President of Botswana saying he should let the Bushmen go home:

Fax: +267 395 0858

The Bushmen certainly stole Khoi cattle, because the concept of private ownership of animals was foreign to them.

But the Khoi started the process by stealing the Bushmen’s land when they colonised the southern and western Cape and proceeded to wipe out or reduce to serfdom every Bushman they could lay hands on.

They roamed the savannahs and open plains for thousands of years, but the hunter-gatherer lifestyle of southern Africa's San tribes is slowly being squeezed towards extinction.

After clashing at the start of the last century with German settlers in modern-day Namibia and then being exploited by South Africa's apartheid regime in the 1980s, the San, also known as Bushmen, are now threatened by the 21st century curses of unemployment, poverty, alcohol abuse and HIV-AIDS.

A new report on indigenous people around the world says forced relocation and loss of land can lead to disease, suicide and addiction. VOA's Joe De Capua reports.

Survival International director Stephen Corey says the new report is called "Progress Can Kill." He says it catalogues the mental and physical breakdown of tribal peoples due to what's commonly called progress or development.

Six Bushmen have been arrested for hunting in New Xade resettlement camp, according to First People of the Kalahari, a Bushman human rights organisation.

The latest arrests bring the total number of Bushmen arrested for hunting since last year's landmark court ruling to at least forty-eight, with most being arrested since June this year.

The Botswana High Court held last December that the Gana and Gwi Bushmen had been evicted illegally from their land in the central Kalahari in 2002. The court also held that the government had broken the law in refusing to issue them with hunting permits.

Besides refusing to issue hunting permits, the government has also refused to provide transport for the Bushmen to return. It has banned them from using their water borehole, and will not let them take their small numbers of livestock back with them.

Survival's director Stephen Corry said today, 'The ongoing campaign of harassment against Bushman hunters has suddenly escalated in the past few months. This is a blatant attempt on the part of the government to stop Bushmen returning home. It seems that it is determined that the High Court judgement should not be implemented.'

A Bushman human rights organisation  reported that at least ten men in Kaudwane resettlement camp have been arrested and beaten by wildlife officials for hunting.

At least one man, Motsoko Ramahoko, was tortured as officials attempted to force him to admit that he had been hunting without a permit.

On September 13th, 2007, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a landmark declaration outlining the rights of the world's estimated 370 million indigenous peoples and outlawing discrimination against them - a move that followed 22 years of contentious negotiations.

The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples( http://www.ohchr.org/english/issues/indigenous/docs/draftdeclaration.pdf ) has been approved after 143 Member States voted in favour, 11 abstained and four voted against the text.

A non-binding text, the Declaration sets out the individual and collective rights of indigenous peoples, as well as their rights to culture, identity, language, employment, health, education and other issues.

The Declaration emphasises the rights of indigenous peoples to maintain and strengthen their own institutions, cultures and traditions and to pursue their development in keeping with their own needs and aspirations.

A Mashco-Piro camp on the Piedras river in the Peruvian Amazon. Estimates of the number of such isolated tribes are rising, largely due to industry incursions Photograph: Heinz Plenge Pardo/SZF

"First just one came out, then two, then three, four, five, six, seven, but there were more than that in total. We had a dozen machetes, a dozen knives and some axes and pots with us. We gave these to them. Not by hand, but by leaving them on the beach. We said to them, 'Come closer' but they didn't want to. They said to us, 'Go further back, further back,' so we did."

The encounter between Jose, a Peruvian from the Las Piedras river area near the border with Brazil, and members of the large isolated Mashco-Piro tribe living in the deep Amazonian rainforest, took place this year and was described to the anthropologist Richard Hill, of Survival, the international campaign for tribal peoples.

50 years after her father famously chronicled the lives of the Kalahari Bushmen, LUCIA VAN DER POST visits their tribal homeland in Botswana -and finds a demoralised people trapped in a limbo between their ancient heritage and the modern world

Almost all my life the Bushmen of the Kalahari have been part of my psychological landscape. It is 50 years since my father, Sir Laurens van der Post, "gave a face and a story to a discarded people before anyone else thought to do so", as the writer Christopher Hope put it. So how could I not have thrilled to the news that the Bushmen had won the right to return to the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR), the lands that were historically theirs?

Three decades of worldwide effort by Indigenous Peoples resulted in an historic victory in the United Nations General Assembly on September 13, 2007, when that body adopted the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples by an overwhelming majority. The Declaration affirms the collective human rights of Indigenous Peoples across a broad range of areas including self-determination, spirituality, land rights, and rights to intellectual property.

Basarwa [San Bushmen] spokesman Jumanda Gakelebone has accused the government of harassing his people by arresting them for hunting on their land. He reiterated allegations by British-based minority rights NGO Survival International (SI) that six Basarwa have been arrested for hunting.

How do we have to call first people of Southern Africa? 

Is the term "Bushmen" for Southern Africa's first people ok?

 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.

The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) will  discuss Botswana's refusal to allow the Kalahari Bushmen to hunt in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, Survival International said on Friday.

Botswana is often hailed as an oasis of peace and prosperity on a troubled continent, but critics say the government of the southern African nation is clamping down on free speech and threatening democracy.

Botswana, long admired for its well managed economy and open democratic system, earlier this month banned 17 people, mostly foreign journalists and human rights activists, from entering the diamond-rich country.

Six Bushmen were held for days and refused food after officials accused them of hunting in a Botswana game reserve despite a December court ruling allowing them to do this, Survival International (SI) said.

Tony Weaver thinks that the Botswana Bushmen’s return to their ancestral lands in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve after their recent court victory was “shambolic”, and that for some reason this is Survival’s fault (January 26). This is curious logic, to say the least.

The Bushmen were originally represented in their court case by a Cape Town law firm.

Botswana President Festus Mogae has met with a small number of Bushmen in an effort to persuade them not to return to their life of hunting and gathering in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve.

Only about 100 of the 2 000 Bushmen in New Xade attended Thursday's meeting with the president although state media had encouraged them not to return to the game reserve -- as a court had ruled they had the right to do -- until after they had heard the president's speech.

New Xade is a village on the western edge of the game reserve where the Bushmen evicted from the reserve by the government were relocated.

About 40 San Bushmen have returned to their ancestral homeland in Botswana following a court ruling that found they were wrongly evicted by the government and could return, a statement said on Tuesday. "A group of 40 Bushmen have managed to return to their homes in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve this weekend despite a heavy police presence and attempts to persuade them to stay in the relocation camps," rights group Survival International said. "All the Bushmen in the convoy were allowed into the reserve by the wildlife guards at the gates, although some were only issued with temporary permits," it said. A court in the southern city of Lobatse ruled last month that hundreds of Bushmen were wrongly forced out from the Kalahari Game Reserve after a marathon legal battle.

Keratwaemang Kekailwe spent his childhood collecting wild fruits and eating the meat of animals killed by his father. Now he cuts a desolate figure, wearing blue jeans, a T-shirt and an unkempt beard, dependent on government handouts.

A court has said Kekailwe and other Bushmen have the right to resume their ancient hunter-gatherer ways in a vast game reserve the Botswana government had argued was threatened by their presence. The December verdict was hailed as a victory for indigenous peoples around the world.

But the government has made it difficult for the tribesmen to return. It says they can't take along cows or goats or items that have become necessary to supplement hunting and gathering.

International pressure to boycott mining giant De Beers' diamonds is continuing.

Botswana’s government said it would not appeal a high court ruling that hundreds of San had been wrongly evicted from ancestral hunting grounds and should be allowed to return.

Her name is Unity Dow, Judge Unity Dow. But she may remind some of Portia -- Shylock's nemesis -- for the performance she put on last week for the Bushmen of the Kalahari.

Botswana's Bushmen won a historic victory at the end of a four-year legal battle to hold on to their ancestral lands and to hunt game in one of Africa's biggest nature reserves.

To quote Dow: "It has turned out to be the most expensive and longest-running trial this country has ever dealt with. It has also attracted a lot of interest as well as a fair amount of bandwagon jumpers, both nationally and internationally, than perhaps any other case has ever done."

Dow (47) is a phenomenon. She is a successful author, with three published thrillers to her name, and she was the first woman appointed a judge in Botswana. Even before she arrived on the bench she was locally famous, for successfully suing the government to have maternal rights recognised in the country's nationality laws.

The Bushmen, southern Africa's first inhabitants, now number only about 100,000 and are striving to regain their rightful place after centuries of exclusion, oppression and marginalisation.

Currently spread over Namibia and Botswana and in some measure in South Africa, these hunter-gatherers who speak a language replete with clicks have for decades fascinated the West where they are often wrongly viewed as being caught up in a time warp with no contact with other people.

It's early afternoon in this Bushmen settlement in the Kalahari desert and everyone is drunk.

Removed from their ancestral land by the government, Botswana's Bushmen, also known as San, are unable to hunt or gather wild berries and have little else to do but drink potent fermented barley beer.

"I suffer here. I want to go home, where I know where to find plants to eat and eland to hunt," said 61-year-old Letshwao Nagayame at this bleak resettlement camp about 200 km (124 miles) north of Botswana's capital, the smell of alcohol wafting as he speaks.

 Botswana court will decide this week whether hundreds of San Bushmen can return to their ancestral land in a dispute activists say pits Africa's last hunter gatherers against the world's hunger for diamonds.

The Bushmen say Botswana illegally forced them off hunting grounds in the Kalahari desert to make way for diamond mining, pushing them into camps where, unable to pursue their centuries-old nomadic way of life, they have sunk into poverty.

Botswana's government says the San had long abandoned their traditional lifestyle and were threatening wildlife in the protected Central Kalarahi Game Reserve. It says Bushmen need access to education and health services, and deny plans to mine the vast, desert region.

A Botswana court next week rules on a highly emotive case in which San Bushmen are challenging their ouster from the Kalahari desert, thereby listing big name international support in the process.

The case has dragged on for more than two years and the Bushmen have in the process gathered the backing of A-list celebrities including Nobel laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu as well as film stars Julie Christie and Colin Firth.

Wednesday's high court ruling will be televised live, a first in the southern African country of some two million people.

ABOUT 150 chanting members of the main opposition Botswana National Front marched to the president's office on Saturday to submit a petition objecting to the government's relocation of Bushmen from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve.

Botswana's high court is expected to rule on December 13 on a legal challenge by the Bushmen against their eviction. The government says the Bushmen agreed to move from their ancestral lands in co-operation with efforts to make the central Kalahari a game reserve. The Bushmen contest the claim, saying they were tricked.

About 150 members of the main opposition Botswana National Front held a protest march on Saturday against government moves to relocate Bushmen from their land in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve.

Botswana's high court is expected to rule on December 13 on a legal challenge by the Bushmen against their eviction. The government says the Bushmen agreed to move from their ancestral lands in cooperation with efforts to make the Central Kalahari a game reserve.

A ruling on Botswana's longest-running and most expensive legal battle brought by Kalahari Bushmen against the government will be made next month, Survival International said on Wednesday. The case was filed after the Botswana government evicted the Bushmen from land in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve in 2002, said spokesperson Miriam Ross. "The Bushmen are fighting for their right to live on their land and to hunt and gather freely there." At least 12% of the original 239 applicants had died in government resettlement camps since the case was filed, she said. Survival International is a London-based international organisation that supports tribal people and is helping the Bushmen in the case. This year, 135 more applicants asked to be added to the original list. "We are feeling it in our hearts, waiting for the court case to resume, and if we win it we can go back," Bushman Sellalefatse Gaexhoro said in the statement.

Earlier this year a full page advert was taken out in a magazine asking actor Leonardo DiCaprio to help their cause, Ross said. DiCaprio stars in a film on the diamond conflict in Africa, which will be released in the United States just before the ruling. In their appeal, the Bushmen said they were evicted after the Botswana government found diamonds on their land. Ross said the case was the longest and most expensive in Botswana's legal history. Ruling will take place on December 13. "Together with their children they number [about] 10 000 people," said Ross

AFTER years of debate over the link between the relocation of Botswana's Kalahari Bushmen and diamond exploration, renewed mineral exploration on Bushmen land is rekindling the controversy.

Reports of drilling in the area come just weeks before a key court ruling on the fate of the area is scheduled to be delivered.

Business Day has confirmed that TH Drilling (THD) of Gaborone, Botswana, has sent crews into the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR) to drill 15 test pipes on leases held by Petra Diamonds in the Gope area.

IN the caves of South Africa's Cederberg mountains, an ancient people left a legacy of rock art that could teach modern man a valuable lesson or two about living in harmony with nature.

That is the view of John Parkington, professor of archaeology at the University of Cape Town, who has spent 40 years in the Cederberg and neighbouring areas researching rock paintings and other artefacts left by the pre-colonial hunter-gatherers who once roamed southern Africa.

A drilling company has started operations for diamond exploration in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, an area that Bushmen believe they were evicted from, Survival International said on Thursday.

TH Drilling confirmed to two members of the First People of the Kalahari organisation that it had started operations in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, Survival International spokeswoman Miriam Ross said.

South African Nobel laureate Desmond Tutu threw his support Tuesday behind a fight by San Bushmen for rights to ancestral land, urging Botswana's government not to destroy their unique way of life.

A final judgement is expected next month in what is Botswana's longest-running court case when a judge is due to rule on the Bushmen's claim that they were driven out of the Kalahari desert unlawfully.

In a newly recorded video message, Tutu said the Bushmen's culture, which dates back tens of thousands of years, was "one of the world's treasures".

Botswana: African Human Rights Watchdog Slams Botswana's Treatment Of Bushmen

The African Commission on Human and Peoples Rights' (ACHPR), the continent's top human rights body, is about to publish its report on indigenous peoples in Botswana. It is highly critical of the government's treatment of Bushmen, especially the Gana and Gwi of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR).

In Botswana the Bushmen, or San, face destruction as a separate ethnic group.

A three-judge panel said Friday it would rule Dec. 13 on a plea by the Basarwa, popularly known as Bushmen, to stay on ancestral homelands that also harbor vast mineral and diamond potential.

The suit, the longest running legal battle in Botswana's post colonial history, followed government attempt to evict the Basarwa from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve.

Backed by the British based group Survival International, the Basarwa have accused the government of destroying their traditional way of life to make way for mining, which accounts for three-fourths of Botswana's export earnings.

The Bushmen maintain that about 1,800 of them have been forced out of the reserve, about the size of Switzerland, into camps where they have contracted diseases such as HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis, and have become dependent on alcohol.

"You can only move people if they give their free consent. Residents of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve did not give their free consent," British barrister Gordon Bennett told the court earlier this week.

The government has denied the charges, insisting that the Basarwa were removed with their consent in order to make the Central Kalahari a game reserve.

The government claims it held extensive consultations, starting in 1985, with the inhabitants of all the settlements in the game reserve, non-governmental groups and other interested parties. It maintains that more than 1,700 people relocated to the new settlements of their own choice, prompting others to follow.

The Gana and Gwi Bushmen's landmark court case against the Botswana government has been adjourned until 4 September. The lawyers were due to present their final arguments to the court this week.

The Bushmen's lawyer Gordon Bennett applied for an adjournment after state attorneys sent him their written arguments twelve days after the date ordered by the court.

'We were due to start the final oral arguments today [Monday], but I did not receive the defence's written submissions by August 11, as had been agreed,' Mr Bennett told Agence France-Presse.

'I only got them last Wednesday and therefore did not have adequate time to file our written submissions.'

The last of the evidence in the case was heard in May. A judgement should be made soon after the final arguments have been presented to the court.

The Bushmen are fighting for their right to return to their land in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, and to hunt and gather freely.

At least 10% of the original 243 applicants have died in government resettlement camps since the case was filed. 135 more Bushmen have asked to be added to the original list of 243 applicants this year.

The longest running legal battle in Botswana's post colonial history resumed Monday with arguments against the government's relocation of Bushmen from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve.

The Basarwa, popularly known as Bushmen, have accused the government of destroying their traditional way of life to make way for mining, which accounts for three-fourths of Botswana's export earnings.

Final arguments in Botswana's longest-running court case, in which San Bushmen are fighting for rights to ancestral land, will be heard next month after judges agreed to an adjournment request on Monday. The Bushmen's lawyer said he had applied for an extension as he had only received written submissions from state attorneys last Wednesday.

"We were due to start the final oral arguments today [Monday], but I did not receive the defence's written submissions by August 11, as had been agreed," Gordon Bennett told Agence France-Presse at the court in Lobatse, east of the capital Gaborone.

Final argument over Botswana Bushmen's rights to ancestral land will be presented in court later in August, Survival International said on Wednesday. The organisation, which has been helping the Bushmen to fight for their rights to hunt and gather in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, said in a statement that the last evidence was heard in May. Lawyers are due to present their final arguments in the last week of August and a judgment is expected soon afterwards. "We are very happy that at long last the end of our court case is in sight," a spokesperson for the Bushmen said. "While it has been going on more than 20 of the original applicants have died in the relocation camps. "We hope justice will come soon before more of us die." The Bushmen were evicted from their land in the game reserve in February 2002 and have been fighting since April that year to regain their rights.

Botswana's longest-running court case in which its San Bushmen are fighting for rights to ancestral land will hear final submissions next month as the trial nears completion, lawyers said Tuesday.

State lawyer Dittah Molodi said after written submissions in the case in which the Bushmen were suing Gaborone over rights to live in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR), "final oral submissions before the court are expected to start on August 28," he told

More Botswana Bushmen are aligning themselves with a land claim case which is two years old on Wednesday, said the London-based Survival International (SI).

"Tomorrow, July 5, marks two years since the Kalahari Bushmen's legal case against the Botswana government began. In a groundswell of support, 135 Bushmen have asked to be added to the original list of 243 applicants," said SI in a statement on Tuesday.

Over the past few years, Survival International has carried out a high profile campaign accusing the government of Botswana of removing people from the Kalahari region in order to exploit mineral resources in the area. Botswana has strongly denied this. With emotions running high and with a court case hearing arguments, it is difficult to separate fact from conjecture. In order to do so, we sent Barry Baxter to discuss the issue with the parties concerned, including the national president, Festus Mogae. Here is his report.

The issue is not a simple case of big business bullying a small group of people as it is often portrayed in the mass media. There are complex factors involved.

Botswana: Bushmen Holding Out in Reserve Appeal for Help

The last group of Bushmen still holding out inside the Central Kalahari Game Reserve have smuggled out an appeal for help.

The Kalahari Bushmen in Botswana have sent a desperate plea for help to actress Angelina Jolie, who gave birth to a daughter on Saturday in neighbouring Namibia.

The Botswana government has evicted the Gana and Gwi Bushmen from their ancestral land in the central Kalahari. The Bushmen are fighting for their right to return home. Actors Colin Firth and Julie Christie have already spoken out in their support.

Before Africa's colonisation, the Bushmen population in the south of the continent numbered in the millions. Today the figure is 80,000.

Two-thirds of the Bushmen who remain are based in Botswana where a majority now work as ranch hands, having moved or been forced off their ancestral lands in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR), where they had lived for millenia.

A tiny number of Bushmen now remain in the CKGR, but the government of Botswana continues its policy of relocating tribespeople to 65 new settlements (dismissed as slums by campaigners) on the fringes of the reserve. Between 1997 and 2002, 1,550 Bushmen were resettled and by mid-2005 only a reported 66 remained in the CKGR, two thirds of whom were removed later that year.

In the words of Botswana's president, the rationale of the resettlement programme has been "to ensure that all citizens of Botswana have opportunities to share in the wealth of the nation."

Evidence in a court case in which Botswana's San Bushmen are fighting for rights to ancestral land in the Kalahari wound up in court this week, with a rights group Thursday calling for a speedy end to the case.

The Bushmen are taking Gaborone to court to challenge their eviction four years ago from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR), one of the world's largest sanctuaries and an area they have called home for the past 20,000 years.

Roy Sesana sits in the back row of the dark-panelled room that houses Botswana's High Court, in this little town 70 kilometres from the capital. The courtroom has parquet floors and a row of judges in gowns and powdered wigs, a legacy of the country's British colonial history.

Mr. Sesana has come here almost every day that the court has been in session over the past four years, yet he could hardly look less at home. He wears a traditional headdress made of beads and the horns of a small antelope. His tea-coloured face is crevassed and worn by a climate very different from the rarefied air of the court.

Yet Mr. Sesana thinks constantly of home: of the sand and scrub trees and low moon of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve where he grew up and where, he hopes, the row of stern, bewigged judges will allow him to return.

Survival International is under fire for criticising Botswana government.

Survival International is at loggerheads with the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Botswana after its chair criticised the charity's work defending Kalahari Bushmen in the African state.

Malcolm Moss MP, the shadow minister for culture, media and sport, has refuted many of Survival International's claims about the treatment of Gana and Gwi Bushmen at the hands of the Botswana government.

The earliest modern inhabitants of southern African were the bushman (San) and the Hottentot (Khoe) peoples.

The quote is from the department of tourism website on 'culture and history of Botswana.' While the word bushman has been removed from laws of Botswana because it is deemed derogatory, the tourism department has not updated the information on its website. Addressing kgotla meetings in Ngwaketse area last year, the assistant minister of agriculture, Peter Siele said that the word 'Bushmen' was being replaced with Basarwa. Director of the department Tlhabologo Ndzinge, admitted that the offending term has been used on their website and other promotional brochures, not for derogatory purposes but to highlight cultural experiences of the Basarwa in order to attract the attention of prospective tourists.'Our website was developed some years back. We are in the process of updating it and other publications as well. In our recent promotional brochures we have used either 'the San' or 'Basarwa',' Ndzinge said.

This was the sobering assessment of Namibia's indigenous San community, delivered by Deputy Prime Minister Libertina Amathila last September after a visit to the north-eastern Otjozondjupa region where the majority of San live.

"We need to go into full force as government. They should be given land -- a place they can call their own so that they can feed themselves, run agricultural projects, water the gardensàand women can do needlework projects," Amathila said.

LAST week, outside Kimberley in South Africa's Northern Cape province, the first 40 recruits of Sanda, a new security company, paraded in the blazing sun and rolling dust to celebrate the end of their training. This would not be much of an event, were it not for the fact that all the recruits are Bushmen, the once traditional hunter-gatherers also known as San who roamed Southern Africa for thousands of years.

Sanda is bringing much needed hope to the 6,500 !Xun and Khwe Bushmen who live on Platfontein farm and who own a majority stake in the new venture. It is the brainchild of Gert Schoombie, a retired colonel from the South African Defence Force. "God gave me a very clear vision," he explains. The Bushmen's traditional tracking and hunting skills could be used to deal with predators, recover stolen livestock and prevent attacks on farms by spotting unusual activity. At the same time, this would provide a stable source of income for people short of jobs and prospects, while preserving fast-disappearing skills and traditions. Luckily, God also sent Absa, a South African bank, which provided cash to start the project.

Kamama Mukua, the local Khwe leader, believes that this heralds a new future for the community, originally from Angola and Namibia. With his three-piece suit, sunglasses and hat, he dressed for the occasion. Like many others in Platfontein, he was enrolled in the Portuguese colonial army during the war in Angola in the 1970s. When the defeated Portuguese went back home, the conscripted Bushmen and their families fled to Namibia. With Namibia's independence in 1990, they moved to South Africa, and most were dumped in the Schmidtsdrift military camp, a desolate dustbowl near Kimberley. They remained there for ten years, living in tents, largely forgotten. A few years ago, they pooled their government allowances to buy Platfontein, the farm where they are now.

The plan is to train 1,000 guards over the next five years. Marais Kluge, a local farmer and Sanda's marketing director, says demand far outstrips supply. Loutjie du Toit, from the Bloukop farm in Mpumalanga province, has already recruited three guards from Sanda. The farm, he explains, loses about 15 sheep a week to theft, and a few more to jackals. He expects that even guards with bows and arrows will be a strong deterrent.

Eight Bushmen were arrested at gunpoint, threatened with death, and tortured last week before being held for a night in prison and charged for hunting in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, Botswana.

One of the men, Vitanon Mogwe, told Survival, 'The wildlife officers told our families they would shoot us and kill us so we ran for two days to the next village to hide. When they found us they pushed their guns into our chests and asked us what should stop them killing us right now.'

The eight men were tied to a pole for a day in a press-up position, and kicked and beaten if they tried to move.

The men are currently living in Kaudwane resettlement camp, having been evicted from their land in the reserve in 1997 and 2002. They are all listed on the charge sheet as 'unemployed'. The Botswana government banned hunting and gathering in the reserve following the 2002 evictions. The evicted Bushmen, who lived mainly by hunting and gathering, are now dependent on government 'destitute rations'. One Bushman at Kaudwane old Survival, 'I am doing nothing, and I'm suffering from hunger. That's why you're seeing us eating dogs.'

The persecution, arrest and torture of Bushman hunters in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve has been going on for about two decades, and has intensified in recent years.

Another group of four Bushmen were arrested for hunting in the reserve earlier in March. Two of the four were also tortured.

We, as the organisation of Bushmen of the Central Kalahari in Botswana, are very offended by comments made by Jenny Tonge (Response, March 23) that we are "mesolithic", or middle stone age. She says it is not an insult. But if you call someone stone age or primitive, it sounds like you think they are inferior to you. As a matter of fact, we use radios and some of us have mobile phones. But that is not the point. We just want the opportunity to be allowed to choose our lifestyles. We want to go back to our land to be with our ancestors and we want to be allowed to live there in peace by hunting and gathering - not as "exhibits in a museum", but because it is a very clever way to survive in the desert. Tonge obviously does not respect us enough to think we know how to choose what is best for ourselves.

She also thinks women and children want to leave their land and go to government resettlement camps, but men don't. The women in our communities are some of the strongest speakers about wanting to go home and have gone to court to get our land back. The new places we are forced to live are not good for our development, as she says. People are dying there of diseases that they didn't have before and the children drop out of school early with HIV/Aids.