Botswana: Important Players Change Sides in Bushmen Saga
The saga of the expulsion of the Bushman community from their central Kalahari homes in Botswana has taken a fresh turn that is threatening to undermine Botswana's prized reputation for moderation and development in Africa.
On September 26, the UK-based NGO Survival International reported that several leaders of the Bushmen (also called the Basarwa in Botswana or the San people) organization 'First People of the Kalahari' (FPK) had been arrested and imprisoned two days earlier at the New Xade resettlement village. They were among a group of 28 Bushmen, including seven children who were seized by police as they tried to enter "their ancestral homeland" in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR).
On September 26, the UK-based NGO Survival International reported that several leaders of the Bushmen (also called the Basarwa in Botswana or the San people) organization 'First People of the Kalahari' (FPK) had been arrested and imprisoned two days earlier at the New Xade resettlement village. They were among a group of 28 Bushmen, including seven children who were seized by police as they tried to enter "their ancestral homeland" in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR).
The issue has whipped up strong sentiments abroad and inside Botswana, with President Festus Mogae responding belligerently to foreign NGOs despite the threat this presents to his country's reputation for moderation and good governance.
However, an important player, the European Union, appears to have changed its approach over the issue. In 2001 it threatened to withhold a Euros 14 million for financing a management plan for the reserve. The EU delegate in Gaborone, Gunnar Ring, had warned the Botswana authorities that cutting off water supplies to the Bushmen was in direct breach of the terms of the EU-funded management plan, and that unless this ceased, the EU would halt its payments.
But two years later in a letter to Survival International, Ring's successor, Claudia Wiedey-Nippold said that the expulsions were acceptable because the Bushmen were no longer hunter-gatherers but engaged in "settled agricultural activities" considered "incompatible with the regulations on national parks and game reserves".
Survival is also accusing the government of seeking to get rid of the Bushmen to allow diamond mining inside the reserve. A subsidiary of BHP Billiton, Kalahari Diamonds Limited (KDL), which has the backing of the World Bank's group International Finance Corporation has won a concession there. In the 1980s, De Beers began prospecting on its Gope concession inside the reserve.
But De Beers, which owns this concession in partnership with Canada's NorandaFalconbridge, denies that there is any link between the existence of diamond deposits there, which are anyway "uneconomic", and the expulsion of Bushmen. Mogae has in any event said that if diamonds are found anywhere in Botswana his government would have no compunction in moving people off the site.
In June the World Bank's ombudsman who had been approached by the FPK about the IFC funding of the KDL project concluded that it was impossible to establish a causal link between diamond prospecting and the relocation of the Bushmen
But the issue remains delicate, and the government and the mining companies may not win the propaganda war.
The Gaborone newspaper Mmegi in its September 28 issue was concerned at the government's failure to vigorously counter allegations by Survival's chairman, Rafael Runco that "what the government is doing now is coming perilously close to genocide".
Survival is also calling for a global boycott against De Beers while announcing that Sesana has won an "alternative Nobel prize" (also won by the Kenyan environmentalist and Nobel prizewinner Wangari Maathai and the executed Nigerian Ogoni activist Ken Saro Wiwa).
The authorities seem generally to underestimate the emotional support by Westerners for the Bushman cause. According to Survival, journalists as well as other people are now being banned from entering the reserve.
However, an important player, the European Union, appears to have changed its approach over the issue. In 2001 it threatened to withhold a Euros 14 million for financing a management plan for the reserve. The EU delegate in Gaborone, Gunnar Ring, had warned the Botswana authorities that cutting off water supplies to the Bushmen was in direct breach of the terms of the EU-funded management plan, and that unless this ceased, the EU would halt its payments.
But two years later in a letter to Survival International, Ring's successor, Claudia Wiedey-Nippold said that the expulsions were acceptable because the Bushmen were no longer hunter-gatherers but engaged in "settled agricultural activities" considered "incompatible with the regulations on national parks and game reserves".
Survival is also accusing the government of seeking to get rid of the Bushmen to allow diamond mining inside the reserve. A subsidiary of BHP Billiton, Kalahari Diamonds Limited (KDL), which has the backing of the World Bank's group International Finance Corporation has won a concession there. In the 1980s, De Beers began prospecting on its Gope concession inside the reserve.
But De Beers, which owns this concession in partnership with Canada's NorandaFalconbridge, denies that there is any link between the existence of diamond deposits there, which are anyway "uneconomic", and the expulsion of Bushmen. Mogae has in any event said that if diamonds are found anywhere in Botswana his government would have no compunction in moving people off the site.
In June the World Bank's ombudsman who had been approached by the FPK about the IFC funding of the KDL project concluded that it was impossible to establish a causal link between diamond prospecting and the relocation of the Bushmen
But the issue remains delicate, and the government and the mining companies may not win the propaganda war.
The Gaborone newspaper Mmegi in its September 28 issue was concerned at the government's failure to vigorously counter allegations by Survival's chairman, Rafael Runco that "what the government is doing now is coming perilously close to genocide".
Survival is also calling for a global boycott against De Beers while announcing that Sesana has won an "alternative Nobel prize" (also won by the Kenyan environmentalist and Nobel prizewinner Wangari Maathai and the executed Nigerian Ogoni activist Ken Saro Wiwa).
The authorities seem generally to underestimate the emotional support by Westerners for the Bushman cause. According to Survival, journalists as well as other people are now being banned from entering the reserve.
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02 Novembre 2005 à 13:43 dans
- English
