Botswana court case continues

NEW XADE, Botswana – The second leg of a landmark case over the right to ancestral land by Africa’s earliest inhabitants, the San Bushmen, started in a make-shift court in the Kalahari desert yesterday.

A group of 243 San Bushmen are challenging their resettlement from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, one of the world’s largest sanctuaries and an area they have been calling home for the past 20 000 years. The court case started on July 4 with high court judges inspecting settlements built by the state for the San outside the reserve.The Botswana government controversially decided in 2002 to cut off water, food and health services to the hunter gatherers and regrouped them into these settlements.The high court judges last week toured New Xade, a settlement located outside the Central Kalahari Game Reserve.”Basarwa (Botswana term for Bushmen) do not belong to live where animals do as they are just humans like you and me,” said government lawyer and president Festus Mogae’s special advisor, Sydney Pilane.”Relocation is an option any government could consider if it wants to improve the welfare of its people,” he added.He said it was important that the judges saw for themselves the harsh terrain the San had been living in, adding that at new settlements such New Xade and Kaudwane, the government was finally able to provide water, food and clothing – items they did not have access to in the past after abandoning their traditional way of life.London-based Survival International, which has been waging a 30-year campaign in support of the rights of the San, maintains that they were driven out of the Kalahari reserve to make way for diamond mining, a claim the government has rejected as false.- Nampa-AFPThe court case started on July 4 with high court judges inspecting settlements built by the state for the San outside the reserve.The Botswana government controversially decided in 2002 to cut off water, food and health services to the hunter gatherers and regrouped them into these settlements.The high court judges last week toured New Xade, a settlement located outside the Central Kalahari Game Reserve.”Basarwa (Botswana term for Bushmen) do not belong to live where animals do as they are just humans like you and me,” said government lawyer and president Festus Mogae’s special advisor, Sydney Pilane.”Relocation is an option any government could consider if it wants to improve the welfare of its people,” he added.He said it was important that the judges saw for themselves the harsh terrain the San had been living in, adding that at new settlements such New Xade and Kaudwane, the government was finally able to provide water, food and clothing – items they did not have access to in the past after abandoning their traditional way of life.London-based Survival International, which has been waging a 30-year campaign in support of the rights of the San, maintains that they were driven out of the Kalahari reserve to make way for diamond mining, a claim the government has rejected as false.- Nampa-AFP