SOS Bushmen

A three-judge panel said Friday it would rule Dec. 13 on a plea by the Basarwa, popularly known as Bushmen, to stay on ancestral homelands that also harbor vast mineral and diamond potential.

The suit, the longest running legal battle in Botswana's post colonial history, followed government attempt to evict the Basarwa from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve.

Backed by the British based group Survival International, the Basarwa have accused the government of destroying their traditional way of life to make way for mining, which accounts for three-fourths of Botswana's export earnings.

The Bushmen maintain that about 1,800 of them have been forced out of the reserve, about the size of Switzerland, into camps where they have contracted diseases such as HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis, and have become dependent on alcohol.

"You can only move people if they give their free consent. Residents of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve did not give their free consent," British barrister Gordon Bennett told the court earlier this week.

The government has denied the charges, insisting that the Basarwa were removed with their consent in order to make the Central Kalahari a game reserve.

The government claims it held extensive consultations, starting in 1985, with the inhabitants of all the settlements in the game reserve, non-governmental groups and other interested parties. It maintains that more than 1,700 people relocated to the new settlements of their own choice, prompting others to follow.