SOS Bushmen

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.