Resources Or People? No Competition

Botswana government lies exposed as diamond mine opens on Bushman land

Survival International

In 2004, a Botswana Minister said there was no mining nor any plans for future mining anywhere inside the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. In 2014 a $4.9bn diamond mine opens A $4.9bn diamond mine will open on September 5 in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, the ancestral land of Africa’s last hunting Bushmen, exactly ten years after the Botswana government claimed there were “no plans to mine anywhere inside the reserve.”

The Bushmen were told they had to leave the reserve soon after diamonds were discovered in the 1980s, but the Botswana government has repeatedly denied that the illegal and forced evictions of the Kalahari Bushmen – in 1997, 2002 and 2005 – were due to the rich diamond deposits. It justified the Bushmen’s evictions from the land in the name of “conservation”.

In 2000, however, Botswana’s Minister of Minerals, Energy & Water Affairs told a Botswana newspaper, "the relocation of Basarwa (Bushmen) communities from [the Central Kalahari Game Reserve] is to pave way for a proposed Gope Diamond Mine”; and in 2002, the Bushmen told Survival International, the global movement for tribal peoples’ rights, "Foreign Minister General Merafhe went to the reserve and told us we had to be moved because of diamonds.”

The mine opening has also exposed Botswana’s commitment to conservation as window dressing. The government falsely claims that the Bushmen’s presence in the reserve is “incompatible with wildlife conservation,” while allowing a diamond mine and fracking exploration to go ahead on their land.

And while conservation organizations have heralded Botswana President Ian Khama’s conservation efforts, they have remained silent on the persecution of the Bushmen and the mining activities in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve.

A Bushman whose family was evicted told Survival, “This week President Khama will open a mine in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. Do those organizations who have been awarding President Khama for his work with the flora and fauna still believe he is a good example to the world? The residents of the Reserve are not benefitting anything from the mine. The only benefits go to communities living outside the reserve, while our natural resources are being destroyed. We strongly oppose the opening of the mine until the government and Gem Diamonds sit down with us and tell us what we will benefit from the mine. ”

The government continues its relentless push to drive the Bushmen out of the reserve by accusing them of “poaching” because they hunt their food. The Bushmen face arrest, beatings and torture, while fee-paying big game hunters are encouraged. The government has also refused to reopen the Bushmen’s water wells, restricted their free movement into and out of the reserve, and barred their lawyer from entering the country.

Survival’s Director Stephen Corry said today, “When the Bushmen were illegally evicted from their ancestral homelands in the name of ‘conservation’, Survival cried foul play – both we and the Bushmen believed that, in fact, diamond mining was the real motivation for kicking the tribe off their territory. Government and its cronies vigorously denied these accusations, but finally we have been proven correct. Meanwhile, organizations such as Conservation International continue to laud President Khama for his environmental credentials and turns a blind eye to his human rights abuses.”

- Download a timeline of events leading to the opening of the Ghaghoo diamond mine (PDF, 639 kB)



from here

Modern Life...No Thanks

 Socialist Banner adds yet another post to its list protesting the treatment of Bushmen. 

There are an estimated 100,000 Bushmen across southern Africa, mainly in Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Zambia. Thousands of Bushmen lived in the vast expanse of the Kalahari Desert for many millennia. But today most have been moved, many argue forcibly, to government-built resettlement camps far from the reserve.

New Xade, a resettlement camp an hour's drive from the nearest town, Ghanzi, in western Botswana. It is the new home of the Basarwa - Kalahari Bushmen. They do not take much pleasure in this honour.

Sisters Boitumelo Lobelo, 25, and Goiotseone Lobelo, 21, are kneeling in front of a basin of dirty water, washing their children's clothes. They speak fondly of life in the reserve, where they would wake up every morning and join the women in the village in collecting berries, nuts and roots to eat. Their eyes fill with anger when they speak of their life here, a desolate village half a day's drive from their original home, which is now part of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR).

“I miss my home and the way we lived. Life was easy, there were lots of fruits, animals and there were no bars and no beer. Now we are lost," says Goiotseone. She also remembers the day they were forced to leave "The police came, destroyed our homes and dumped us in the back of trucks with our belongings and brought us here. They dumped us here like we are nothing,"

These two are the new generation of Basarwa: they go to school and have learned English and the Tswana language, the most widely spoken in the country. But they say this new life has come at too high a price. "We are getting Aids and other diseases we didn't know about; young people are drinking alcohol; young girls are having babies. Everything is wrong here," Boitumelo says.

Unemployment is high and this community has no expertise to speak of, or at least none that they can use in the outside world. The village's liquor shop has no shortage of customers. It is not uncommon to see young men stumbling out of local watering holes in the mid-afternoon.

When the Bushmen were relocated, each family was given five cattle or goats to encourage them to become farmers. "If you push somebody to a certain kind of lifestyle that he doesn't know, he will be facing a lot of difficulties," says one bushman farmer, Jumanda Galekebone. "Our people don't know how to look after the cows when they get sick, they don't know about diseases of cattle like foot and mouth disease," he explains.

 Modern life has not worked for them. "This life hasn't improved any of their lives. We still get a lot of people going inside the park to hunt and they get arrested. Some of us here are facing court penalties for hunting. It just proves that you can't force change on people."

For a people who have spent most of their lives roaming the land freely, hunting wild animals and gathering berries and nuts for food, this place offers them no chance to live off the land.

"We are used to feeding ourselves - now dependant on government hand-outs, we are being made lazy and stupid," says Mr Sesana. "Now we are being treated like dogs. The dog is the only thing that can't bring its own food home. It has to wait for its owner to give it some food." "The only place where you find Bushmen now in our traditional clothes surrounded by traditional huts is in the local tourism villages," says Mr Sesana. "We are worried that in the future, there will be no-one who would be able to practice the Bushman culture unless they are parading in front of tourist for companies who are using them for business," he says.

The Botswana Bushmen have been at odds with the country's government for more than 15 years, embroiled in several legal battles over their right to live inside the game park - and to continue their traditional lifestyle as hunter-gatherers. At some point they were denied access to water in the reserve. Their boreholes were capped and they were banned from drilling more. The Botswana Appeals Court, in a 2011 judgment on the matter, described the plight of the Bushmen as a "harrowing story of human suffering and despair" and ruled that they be allowed access to water. In 2006, another court ruled that the government's refusal to allow the Basarwa into the CKGR was unconstitutional. A handful have been allowed by officials to return to the park but only those whose names appeared in the court papers. Today many say court orders in their favour have been ignored by officials. They need permits to enter the reserve and are not allowed to hunt. Those found hunting face arrest.

Why were they relocated? The government says the restriction of people on the land is intended to preserve the wildlife and the ecosystems of the vast reserve, which is slightly bigger than Denmark. But human rights groups and the Bushmen believe the real reason is more sinister Mining is one of Botswana's key industries, with diamond mining the leading source of revenue. The ancestral lands of the Bushmen lie in the middle of the world's richest diamond field. They believe they were relocated to make way for a multi-million dollar mining project. A London-listed diamond producer has begun plans for production about 45km (28 miles) from the eastern border of the reserve. Construction of the first phase of the project began in 2011. It is expected to begin production in 2014, with an initial output of 70,000 tonnes of rough diamonds.

Some believe that the Bushmen's way of life does not belong in modern Botswana society. Some officials have referred to them as "remote area dwellers", a "Stone-Age" people who should be pulled into the 21st Century. President Ian Khama,  has announced that hunting in controlled areas would be outlawed by January 2014. He said the Bushmen would be taught "non-consumptive" ways of using their resources.

 Bushmen argue that their years of living in harmony with the environment prove that their ways are ecologically sustainable. They say instead that this move is an attempt to do away with their culture.

Botswana: Fracking the Kalahari

While a fierce debate rages about fracking in South Africa and elsewhere, the Botswana government has been silently pushing ahead with plans to produce natural gas, keeping the country in the dark as it grants concessions over vast tracts of land, including half of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve - the ancestral home of the San.

A new documentary film - the High Cost of Cheap Gas - has uncovered incontrovertible evidence that drilling and fracking are underway in Botswana and that international companies are planning massive gas operations in the future. But there has been little attempt to inform the public, despite growing international concerns about the harmful effects of natural gas production.
"The people of Botswana have the right to know about developments on this scale and to be given the chance to publicly debate their pros and cons and then decide whether natural gas production is in their best interest," said Jeffrey Barbee, Director of the film, which was funded by the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA).

For more than a decade, the authorities in Botswana - routinely referred to as one of Africa's best governed states - have been quietly granting licences to international companies. South Africa's SASOL, Australian-based Tamboran Resources, Anglo American, Tlou Energy, Kalahari Energy, Exxaro and many more are drilling for Coal Bed Methane (CBM) without any public debate about the industry, particularly the serious threats these large scale developments pose to the environment and communities.

While activists have been campaigning against the extraction of shale gas and coal bed methane for years, the film documents alarming new evidence from the United States, exposing the damage these industries can inflict on human and animal health, and the environment. Structural problems with the entire production process mean that 'unconventional' natural gas like this can end up being 'dirtier' than coal - contributing even more to greenhouse gas emissions and global climate change.

For a water scarce country like Botswana gas extraction - whether through fracking or simple drilling - poses another worrying threat: Coal Bed Methane extraction requires vast amounts of water to be pumped out of the ground, which can significantly lower the water table. In some parts of America, where this process was pioneered, water tables have dropped by as much as 30 meters.
"Lowering the water table in parts of rural Botswana could mean the difference between a community having access to water one day and not the next," said the film's director, Jeffrey Barbee. "It might be in Botswana's best interests to allow fracking but only if all the potential impacts based on the latest science - not just the promises of gas companies - are openly debated and if the regulations are tough enough and are rigorously enforced long after drilling has stopped."
However, if America is anything to go by, the natural gas industry is adept at undermining, bypassing or riding roughshod over government regulations and regulators.

Astonishingly, fracking companies in the USA are not bound by the Clean Air Act, the Community Right to Know Act or the Clean Water Act. And despite Botswana government claims to the contrary, a senior official at SASOL, which is planning thousands of gas wells in Botswana, says in the film that they were not required to produce an environmental management plan. Apparently, SASOL did produce one anyway since it is international best practice, but other companies might be more willing to exploit this inexplicable weakness in the regulations.

In particular, there are fears that the hard won right of the San to live on, and access water from, their ancestral land will be threatened by the coal bed methane concessions in and around the Central Kalahari Game Reserve.
Indeed, according to the film, drilling is already taking place within the confines of the world famous reserve. Elsewhere in the country, the unfenced buffer zones on the borders of other bio-diversity rich - and economically important - national parks, like Chobe and Kgalagadi, are already being drilled. In fact, it appears that the government has also granted some concessions within Chobe National Park. This endangers not only the local communities but also the largest herd of migrating elephants left in the world.

The gas industry promises jobs and economic development but evidence from the USA shows that the few local jobs are created and that riches usually do not trickle down to the local communities, who have to live with the extraction.
"It is time for the Botswana government to come clean about natural gas operations in the country and to encourage an open and genuine debate so that the population can decide what is best for them and their country - not just an elite few", said Barbee.
"Instead the authorities keep everyone in the dark, particularly the San, who now face another grave threat to their future from Botswana's secretive dash for gas."

from here

African Migrants Not Welcome In Africa

Entering Botswana from South Africa Wame Molefhe gets into conversation with a fellow Botswanian also on his way back home. The remaining narration is hers, taken from 'Letter from Botswana' in October's New Internationalist.

'I'm going home.' He would never live anywhere else, he adds. He is a true patriot, fiercely proud of the country he calls hom, he tells me. Like him, I am happy to be able to call Botswana my home, but I believe I would feel at home anywhere on African soil. But I have begun to question this idea of patriotism, when the phrase 'my people' is spoken in order to exclude. I belong to this nation not because of any achievement. I was simply born in Botswana. I know no other country as intimately. I do not feel foreign, but I know that there are those who visit Botswana who are made to feel foreign - from the minute they enter this country.
During the days of apartheid, Botswana provided a sanctuary for those fleeing the oppressive racist regime in South Africa. After the South African Defence Force raided Gaberone and killed 13 people in 1985, Botswana became somewhere to run through, rather than to. It was clear that it was no longer a place of safety, but Botswana was still lauded for having done her bit to stand up against apartheid.

Back in Gaberone city I take a walk down the road. There is a police vehicle rounding up foreigners. They are all black . . .African, I assume. And I think of the story I recently read in the newspapers, of a 96 year old man who arrived in Botswana in 1945 and has lived here since. The circumstances of his arrival I do not know. I see a picture of an old man, being wheeled out of hospital in a wheelchair. Another shows him being loaded into the back of a pick-up van, surrounded by men and women in nursing uniforms . . . the old man is being deported. I feel much shame in admitting that I am from Botswana.

(- - - - ) We continue to describe ourselves as a caring and compassionate people  but at the same time we are pulling the noose tighter around the necks of immigrants. We are smoking them out - some of them. In the same breath we call for foreign investors. I do not know who Botswana wants to embrace. It does not seem to be my fellow Africans.

A few days after the old man was expelled I learn from a news report that an ambulance was despatched to fetch him back from Zimbabwe. The reasons for this change are not known. Perhaps someone, somewhere, remembered that we are supposed to be a caring and compassionate people.

Africa, Europe, North America, Australia - what's the difference? It seems that no one wants them - except when they need them and then how are they treated?
Nationality is simply an accident of birth and patriotism a tool of ruling elites to keep sections of the populations divided in order to enhance control.
JS

Botswana misery

Almost half of Botswana are born into abject poverty .

The report also says many children and infants in Botswana die of preventable diseases like diarrhoea and pneumonia. The report observes that malnutrion levels are high among children under five. The UNICEF report also says the prevalence of  wasting, stunting and obesity were 12%, nine percent, 31% and 15% respectively.

The San Win in Court

Socialist Banner has carried a number of posts about the victimisation of the San in Botswana.

The latest development is for the moment good news for Botswana’s first peoples. Dozens of Botswana Bushmen threatened with eviction, reportedly because they live in an area proposed as a 'wildlife corridor', have won a significant court victory in their struggle to stay on their land. The Bushmen in fact pose no threat to wildlife, alongside which they have lived sustainably for centuries, and many believe the eviction is in fact to benefit local cattle ranchers. The corridor project was promoted by the US organization Conservation International (CI) - Botswana's President Khama sits on Conservation International's board.

Government officials and police set up camp at Ranyane to pressurize residents into relocating. Last month the local council told residents that they would be evicted in just four days, and sent trucks and police to the settlement to intimidate them. The Bushmen went to court, and obtained a temporary injunction against their eviction.

Botswana inequality

Various studies have shown that Botswana is one of the most unequal countries in the world. Botswana's income inequality, with a Gini Index in excess of 0.5, is one of the highest in the world.

At present, the highest paid senior public servant is the Permanent Secretary to the President (PSP), Eric Molale, who earns P47,380 per month. With the three percent increase, Molale will earn about P48,801.40. Permanent Secretaries currently earn P41,200 per month. With the three percent salary increase, they will smile all the way to the bank to rake in P42,436. This is in contrast to what the lowest paid public workers are remunerated. If these workers are lucky to get the three percent, they will have only P41 more than what they have been earning. At present, these workers earn about P1,351.67. With the increment, their earnings will total P1,392.67.

The CEO of the National Development Bank earns about P1,172.608 per annum or about P97,717.333 per month.

It was reported earlier this year that two executive directors at Choppies earned P11 million while former president Festus Mogae - who is the company's chairman and non-executive director - pocketed half a million Pula in salaries and bonuses for the year ended June 30, 2011. The deputy chairperson of the Choppies Group, Farouk Ismail, raked in P5,057,000 in salaries and bonuses and a further P628,000 in benefits and bonuses, all of which total P5,685,000. Choppies director Ramachandran Ottaphathu pocketed P5,354,000 while former president Mogae was paid P529,000 in what is characterised as fees.

Growth goes up - so does hunger

You wouldn't know there's a food crisis in this country, one of Africa's wealthiest and most stable countries, because it's a silent one. This is not the doom and gloom Africa that we often hear sensationalised in the media as a place of coups, famines and corruption. No, Botswana is a model African state which has lived carefully within its means, had democratically elected governments since independence, and is the world's leading exporter of precious diamonds. Africa's resource rich economies continue to grow. In some regards, Botswana is a shining example of successful resource-financed development. It has carefully husbanded a valuable natural resource, diamonds, and invested the proceeds in infrastructure development and education. Botswana's literacy rate of 86 per cent is one of the highest in the world, and its road and hospital infrastructure is admirable. Its government is ranked as one of the least corrupt by Transparency International, it exports high quality, grass-fed beef and its high-end eco-tourism business is booming.

Yet food prices are up here dramatically since 2011, and the rural and urban poor are hurting badly. "Growth with hunger" could be the rest of continent's conundrum in 25 years time. Botswana imports 90 per cent of its food, which has made it particularly vulnerable to rising global food prices. In 2011, global food prices were the highest on average at any time since they began to be systematically recorded in 1990.

Despite consistent growth, the problem is that Botswana also has one of the most inequitable income distributions in the world, second only to Namibia. Resource-based economies are often undiversified and produce deep inequalities. As such, while Botswana is a prosperous middle income country, the median per capita household income in the capital city, Gaborone, is only $2 per day. With two-thirds of the city's population spending nearly half its income on food, rising food prices present a particular problem. Recent surveys suggest that 63 per cent of households in the capital are severely food insecure, and 21 per cent of households in rural areas sometimes go for a day without eating. Botswana does have ample amounts of food, it's just increasingly expensive.

Botswana, while largely rural at independence in 1966, has been urbanising at a phenomenal rate and now has 60 per cent of its population residing in cities and towns. Although Botswana is ahead of its neighbours on this front, the continent as a whole is the most rapidly urbanising region in the world. The poor are disproportionately dependent on agricultural activity. Even the urban poor often depend on food shared with them by relatives in the rural areas. Climate change, the changing macroeconomic structure of the country and liberalised food markets are killing subsistence, dryland agriculture, the long time safety net of the poor. No amount of good governance and welfare payments to the poor can seem to solve the resulting hunger if the price of imported food continues to rise.

The combination of expensive food and deepening inequality means that hunger will persist even if Africa's leaders do everything "right".

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/05/201254115536921635.html

The San - again

Socialist Banner has sympathetically and repeatedly reported on the manner that the San Bushmen are being treated by the Botswana government.

In the early 1980s, diamonds were discovered in the reserve. Soon after, government ministers went into the reserve to tell the Bushmen living there that they would have to leave because of the diamond finds. In three big clearances, in 1997, 2002 and 2005, virtually all the Bushmen were forced out. Their homes were dismantled, their school and health post were closed, their water supply was destroyed and the people were threatened and trucked away. They now live in resettlement camps outside the reserve. Rarely able to hunt, and arrested and beaten when they do, they are dependent on government handouts. They are now gripped by alcoholism, boredom, depression, and illnesses such as TB and HIV/AIDS.

The forced relocation of indigenous tribespeople by the Botswanan government was condemned by US diplomats as a "special tragedy", leaked US state department cables reveal. After visiting New Xade in 2005, ambassador Huggins condemned the manner of the relocation, saying it was "clear that people have been dumped in economically absolutely unviable situations without forethought, and without follow-up support. The lack of imagination displayed on the part of the [Botswanan government] is breathtaking." He added that "the special tragedy of New Xade's dependent population is that it could have been avoided."

In 2006, Botswanan courts ruled the San could return to their land, but also decided the government did not have to provide certain key services. The San still have no access to the borehole. A hearing was held in June 2010 but the judge dismissed their application. They are now appealing against this decision.

the San

Socialist Banner has posted on a number of occasions about the plight of the San , the Kalahari Bushmen and makes no apologies for doing so again.

These weary Bushmen — four men, three women and an infant — were nearing the end of a two-day journey, walking their way toward water. Taoxaga was thirsty, and it angered and baffled him that he had to walk so far. Closer by was a borehole, the wellspring to underground water. But the government had sealed it up, and he supposed this was just another way to drive the Bushmen from the sandy home they had occupied for millenniums.

“The government says we are bad for the animals, but I was born here and the animals were born here, and we have lived together very well,” he said.

But most of the Bushmen have moved to dreary resettlement areas on the outskirts, where they wait in line for water, wait on benches at the clinic, wait around for something to do, wait for the taverns to open so they can douse their troubles with sorghum beer. Once among the most self-sufficient people on earth, many of them now live on the dole, waiting for handouts.

“If there was only some magic to free me into the past, that’s where I would go,” said Pihelo Phetlhadipuo, an elderly Bushman living in a resettlement area called Kaudwane. “I once was a free man, and now I am not.”

Botswana V Bushmen

Socialist Banner previously reported on the plight of the indigenous San people (Bushmen) being deprived of access to water by the Botswana government here . We now read that in desperation the Bushmen are taking legal measures to assert their basic human right to water. They are taking the government of Botswana to court over its refusal to allow them access to a water borehole on their land. The case is due to be heard at Botswana’s High Court in Lobatse on 9 June 2010.

Jumanda Gakelebone, a Bushman from the CKGR, explained "The High Court said we have the right to live on the land of our ancestors. Surely that includes the right to drink our water. Many Bushmen, especially the old people and the young are suffering from lack of water. It pains us that the animals and tourists on our land can drink our water to their heart’s content yet we go thirsty. We pray that the court will give us back our water."

It is claimed by Survival International and others that the Kalahari was being emptied so that tourists would have uninterrupted views of wildlife. The Botswana Tourism Board, a government body, won a World Travel and Tourism Council award which recognizes "dedication to and success in maintaining a programme of sustainable tourism management". Wilderness Safaris built a safari lodge on the ancestral land of the Bushmen of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve in Botswana, without consulting the Bushmen or obtaining their consent.The lodge, sporting a bar and swimming pool for tourists, is situated on the ancestral territory of the Bushmen who are being deprived of water.Survival director, Stephen Corry, yesterday said, "The Botswana Tourism Board is violating UN norms on indigenous peoples. If this is prize-winning ‘sustainable tourism’, it highlights the emerging conflict between tribal peoples and the way their lands are used to benefit rich tourists and the companies which service them..."

At the same time, diamond firms are understood to have the government’s support for fresh prospecting in the reserve, which is the size of Denmark. It has given the Gem Diamond company permission to open a mine in the reserve.

Botswana inequality

In Botswana , Dr Kenneth Dipholo of the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning has said that the richest 10 percent of the population controls 42 percent of the total national income. The poorest of 50 percent of the population share 17.4 percent of national wealth.

denying people water to live

World Water Day has just been , marking 8 years since the Gana and Gwi Bushmen of Botswana had access to a regular supply of water in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve.In 2002, the Botswana government cut off and sealed a borehole, which the Bushmen relied on for water, in an attempt to drive them out of the reserve. Despite the Botswana High Court’s 2006 ruling that the Bushmen have the constitutional right to live in the reserve, the government has refused to allow them to re-commission their borehole. It forces the Bushmen to make 300 mile round trips to fetch water, yet the government has allowed the opening of a safari lodge in the reserve, complete with a swimming pool for tourists, and has drilled new boreholes for wildlife only.

The government’s treatment of the Bushmen was recently condemned by the UN Special Rapporteur for indigenous peoples, who accused it of falling short of ‘the relevant international human rights standards’. He also found that those Bushmen who have returned to the reserve ‘face harsh and dangerous conditions due to a lack of access to water’

At least one woman has died from dehydration since the borehole was cut off.

Bushmen - the attempted genocide continues

We have posted before here about the harrassment and oppression of the indigenous peoples of southern Africa , the Bushmen . We sadly report that this is continuing .

The Bushmen of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve have been forced from their ancestral lands in a wave of evictions by the Botswana government. In 2006 they won an historic legal victory when Botswana's High Court ruled that their eviction was 'unlawful and unconstitutional'. Yet , since then the government has arrested more than 50 Bushmen for hunting to feed their families, and banned the Bushmen from using their water borehole during one of the fiercest droughts in years. Hundreds still languish in resettlement camps, unable or scared to return home. Survival’s director Stephen Corry said today, "The Botswana government has had nearly a year to implement the court’s ruling. It’s now clear it has no intention of doing so..."

There are 100,000 Bushmen in Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Angola. They are the indigenous people of southern Africa, and have lived there for tens of thousands of years. In the middle of Botswana lies the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, a reserve created to protect the traditional territory of the 5,000 Gana, Gwi and Tsila Bushmen (and their neighbours the Bakgalagadi), and the game they depend on.
In the early 1980s, diamonds were discovered in the reserve. Soon after, government ministers went into the reserve to tell the Bushmen living there that they would have to leave because of the diamond finds. In three big clearances, in 1997, 2002 and 2005, virtually all the Bushmen were forced out. Their homes were dismantled, their school and health post were closed, their water supply was destroyed and the people were threatened and trucked away. There is plans for a massive diamond mine worth $2.2 billion on the Bushmen’s land.

They now live in resettlement camps outside the reserve. Rarely able to hunt, and arrested and beaten when they do, they are dependent on government handouts. They are now gripped by alcoholism, boredom, depression, and illnesses such as TB and HIV/AIDS. Unless they can return to their ancestral lands, their unique societies and way of life will be destroyed, and many of them will die.

Details emerged of the torture and beating of a group of Bushmen in Kaudwane resettlement camp, Botswana. Fifteen men were arrested in late September for hunting, and at least ten of them were tortured. Police and wildlife guards took three of the men , made them run through the desert for several hours in high temperatures, following them in vehicles. They beat the three with sticks, kicked them, jumped on them and tightened car inner tubes around the necks . Another group of three were made to run through the desert in a separate incident. Other Bushmen were beaten with sticks, threatened, punched, slapped, held without food or water, and had handcuffs tightened around their wrists until they were forced to confess to hunting. A Bushman died in 2005 a few weeks after he was beaten and tortured by wildlife scouts.

Stephen Corry said , ‘Botswana’s police and wildlife guards have tortured or beaten at least 63 Bushmen for hunting over the past three years, and they’ve arrested 53 this year alone. Their policy couldn’t be clearer – to terrorise the Bushmen so that they’re too afraid to go home. It’s a policy that is both brutal, and doomed to failure.’

BUSHMEN AND THE PROGRESS OF CAPITALISM

Three stories of the ongoing tribulations of the Kalahari Bushmen in Botswana

1.

It has been estimated that the so-called Bushmen of the Kalahari have lived in southern Africa for at least 20,000 years, but that cuts no ice with the zealots hell-bent on the development of capitalism in that part of the world.

"The Bushmen of the Kalahari – among Africa’s last indigenous peoples – are on the verge of losing their ancestral homeland after the Government of Botswana stepped up a campaign to force them into squalid resettlement camps" (Times, 12 September). The government has sent heavily armed wildlife guards into the Central Kalahari Game reserve – an area that had been promised to the Bushmen "in perpetuity". Their aim is to remove some 200 to 250 Gana and Gwi who have returned there from the resettlement camps. The Times report continues: "Stephen Corry, director of Survival International, which has been highlighting the Bushmen’s plight, said: ‘The Government seems hell-bent on finishing them off this time. The situation is very urgent. Unless circumstances change through outside intervention, this could very well be the end of these particular people’".

The plight of the Gana and Gwi people is by no means unique. The development of capitalism crushes all the tribal societies it comes into contact with. In the past we have had the slaughter of the native Americans in the USA, the butchery of the Australian aborigines and more recently of the Yanomami in Northern Brazil. The concept of a tribal society that lives by gathering and hunting with no recourse to capitalism’s markets is anathema to a property-based social system.

The Botswana government has destroyed the tribal wells and banned hunting in its efforts to restrict tribal groups. The growth of farming and diamond mining probably lie behind the government’s recent actions. Some government ministers have hinted that the evictions are needed because deposits of diamonds have been found in the area, although the state diamond company, which is an offshoot of De Beers claim they are uneconomic to mine. "However, De Beers does not rule out mining them at a later date."

The development of capitalism in Africa must crush tribal communities just as it did in Europe and America . The only hope for a communal life-style is not a return to primitive tribal society, but the transformation of present day private property, profit-producing society into the new social system of world socialism.

2.

January 2007 , Bushmen began returning to their ancestral lands inside Botswana's largest game reserve this weekend, despite what their supporters describe as a heavy police presence and attempts to persuade them to stay in relocation camps. The Bushmen have lived in southern Africa for more than 20,000 years and are thought by some experts to be one of the oldest--if not the oldest--people on the planet, in genetic terms.

Basarwa tribesmen, also known as Bushmen, won a court order in December allowing them to return to land in the massive Central Kalahari Game Reserve, which, at 52,800 square kilometers, is larger than the nations of Denmark and Switzerland.In its ruling, Botswana's High Court called the government's eviction of the Basarwa "unlawful and unconstitutional" and said that they had the right to live on their ancestral land inside the reserve. The court also ruled that the Basarwa who live in Botswana have the right to hunt and gather in the reserve . But the harassment continues - the government continues to dispute the Bushmen's return, maintaining that only the 189 people who filed the lawsuit would be given automatic right of return with their children--well short of the 50,000 Basarwa who live in Botswana, 2,000 of whom say they want to go home. And officials also argue that tribesmen cannot take along domestic animals or other items that have become necessities for these descendants of hunter-gatherers.

According to Survival International, government officials forced nearly all of the Bushmen to leave the Central Kalahari Game Reserve in three separate events in 1997, 2002, and 2005. Their homes were dismantled, their school and health center were closed, and their water supply was destroyed. Botswana's government has sought to evict the local tribesman numerous times over the last 20 years, ostensibly to promote tourism and protect wildlife in the area, although many believe the main reason has more to do with diamond mining aspirations.

Life in relocation camps outside the reserve has been especially difficult for the Bushmen, Survival says. Rarely able to hunt, they have been dependent on government handouts while their society has become gripped by alcoholism, boredom, depression, and illnesses such as tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS .

"The government has given various different reasons for the evictions," Survival International's Ross told OneWorld. "The government said it's for the people's own good--that they can't live hunting and gathering in this day and age, that they need to become civilized. The president said if the Bushmen want to survive they'll have to change or they'll perish like the Dodo. They've also said it's because the game reserve is for animals and that the Bushmen are a danger to animals.What Survival believes is that the Bushmen were evicted because there were diamonds found under their land in the early 1980s,"

Ross said. "There isn't mining in the reserve at the moment but we believe the government wanted to get the Bushmen out of the way so future diamond mining could take place."
Ross noted much of Botswana's foreign exchange comes from partnerships with diamond companies like DeBeers.

"DeBeers has a concession in the Kalahari Game Reserve," she said, "so it has the right to explore for diamonds in the reserve. I would ask the government to explain that."

3.

The leader of the San Bushmen met British lawmakers in London on Wednesday in a bid to drum up support for his people's struggle to return to their land in the Kalahari desert in Botswana.
In December 2006, a court in Botswana's southern city of Lobatse ruled that hundreds of San Bushmen were wrongly forced out from the Kalahari Game Reserve after a marathon legal battle. The Bushmen maintain they were driven out of the Kalahari when vital supplies were cut off in order to make way for diamond mining -- a claim the world's top diamond producer has denied.
But despite the court victory, the Botswana government is trying to prevent them returning to their land, claimed Survival International, a London-based non-governmental organisation supporting tribal people. In addition, the attorney general has said that only Bushmen named in the court case can return, Survival said. Despite the court ruling that the evictions were illegal, the government has refused to help the Bushmen make the long journey home. It has also banned the Bushmen from taking their small herds of goats back to their land. Since the court ruling, Bushman hunters have been arrested, beaten and held for days without food.

The government of Botswana has set down conditions for travel to the country by a UN human-rights spokesperson in what critics say is part of a concerted campaign to cover up the state's shoddy treatment of the San Bushmen. The government invoked a special clause of the constitution in requiring the UN special rapporteur on indigenous peoples, Mexican Rodolfo Stavenhagen, to get a visa to visit Botswana, said Survival International, the British-based human rights group. Most visitors to Botswana merely require a visa stamp in their passport on entry to the country. The same restrictions were imposed in March on 17 individuals including four Survival staff, BBC world affairs editor John Simpson and other journalists and human rights activists, most of whom had taken an interest in the eviction of the Kalahari Bushmen .

Sesana said , 'We Bushmen won our court case, and this made us feel strong again. But now the President is ignoring Botswana's own court. I am asking people in Britain to please help us, because people are dying in the places where we have been forced to live.'
Sesana will also go to Downing Street to deliver a letter from the Bushmen to Tony Blair expressing their dismay at the British government's support for the evictions.

About 100,000 San live in the region: 50,000 in Botswana, 4,500 in South Africa, 38,000 in Namibia, 1,600 in Zambia and 1,200 in Zimbabwe, according to the Working Group of Indigenous Minorities in Southern Africa (WIMSA), based in the Namibian capital of Windhoek.