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Bushmen of Botswana: Historical recognition D ’ indigenous people

Benoite Labrosse

At the end longest and more expensive lawsuit of L ’ history of Botswana, expelled hundreds of Bushmen of their grounds gained last December an important legal victory. L ’ ONG D ’ origin British international Survival (IF) a decisive role in this business played which could mark a turning in the file of the respect of the rights of the autochtones throughout the world.

On December 13, 2006, three judges of the National High court of Botswana indeed authorized some 350 Bushmen to reinstate their ancestral grounds and to take again the court normal of their life. The latter disputed their expulsion, in 2002, of the game Natural reserve of central Kalahari (CKGR), where they remain since million D ’ years. In a historical verdict, the judge as a chief Maruping Dibotelo and his two assessors recognize that these Botswanais D ’ indigenous origin “were private of their possession by the force, wrongly and without their assent”, which returns in their eyes their expulsion of the “illegal and unconstitutional” CKGR. L ’ one of the associated judges, Unity Dow, added that Bushmen “belong to an ethnicity which was historically treated with contempt” and which the government botswanais should have taken account of “special relation” qu ’ they maintain with their grounds.

Governmental pressures

Jusqu ’ with it N ’ does not have there so a long time, between two and three thousand of these hunters-gatherers lived in the CKGR. However, since the middle of the 1990, the government of Gaborone supports that Bushmen S ’ install in permanent villages, raise cattle and give up traditional hunting with L ’ arc with the profit of the tracking to rifle. According to the authorities botswanaises, “this novel mode of life D ‘ farmers sedentary became incompatible with the protection of L ’ environment and the wild life in Kalahari”. What contradicts certain specialists in the question, inter alia L ’ South-African ecologist Arthur Albertson, which certified during the lawsuit that Bushmen “have a minor impact on their natural environment” and that “the wildlife was in increase” before their expulsion.

D ’ another side, the government feels “the duty to protect the reserve as a national tourist resource”. It thus orders the installation of three of the camps of delocalization to L ’ external of the CKGR in 1997 and attracts Basarwa with cattle and silver compensations there. This solution seems counterproductive in Joram Useb, the regional coordinator of L ’ organization Working Group for Indigenous Minorities in Southern Africa, an ONG based in Namibia from which the goal is also to come to assistance of the Bushmen tribes of the south of L ’ Africa. This last suggests rather “qu ’ a buffer zone can be established so that the cattle does not mix with the wild animals”, to make it possible Bushmen D ’ to raise their livestock in the reserve without affecting fauna of it, as that was currently done in Kenya and in Tanzania.

After their attempt 1997, the authorities try to push Bushmen at the beginning with L ’ assistance of more drastic measurements, because the majority of the inhabitants of the CKGR refuse all the same to leave. Gaborone promulgates laws consequently prohibiting hunting, L ’ breeding and L ’ agriculture. The schools and the dispensaries close, then, the wells are sealed and L ’ removed food aid. Finally, the government expels purely and simply Bushmen of their reserve in 2002, redirecting them all worms three camps of delocalization located at the limits of the CKGR: New Xade, Xere and Kaudwane. Forced D ’ to give up its reference marks and its traditional lifestyle, the Basarwa community sees developing problems similar to those of the Canadian autochtones: alcoholism, depression, suicide, excessive violence, school absenteeism … S ’ add to these phenomena the proliferation of the cases of HIV and tuberculosis, of the diseases “up to that point completely absent at the populations of the reserve”, with the dires of Magali Rubino, spokesperson of the file within the French division of L ’ ONG Survival International (IF). This situation confirms the recent conclusions of L ’ expert of L ’ United Nations (UNO) on native-born people, Rodolfo Stavenhagen. He declared last April that L ’ African expansion of natural reserves such as the CKGR carried out native-born people, enter others to Kenya and Botswana, “at the edge of the destruction, of dispersion”. With the dires of this special protractor, the governmental pressures to restrict or prevent the claim of territorial rights “weaken these communities at such a point qu ’ it will not survive a long time”.

“They kill us by forcing us to leave our territory”

Survival considers that the forced displacement of Bushmen rises from the “latent racism” of the government botswanais towards those qu ’ it regards as the “primitive ones”. It N ’ was not necessary any more so that IF supports without reserve L ’ action of First People off Kalahari (FPK), L ’ association bushman which brought a legal proceeding against the national authorities in 2004 with an aim of reinstating the CKGR in all legality. “All the international observers gave Bushmen losers at the beginning”, remembers Magali Rubino. What qu ’ it is, Survival provided the logistical support necessary to FPK so that L ’ association can S ’ associate the services of L ’ British lawyer Gordon Bennett, known to have already defended the territorial rights of the autochtones for Kenya, in Guyana and Tanzania.

FPK has the appearance of a pionnière, because C ’ is the first time in L ’ African history qu ’ an indigenous organization thus takes L ’ initiative of its own defense. That has D ’ elsewhere been worth with L ’ association and its president, Roy Sesana, prestigious Right Livelihood Award 2005, price decreed by the Parliament Swedish and recognized like the “alternate Nobel Prize”. In his speech of thanks, Mr. Sesana interpreted with his way the justifications given by the authorities at the time of L ’ expulsion of Bushmen:

“They said to us that we must leave so that the government can develop us. The president affirms that if we do not change, we will disappear like the dodos. I did not know what was a dodo. But I found: it is a bird which was exterminated by the colonists. The president rightly, they kill us by forcing us to leave our territory. ”

Diamonds of the conflict

One of the reasons which explains L ’ impatience of the government to expel Bushmen is perhaps the presence D ’ important layers of diamonds on the territory of the CKGR. Seams were discovered in the reserve, particularly on the territory of the community bushman of Gope, and of drillings started there in October 2006. Even S ’ they S ’ defend some publicly, the government botswanais and the diamond-like giant South-African De Beers seems to wish to exploit these layers by L ’ mediation of Debswana, a company qu ’ they hold with equal share. With L ’ current hour, approximately 10% of the reserve could be concerned by L ’ exploitation diamantiferous. “Before does not begin the countryside of Survival in favour of Bushmen, De Beers and the government did not hide their project D ’ mining activity”, explains Stephen Corry, the director of IF. Does everything to say to Magali Rubino qu ’ “it would be naive to believe that diamond N ’ has anything to make in this history”.

A boycott campaign of Beers was thus launched by Survival, with the support of personalities like Julie Christie, Iman, Lily Cole and Leonardo DiCaprio. L ’ ONG published a message in the magazine étasunien Vanity Fair and collected more than 200.000 signatures of support a little everywhere in the world. The reactions are not make wait: the spokesperson of Beers considered to be this countryside “useless and nonclever” and the spokesperson of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs botswanais, Clifford Maribe affirmed in December 2006 that “by principle, government N ’ will never abdicate in front of the malevolent and odious propaganda of Survival International”.

Wobbly application of the judgement

Meanwhile, the perimeter of the CKGR was buckled and made safe to prevent any provisioning and any communication with the minority of resistant which always remain in the reserve. In spite of a special permit of the national High court, even the lawyers engaged by FPK could not consult them to support their evidence with the lawsuit. On the other hand, a clandestine network bushmen manages all the same to supply these last opponents, who N ’ will have any contact with L ’ external before September 2006, with the launching of Internet site “I want 2 go home” (I want to return to the house). To the always accessible breaking news on line, this virtual public awareness campaign coordinated by Survival International aimed at making it possible the world population to put 405 faces on the bushman cause and to communicate its support in Basarwa, as L ’ made celebrates it South-African archbishop Desmond Tutu, Nobel Prize of Peace. In addition to testimonys of Bushmen installed in the camps of delocalization, the site published anonymous declarations of resistant, the “voices of L ’ interior of the CKGR”.

Then, in December 2006, more than two years after the beginning of the legal procedures, the High court of Botswana finally imposed a re-establishment partial of the situation of Bushmen. The government is seen indeed exempted L ’ obligation to provide the basic services out of matter D ’ water of food, D ’ education and of health whose the inhabitants profited from the reserve before their expulsion. Magali Rubino estimates that “C ’ is regrettable, but this help N ’ is not inevitably essential with the life in the reserve”. Survival tries all the same “to reason” the authorities with an aim of seeing falling the new decree which prohibits in Bushmen which N ’ did not take share with the continuation to reside on the reserve or D ’ to penetrate there without licence. Currently, only a thin sixth of the population thus sees its recognized rights. And still. According to IF, not less than 12% of the 239 people having initially taken share with the continuation died in the camps of relocalization before the outcome of the lawsuit.

Despite everything these contrarieties, “the majority of Bushmen are impatient to turn over on the reserve to see this qu ’ it is occurred their dwellings and of their community”, Magali Rubino specifies. One month after the verdict, forty D ’ between them had D ’ already taken again elsewhere the way of the CKGR, under strong police presence. The president botswanais in person, Festus Mogae, would be D ’ elsewhere shortly after gone to visit the camps of relocalization to exhort Bushmen not to be turned over on the reserve. In July 2007, they were more D ’ a hundred to have to reinstate their grounds, in spite of L ’ absence of food, because the government does not provide any more rations and refuses D ’ to emit legal hunting permits just like to let Bushmen repatriate their livestock and to pump their water. D ’ elsewhere, since last December, forty D ’ between them would have been stopped, and probably maltreated, with the dires authorities, “to have driven out without licence”.

“One can only note the contempt with which the government considers the verdict of the High court, its own vote in favour of the Declaration of the rights of native-born people of the United Nations and its alleged respect of the human rights. The reputation of Botswana declines of day in day and the national organizations of the human rights remain quiet”, was afflicted very recently the director of Survival International, Stephen Corry. L ’ organization indeed presented at mid-July a report/ratio before the Committee of the Rights of L ’ Homme of L ’ UNO in L ’ hope that this last requires that the government botswanais yields with the judgement of its High court, but this request is always with L ’ study. Meanwhile, Survival reactivated its international support campaign for Bushmen, which is definitely not at the end of their sorrows.