SOS Bushmen

South African Nobel laureate Desmond Tutu threw his support Tuesday behind a fight by San Bushmen for rights to ancestral land, urging Botswana's government not to destroy their unique way of life.

A final judgement is expected next month in what is Botswana's longest-running court case when a judge is due to rule on the Bushmen's claim that they were driven out of the Kalahari desert unlawfully.

In a newly recorded video message, Tutu said the Bushmen's culture, which dates back tens of thousands of years, was "one of the world's treasures".

"And while progress is necessary, it cannot be that the only way to achieve progress is to remove the San from their ancestral lands and drive their traditions away," said the former archbishop of Cape Town who forged his international reputation during the battle against apartheid.

"We've already seen this with the American Indians, the Aborigines, and it is also happening with the Tibetans. When a culture is destroyed in the name of progress, it is not progress, it is a loss for our world.

"Hundreds of thousands of years of wisdom, knowledge of nature, medicines, and ways of living together, go with them."

A group of around 200 Bushmen filed an application in April 2002 challenging their eviction from a game reserve in the Kalahari, but the case was thrown out on a technicality. The high court agreed in 2004 to hear the complaint.

The Bushmen maintain they were driven out of the Kalahari to make way for diamond mining, a claim the government has denied.

Once numbering millions, roughly 100,000 San are left in southern Africa, with almost half of them -- 48,000 -- in Botswana. Others are spread across Angola, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Tutu said the Bushmen had been confronted with issues such as alcoholism and prostitution for the first time since leaving their land and moving to resettlement camps.

"I appeal to (the Botswana government), and the world, to find new ways to help solve these issues in a manner that respects the lovely, spiritual culture of the San Bushmen," he added.