Botswana court starts second leg of Bushmen land claim case
The second leg of a landmark case over the right to ancestral land by Africa's earliest inhabitants, the San Bushmen, starts in a make-shift court in the Kalahari desert on Monday.
A group of 243 San Bushmen are challenging their resettlement from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, one of the world's largest sanctuaries and an area they have been calling home for the past 20,000 years.
We deserve the right to stay where we want and the judges saw the evidence that we were really forced out when the government burnt down our huts," San spokesman Roy Sesana said.
The court case started on July 4 with high court judges inspecting settlements built by the state for the San outside the reserve.
The Botswana government controversially decided in 2002 to cut off water, food and health services to the hunter gatherers due to costs and regrouped them into these settlements.
The high court judges last week toured 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.
The delegation was taken to see a horticultural project run by the San, their cattle that were donated by the government, the school, a clinic, shop and bottle store run by a San.
"Basarwa (Botswana term for Bushmen) do not belong to live where animals do as they are just humans like you and me," said government lawyer and President Festus Mogae's special advisor, Sydney Pilane.
"Relocation is an option any government could consider if it wants to improve the welfare of its people," he added.
He said it was important that the judges saw for themselves the harsh terrain the San had been living in, adding that at new settlements such New Xade and Kaudwane, the government was finally able to provide water, food and clothing -- items they did not have access to in the past after abandoning their traditional way of life.
"Here they also have schools and sheltered buildings. The Botswana government has an obligation of bringing its people next to development," Pilane said.
But Sesana dismissed this statement, saying new developments might be mushrooming but the tribe still did not have any jobs and many were finding solace in alcohol.
Additionally, the New Xade site did not have any telephone services, accommodation for visitors or electricity, Sesana said.
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.
The second leg of the new case will start in New Xade on Monday in a make-shift court at a school dormitary, one of the many new developments initiated by the government.
The state 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.
Once numbering millions who lived freely in southern Africa, there are roughly 100,000 San left, with almost half of those -- 48,000 -- 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 court case started on July 4 with high court judges inspecting settlements built by the state for the San outside the reserve.
The Botswana government controversially decided in 2002 to cut off water, food and health services to the hunter gatherers due to costs and regrouped them into these settlements.
The high court judges last week toured 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.
The delegation was taken to see a horticultural project run by the San, their cattle that were donated by the government, the school, a clinic, shop and bottle store run by a San.
"Basarwa (Botswana term for Bushmen) do not belong to live where animals do as they are just humans like you and me," said government lawyer and President Festus Mogae's special advisor, Sydney Pilane.
"Relocation is an option any government could consider if it wants to improve the welfare of its people," he added.
He said it was important that the judges saw for themselves the harsh terrain the San had been living in, adding that at new settlements such New Xade and Kaudwane, the government was finally able to provide water, food and clothing -- items they did not have access to in the past after abandoning their traditional way of life.
"Here they also have schools and sheltered buildings. The Botswana government has an obligation of bringing its people next to development," Pilane said.
But Sesana dismissed this statement, saying new developments might be mushrooming but the tribe still did not have any jobs and many were finding solace in alcohol.
Additionally, the New Xade site did not have any telephone services, accommodation for visitors or electricity, Sesana said.
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.
The second leg of the new case will start in New Xade on Monday in a make-shift court at a school dormitary, one of the many new developments initiated by the government.
The state 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.
Once numbering millions who lived freely in southern Africa, there are roughly 100,000 San left, with almost half of those -- 48,000 -- 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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12 Juillet 2004 à 11:05 dans
- English
