An ancient people fight to keep their land and their way of life.
ROY SESANA is a haunted man. His people, the Bushmen, represent Africa's most ancient culture. But their way of life is being wiped out because of a campaign by the Botswana government to move them off the land on which they have survived by hunting and gathering for more than 30,000 years.
By coincidence, it is land on which reserves of diamonds have recently been detected. Botswana already produces 80 per cent of the world's quality jewel gems.
Bitterness is etched in Mr Sesana's ailing face as he emerges from his wooden hut at his new compound on the near-barren land on which he has been forcibly resettled. He is impatient with preliminary questions about his name, age and family life. Instead, he wants to talk about his hatred for his life in the camp called New Xade, in ironic echo of Xade, one of the important areas of ancestral land in the largely unfenced central Kalahari game reserve, an area the size of Wales created by colonial authorities to protect the Bushmen's land and way of life.
"Being here is like being detained in a refugee camp or being held captive in a place for prisoners of war," he says through an interpreter. He does not know his age but estimates he was a young teenager by the time of the Second World War. Thick dark smoke swirls from his home-made cigar.
In the shade of the lonely tree in his new compound of three wooden huts, Mr Sesana oozes confidence when he narrates his people's centuries-old history as the first inhabitants of southern Africa. But he chokes with emotion when he speaks of the government plan to remove the 3,000 traditional Bushmen from the central Kalahari. "If I had had my way, I would have physically resisted the eviction from my ancestral land and I would not be here at all," he says. "They would rather have killed me as I would have stayed put."
He was not given the choice. He returned from a long hunting trip in the bush to find that government officials had trashed his entire village and destroyed his water sources. His nine children and two wives had been forces into trucks and transported to New Xade. He says he had no option but to follow his family.
But when the home of another Bushman elder, Nare Gaoboene, was destroyed, and his 11 children and three wives forcibly removed, he refused to quit the land where his ancestors are buried. He slept in trees until he could erect a new hut to protect him from animals.
About 140 diehard Bushmen remain inside the old reserve. Some escaped the official compounds at New Xade. In an attempt to drive them out, the government has destroyed all the main water sources. The diehards are almost impossible to reach. They live three days' trek in to the bush. I met Nare Gaoboene only because he was visiting his family. It was only the second time he had set foot in New Xade since his family was evicted two years ago.
"I have come to tell my wives and children that I have finished building new huts and they should come back to join me if they wish that I remain their father," Mr Gaoboene says. "Otherwise I am not coming to visit here ever again." He knows the government's game scouts might refuse them entry to the reserve but he insists they can find a way back.
In New Xade, amid the shabby hut compounds, the government has sunk boreholes and built a modern school, clinic and even a community bar. It seems determined to encourage the Bushmen to integrate into the national way of life.
The government's chief representative in New Xade is James Kilo. He chairs the local development committee and plans to run for public office as the candidate of the governing political party. He denies the evictions have been motivated by diamonds. As far as he is concerned, it is about development. The government has an obligation to integrate them into "modernity" and the Bushmen should be thankful, he says. "I don't possibly see how anyone can argue that it's better to live in the wilderness with animals than being here." Providing services for the people is also much easier and cheaper in New Xade.
Advocates of the Bushmen's cause, such as Survival International, one of the three charities Independent readers are supporting in this year's Christmas Appeal, disagree. The cost of New Xade, and the water pipelines built to supply it, far outweighs what the authorities had spent on mobile health clinics and tankers to distribute water from the reserve's waterholes.
The Bushmen are unimpressed. If development is the aim of the scheme, as the government claims, says one Bushman, Galompele Gakelekgolela, "why did they not bring these developments to where we were in our own lands?" And where they were not plagued, as now, by alcoholism and Aids. He answers his question with one word: "Diamonds."
Individual Bushmen have been told by government officials and representatives of mining companies, that mining will last for decades after it begins in the area around Gope (when Botswana's other reserves begin to run down in 10 years). They are being moved now, he claims, as a pre-emptive strike to ensure that when diamond mining begins the indigenous occupants are unable to make a legal claim to the mineral rights, as an indigenous group has done in South Africa, winning compensation from one of the country's main diamond mines.
The First People of the Kalahari (FPK) is an organisation formed by the Bushmen to champion their interests. "If I thought you were primitive and in need of help, would I visit you in Johannesburg or London and destroy your home, expel your wife and children and leave them without food or a roof over their heads?" the FPK's co-ordinator, Jumanda Gakelebone, asks. "Do I have to strip you of your dignity just because I believe you need help?"
His organisation, with the support of Survival International, is engaged in a high court battle to have the evicted Bushmen returned to their homeland.
It is not difficult to see why so many Bushmen hate their resettlement camp. For miles, there is nothing to distract the eye from the sandy landscape. The land is unsuitable to grow crops to supplement the meagre food rations they get from the government. At least on their ancestral land, they could live sustainably. In New Xade they cannot hunt. There are no familiar wild roots and fruits.
Tseuediteng Gaoberekwe, in her late sixties, is struggling to raise her five sons and two daughters. The five cattle and some goats she got as compensation for the eviction were eaten by wild dogs. "With no kraal here to keep my animals they fell prey to the predators," she says. She longs to go home.
Increasing numbers are acting on that longing. Despite Mr Kilo's insistence that many people are happy in New Xade, I failed to meet anyone saying so. Africa's most ancient culture has clearly not given up yet.
"Being here is like being detained in a refugee camp or being held captive in a place for prisoners of war," he says through an interpreter. He does not know his age but estimates he was a young teenager by the time of the Second World War. Thick dark smoke swirls from his home-made cigar.
In the shade of the lonely tree in his new compound of three wooden huts, Mr Sesana oozes confidence when he narrates his people's centuries-old history as the first inhabitants of southern Africa. But he chokes with emotion when he speaks of the government plan to remove the 3,000 traditional Bushmen from the central Kalahari. "If I had had my way, I would have physically resisted the eviction from my ancestral land and I would not be here at all," he says. "They would rather have killed me as I would have stayed put."
He was not given the choice. He returned from a long hunting trip in the bush to find that government officials had trashed his entire village and destroyed his water sources. His nine children and two wives had been forces into trucks and transported to New Xade. He says he had no option but to follow his family.
But when the home of another Bushman elder, Nare Gaoboene, was destroyed, and his 11 children and three wives forcibly removed, he refused to quit the land where his ancestors are buried. He slept in trees until he could erect a new hut to protect him from animals.
About 140 diehard Bushmen remain inside the old reserve. Some escaped the official compounds at New Xade. In an attempt to drive them out, the government has destroyed all the main water sources. The diehards are almost impossible to reach. They live three days' trek in to the bush. I met Nare Gaoboene only because he was visiting his family. It was only the second time he had set foot in New Xade since his family was evicted two years ago.
"I have come to tell my wives and children that I have finished building new huts and they should come back to join me if they wish that I remain their father," Mr Gaoboene says. "Otherwise I am not coming to visit here ever again." He knows the government's game scouts might refuse them entry to the reserve but he insists they can find a way back.
In New Xade, amid the shabby hut compounds, the government has sunk boreholes and built a modern school, clinic and even a community bar. It seems determined to encourage the Bushmen to integrate into the national way of life.
The government's chief representative in New Xade is James Kilo. He chairs the local development committee and plans to run for public office as the candidate of the governing political party. He denies the evictions have been motivated by diamonds. As far as he is concerned, it is about development. The government has an obligation to integrate them into "modernity" and the Bushmen should be thankful, he says. "I don't possibly see how anyone can argue that it's better to live in the wilderness with animals than being here." Providing services for the people is also much easier and cheaper in New Xade.
Advocates of the Bushmen's cause, such as Survival International, one of the three charities Independent readers are supporting in this year's Christmas Appeal, disagree. The cost of New Xade, and the water pipelines built to supply it, far outweighs what the authorities had spent on mobile health clinics and tankers to distribute water from the reserve's waterholes.
The Bushmen are unimpressed. If development is the aim of the scheme, as the government claims, says one Bushman, Galompele Gakelekgolela, "why did they not bring these developments to where we were in our own lands?" And where they were not plagued, as now, by alcoholism and Aids. He answers his question with one word: "Diamonds."
Individual Bushmen have been told by government officials and representatives of mining companies, that mining will last for decades after it begins in the area around Gope (when Botswana's other reserves begin to run down in 10 years). They are being moved now, he claims, as a pre-emptive strike to ensure that when diamond mining begins the indigenous occupants are unable to make a legal claim to the mineral rights, as an indigenous group has done in South Africa, winning compensation from one of the country's main diamond mines.
The First People of the Kalahari (FPK) is an organisation formed by the Bushmen to champion their interests. "If I thought you were primitive and in need of help, would I visit you in Johannesburg or London and destroy your home, expel your wife and children and leave them without food or a roof over their heads?" the FPK's co-ordinator, Jumanda Gakelebone, asks. "Do I have to strip you of your dignity just because I believe you need help?"
His organisation, with the support of Survival International, is engaged in a high court battle to have the evicted Bushmen returned to their homeland.
It is not difficult to see why so many Bushmen hate their resettlement camp. For miles, there is nothing to distract the eye from the sandy landscape. The land is unsuitable to grow crops to supplement the meagre food rations they get from the government. At least on their ancestral land, they could live sustainably. In New Xade they cannot hunt. There are no familiar wild roots and fruits.
Tseuediteng Gaoberekwe, in her late sixties, is struggling to raise her five sons and two daughters. The five cattle and some goats she got as compensation for the eviction were eaten by wild dogs. "With no kraal here to keep my animals they fell prey to the predators," she says. She longs to go home.
Increasing numbers are acting on that longing. Despite Mr Kilo's insistence that many people are happy in New Xade, I failed to meet anyone saying so. Africa's most ancient culture has clearly not given up yet.
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03 Janvier 2004 à 09:28 dans
- English
