Who are they?
Botswana is home to eight major tribes whose rights, leaders and
languages are recognised in the Constitution. The Wayeyi, or Bayeyi,
are one of the many peoples of Botswana who fall outside this group.
The Wayeyi are a Bantu people who live in the Okavango Delta area of
the northern Kalahari whose lives and livelihoods are regulated by the
flooding and receding of the Okavango River.
How do they live?
The Wayeyi are cattle-rearing people whose villages are sited on high
ground away from the flooding of the Okavango River. They grow
drought-resistant crops such as millet and sorghum and rear cows, goats
and sheep for their milk, skins and meat. During the annual flooding of
the Okavango Delta, fishing is of high importance but hunting and
gathering are of diminishing importance to the Wayeyi, especially due
to the increasingly severe hunting restrictions. The craftmanship of
their canoes, drums, furniture and jewellery is highly sophisticated,
and many women sell basketwork and beaded items.
What problems do they face?
When David Livingstone visited the Wayeyi in 1857, the people were
subjugated as serfs of the ruling Tswana-speaking Batawana tribe.
Within the current Botswana constitution, the Wayeyi are still
discriminated against, along with over 20 other cultural groups who are
outside of the eight main tribes. These ëminor' tribes can be removed
from their ancestral land without compensation, cannot elect a leader
from their own community and cannot educate their children in their
mother-tongue. The Botswana government continues to pursue a policy of
assimilating the ëminor' tribes into Setswana culture, denying these
peoples equal rights in law. The suspicious death of the Wayeyi Chief
Shikati Kamanakao was ënegligently' investigated, according to the
forensic report. This caused great distress among the Wayeyi who had
taken legal proceedings to get their chief elected and respected on a
similar level to the chiefs of the eight major tribes of Botswana. The
Wayeyi people still have rulers imposed by a non-Wayeyi chief and their
language is still banned from use on radio, education, and other fora.
Their history and culture is excluded from the school curriculum.
Another serious problem is that the Botswana government has been trying
to convince the Wayeyi to move from the Okavango Delta. The government
has given various reasons for the move, but the Wayeyi are determined
to stay in their ancestral lands.
'Relocation is a silent genocide on the culture of the people and
their economic activities; it ushers them into poverty and dependence.'
Lydia Nyati Ramahobo.