Botswana government targets Bushman hunters
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’.
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.
Hundreds still languish in resettlement camps, unable or scared to return home.
One of the ways the Botswana government is stopping more Bushmen returning to the Central Kalahari Game Reserve is cutting off their water supply.
Before the evictions, the Bushmen got water from a borehole in the community of Mothomelo. A tanker carried water to the other communities once a month.
During the evictions the government stopped this service, removed all the water storage tanks and took the borehole’s pump, without which it is useless.
Many Bushmen have returned to the reserve, both before and after their court victory. They get water from ‘pans’ – rain-filled depressions in the sand, and from melons and roots. In the dry season, life is extremely difficult, and at least one woman has already died of starvation and thirst.
The government has banned the Bushmen from re-opening and using the borehole, even though the Bushmen have offered to pay the costs. It has given no explanation for its ban.
It has, however, allowed the diamond company in the reserve to use all the water it needs, and has even indicated that safari companies can sink new boreholes to make waterholes for wildlife.
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