Tourism Boycott suspended
In late 2010 Survival launched an international boycott of Botswana tourism ‘until the government ends a brutal campaign of persecution against Kalahari Bushmen.’
Shortly after we launched a petition calling on Wilderness Safaris to move its luxury lodge off Bushman land – in three months it had 30,000 signatures. The Bushmen won a great victory in January 2011 when Botswana’s Court of Appeal confirmed their right to access water on their land. In light of this we have suspended the boycott and the petition, for now.
Here’s what Wilderness Safaris says:
‘Our journeys change people’s lives’
Wilderness Safaris claims that its trips ‘change people’s lives’. This is certainly true in the case of its Kalahari Plains Camp, which was built without consulting the Bushmen on whose ancestral lands the lodge sits.
Wilderness Safaris opened the lodge after signing a lease with the government which hopes to develop tourism in the reserve. However, the lease does not acknowledge the Bushmen’s rights to use and occupy their traditional territories, as established in the 2006 High Court ruling.
‘Various Bushmen clans have thrived in this area for centuries’
Wilderness Safaris has located the Kalahari Plains Camp within the traditional territory of the Gana Bushman band called the Kgei.
The boundaries of the territory were agreed at a meeting between the Bushmen’s organization, First People of the Kalahari, and the government’s Department for Wildlife and National Parks in 2001.
Bushman boy, Botswana. © Fiona Watson/SurvivalWhen the High Court ruled that the Bushmen have a legal and constitutional right to occupy their traditional territories, it meant that they have the right to use and occupy all their territories, including the land on which the camp is situated and the surrounding area it uses for game drives.
‘Water is the most precious commodity in the desert’
Wilderness Safaris knows that ‘water is the most precious commodity in the desert’. It also knows that the Bushmen are struggling without access to water, a fact highlighted recently by the UN Special Rapporteur for indigenous peoples who found that Bushmen in the reserve ‘face harsh and dangerous conditions due to a lack of access to water’. However, this did not stop them from opening a swimming pool at the camp.
‘We seek to actively engage local [Bushmen] people and to integrate them into the potentially mutually beneficial ecotourism industry’
(From sister company Safari Adventure )
Bushman woman. © SurvivalDespite opening the camp without consulting them, Wilderness Safaris claims that it does engage with the Bushmen. However, there is nothing ‘mutually beneficial’ about the Kalahari Plains Camp, which allows its guests to sip cocktails by a swimming pool while the Bushmen are struggling to find enough water to survive on their lands and banned from using their water borehole.
‘A nature walk with these knowledgable Bushmen… will not only enhance your safari, it might just change your approach to life!’
Wilderness Safaris uses the Bushmen to promote the camp, offering its guests an interpretive ‘Bushman walk’. Guests to the camp may be interested to know that while their walk allows them to gain ‘insights into the unique culture of this fascinating people’, the Bushmen are forced to walk up to 300 miles to fetch water.
