Kenneth Good, professor of political science studies at the University of Botswana for 15 years, has been ordered to leave Botswana. Late last Friday three men arrived at his home with handcuffs to inform him that he had 48 hours to leave the country.
Botswana's President Mogae told a UK audience yesterday that he would not allow the Bushmen to return to their homes in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. 'I cannot allow them to go back,' he said, prejudging the court case currently in progress.
Three years after the Botswana government evicted the Gana and Gwi Bushmen from their ancestral land, over 200 Bushmen have returned home in spite of attempts to stop them, while Botswana faces increasing criticism in the international press.
On the eve of the three-year anniversary of the eviction of the Gana and Gwi Bushmen from their land in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, six Bushmen have been heavily fined for hunting to feed their families.
Botswana's high court has heard how government officials evicted a dying man from his home in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, and then returned to tell his sons that they would not see their father unless they agreed to be relocated.
On January 17 the historic court case brought by the Bushmen against the Botswana government resumes.
Bushmen who were evicted by the government from their homes in the Kalahari are braving exhaustion and starvation to return to their land.
Gana Bushman Roy Sesana has appealed to the UK's black population to support his people's fight to return to their land.
In what is presumably an attempt to deflect attention from the controversy surrounding its reaction to the eviction of the Gana and Gwi Bushmen of Botswana, De Beers is sponsoring the launch of a new book about the Bushmen of southern Africa.
In an astonishing reversal of government policy, Botswana's President Festus Mogae has told British MPs that Bushmen are free to hunt in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve.