The Bushmen of Botswana fear for their future, whether they return to ancestral lands in a national park or stay on the desolate reserves where they were forced to move.
Basarwa tribesmen, also known as Bushmen, won a court order last month allowing them to return to land in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve from which the government had expelled them. Government officials, though, say the tribesmen can't take along domestic animals or other items that have become necessities for these descendants of hunter-gatherers.
"They also said they would determine amounts of water we take in," said Keratwaemang Kekailwe, one of the 189 Basarwa who filed suit.
PHOTO: AP
In September 2005, he and 22 other Basarwa were prevented from re-entering the reserve by Botswana police firing rubber bullets. Now he lives in an isolated resettlement camp known as Kaudwane.
President Festus Mogae last week asked the Basarwa to stay where they are until he speaks to them tomorrow in New Xade, another of the camps, about the way forward after the judgment.
"He will also listen to what people have to say," presidential spokesman Jeff Ramsay said on Sunday.
Backed by the British based group Survival International, the Basarwa fought the longest running legal battle in Botswana's postcolonial history to return to the reserve.
The verdict by the Botswana High Court that the government's eviction of the Bushmen was "unlawful and unconstitutional" was hailed as a victory for indigenous peoples around the world.
The court also ruled that the Bushmen have the right to hunt and gather in the reserve, and should not have to apply for permits to enter.
The government has said that only the 189 people who filed the lawsuit would be given automatic right of return with their children -- short of the 2,000 the Basarwa say want to go home.
Along with the restrictions on domestic animals and water, they will also not be allowed to build permanent structures. Hunters will have to apply for special permits.
The government shut the main well in 2002 and water resources are scarce.
It's as if the US Supreme Court had ruled Hopi tribespeople could make their homes in the Grand Canyon, and the US government said any that took the opportunity would have to live there as their ancestors had a millennium ago.
The Botswana government argues it must protect the reserve as a national tourism resource. But Joram Useb, from the organization Working Group for Indigenous Minorities in Southern Africa, said the Bushmen should be allowed to take their domestic animals in and there were similar projects in Kenya and Tanzania involving indigenous people that could be studied and applied to Botswana.
"A buffer zone could be established so the domestic animals don't mix with the wild ones," he said, adding the Bushmen should be able to develop an economy for themselves through tourism and other initiatives.
Robert Thornton, a cultural anthropologist at South Africa's University of the Witwatersrand, said the court victory established "that indigenous cultural rights and land access should be protected."
FRENCH AID: Paris has sent a navy ship and aircraft from Reunion Island with some pollution control equipment, but rough seas are spreading the oil spill The operator of a Japanese bulk carrier which ran aground off Mauritius in the Indian Ocean yesterday apologized for a major oil spill, which officials and environmentalists say is creating an ecological disaster, as police prepared to board the ship. The MV Wakashio, operated by Mitsui OSK Lines, struck the reef on Mauritius’ southeast coast on July 25. “We apologize profusely and deeply for the great trouble we have caused,” Mitsui OSK Lines executive vice president Akihiko Ono said at a news conference in Tokyo. The company would “do everything in their power to resolve the issue,” he said. At least 1,000 tonnes of
Three Micronesian sailors stranded on a remote Pacific island have been found alive and well after a rescue team spotted their giant SOS message written into the sand on a beach. Australian and US military aircraft found the three men on tiny Pikelot island, nearly 200km west of where they had set off. Rescuers said that the men were “in good condition” with no significant injuries. The men had been missing for three days after their 7m skiff ran out of fuel and strayed off course. Authorities in the US territory of Guam raised the alarm on Saturday after the men failed to complete
A cat that went missing on a family holiday on the shores of Loch Lomond, Scotland, has been identified 12 years later. Tortoiseshell-and-white Georgie spent October half term in 2008 with her owners at the Rowardennan campsite, but vanished as they were due to return home to Greater Manchester, England. After a search of the site the Davies family departed without Georgie, hoping the three-year-old microchipped feline would be located by someone. Over the intervening 12 years, she remained close to the Queen Elizabeth Forest Park site, being fed and cared for by campsite staff and holidaymakers. After the COVID-19 pandemic hit and lockdown
LIFELONG LOSS: Jiro Hamasumi, who was not quite born when an atomic bomb hit Hiroshima, lost his father and other relatives, but said he thinks about his father daily As Japan marks 75 years since the devastating attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the last generation of nuclear bomb survivors is working to ensure their message lives on after them. The “hibakusha” — literally “person affected by the bomb” — have for decades been a powerful voice calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons. There are an estimated 136,700 left, many of whom were infants or soon to be born at the time of the attacks. The average age of a survivor now is a little over 83, according to the Japanese Ministry of Health, lending an urgency as they share their testimonies
RSS