Botswana judges make final inspection in Bushmen land claim case
Judges from Botswana's high court Wednesday inspected a village where San Bushmen were resettled, as part of a landmark court case brought by the indigenous people seeking to return to their Kalahari home.
The judges, accompanied by a camera crew, went around New Xade, a settlement located outside the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, a large desert area in central Bostwana that the Bushmen claim is their ancestral land.
They inspected a primary school set up in 2001, a hospital, a community hall and a horticultural project where Bushmen are growing vegetables.
The inspection of the settlements is the first stage in the court case brought by 243 Bushmen who are challenging their resettlement from the reserve, set up in 1961 under British colonial rule to protect the San.
Formal hearings are to begin on Monday in the northwestern town of Ghanzi with the defense laying out its case against the government of President Festus Mogae.
Sydney Pilane, Mogae's legal adviser, made a terse statement in New Xade, saying only that "the inspections went on absolutely well."
Gordon Bennett, counsel for the 243 Bushmen challenging their eviction, was equally cautious, saying: "The inspection team has been to three camps in three days and they are waiting what the court will say."
The San took the government to court in April 2002, seeking an order declaring it illegal to cut off services to the Kalahari reserve where they lived before the Botswana government began moving them from the sanctuary in 1997.
But the case was dismissed on a technicality and the Bushmen last month won the right to have their claim heard again before the Botswana high court.
Xhaixxebe Maqo, a local Bushman leader in New Xade, said he was perfectly happy where he was now.
"I commend President Festus Mogae for relocating us. I will never go back to the game reserve. I am dressing now and I also have blankets which I got from President Mogae's government. Our life is better here than at Old Xade in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve."
Mogae made an impromptu first trip to New Xade last month to hand out food parcels and blankets to the Bushmen.
But Roy Sesana, spokesperson for Bushmen who are suing the government, stressed that the schools, hospital and other facilities in New Xade were built without regard for the distinctiveness of the Bushmen.
"The developments that are taking place do not involve us," he said
The government claims that there are now only 17 Bushmen living in the reserve but rights groups say 200 have gone back in defiance of Gaborone's campaign to resettle them outside, an area the Bushmen have been calling home for the past 20,000 years.
Once numbering millions who roamed freely in southern Africa, there are roughly 100,000 San left, with almost half of those -- 48,000 -- living in Botswana, 38,000 in Namibia, 4,500 in South Africa, 6,000 in Angola, 1,600 in Zambia and 1,200 in Zimbabwe, according to rights groups.
London-based Survival International, which has been waging a 30-year campaign in support of the rights of the San, maintains that they were driven out of the Kalahari reserve to make way for diamond mining, a claim the government has rejected as false.
The inspection of the settlements is the first stage in the court case brought by 243 Bushmen who are challenging their resettlement from the reserve, set up in 1961 under British colonial rule to protect the San.
Formal hearings are to begin on Monday in the northwestern town of Ghanzi with the defense laying out its case against the government of President Festus Mogae.
Sydney Pilane, Mogae's legal adviser, made a terse statement in New Xade, saying only that "the inspections went on absolutely well."
Gordon Bennett, counsel for the 243 Bushmen challenging their eviction, was equally cautious, saying: "The inspection team has been to three camps in three days and they are waiting what the court will say."
The San took the government to court in April 2002, seeking an order declaring it illegal to cut off services to the Kalahari reserve where they lived before the Botswana government began moving them from the sanctuary in 1997.
But the case was dismissed on a technicality and the Bushmen last month won the right to have their claim heard again before the Botswana high court.
Xhaixxebe Maqo, a local Bushman leader in New Xade, said he was perfectly happy where he was now.
"I commend President Festus Mogae for relocating us. I will never go back to the game reserve. I am dressing now and I also have blankets which I got from President Mogae's government. Our life is better here than at Old Xade in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve."
Mogae made an impromptu first trip to New Xade last month to hand out food parcels and blankets to the Bushmen.
But Roy Sesana, spokesperson for Bushmen who are suing the government, stressed that the schools, hospital and other facilities in New Xade were built without regard for the distinctiveness of the Bushmen.
"The developments that are taking place do not involve us," he said
The government claims that there are now only 17 Bushmen living in the reserve but rights groups say 200 have gone back in defiance of Gaborone's campaign to resettle them outside, an area the Bushmen have been calling home for the past 20,000 years.
Once numbering millions who roamed freely in southern Africa, there are roughly 100,000 San left, with almost half of those -- 48,000 -- living in Botswana, 38,000 in Namibia, 4,500 in South Africa, 6,000 in Angola, 1,600 in Zambia and 1,200 in Zimbabwe, according to rights groups.
London-based Survival International, which has been waging a 30-year campaign in support of the rights of the San, maintains that they were driven out of the Kalahari reserve to make way for diamond mining, a claim the government has rejected as false.
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08 Juillet 2004 à 10:06 dans
- English
