Bushmen 'entitled to live, hunt'

2006-12-14 08:39

Lobatse - Botswana's High Court has ruled that the country's last remaining tribe of hunter-gatherers was entitled to live and hunt on ancestral lands in a game reserve.

Basarwa tribesmen, sometimes called bushmen, had accused the government of evicting them, often at gunpoint, in 2002 to exploit the diamond and mineral potential of a reserve the size of Switzerland.

The government denied this, saying the Basarwa agreed to move as part of efforts to protect the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, that it had already owned the mineral rights and that the Basarwa received compensation for their land.

Junanda Gakelevone, of the First People of the Kalahari, a group representing the Basarwa, said: "I feel only happiness and confidence that I can go back."

Judges reach unanimous verdict

He said: "I want to go back home now." There was no immediate comment from government representatives. The parties had six weeks to appeal.

Highlighting the complexity of the case, the three-judge panel reached a unanimous verdict on only two of eight counts - including the key point that the Basarwa were legally living on the land before 2002.

They ruled 2-1 that the government was not obliged to provide basic services like water to anyone returning to the reserve the size of Switzerland.

The ruling said the decision to cut off the services in the first place was neither "unlawful nor unconstitutional".

By a 2-1 majority, the court said the refusal to allow the Basarwa into the game reserve without a permit was unconstitutional.

Basarwa 'deprived of their possessions'

It also said the state's refusal to issue special game licences to allow the Basarwa to hunt was unconstitutional.

It found 2-1 that the Basarwa were "forcibly and wrongly deprived of their possessions," by the government. Gordon Bennett, a lawyer for Basarwa, said that referred to the land.

For more than 20 000 years, clans of hunter-gathers had survived in central Botswana's stark, desert plains. Now, only a handful were left, locked in a bitter dispute over their right to remain in what had been declared a wildlife reserve.

They were the original inhabitants of a vast area stretching from the tip of South Africa to the Zambezi valley in Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Their rock paintings, wildlife knowledge and ability to survive in one of the harshest environments on earth had fascinated scholars. They were even the subject of a hit movie: The Gods Must Be Crazy.

Also known as San or Bushmen, they were driven to near extinction by Bantu tribes who started pushing south from central Africa about 1 500 years ago and the Europeans who followed 350 years ago.

The settlers took the most fertile land and the Basarwa retreated into the Kalahari. Only an estimated 100 000 were left today, most living in poverty on society's fringes.

At least 2 000 of the Basarwa had moved to two new settlements, leaving a handful of holdouts.

- AP