Botswana Bushmen's plea to De Beers and BHP Billiton
Botswana's Gana and Gwi 'Bushmen' are asking De Beers and BHP Billiton not to mine on their land until their rights to return to it and live on it in peace are respected.
Botswana's Gana and Gwi 'Bushmen' are asking De Beers and BHP Billiton not to mine on their land until their rights to return to it and live on it in peace are respected.
The judgment earlier this month in the Richtersveld case highlights once more the issue of racial discrimination in Botswana.
In an astonishing slip, Botswana's Foreign Minister last week admitted that his government had relocated the Bushmen to 'where we want them to be.'
On 14 October 2003, in one of the most historic court judgments ever made in favour of Indigenous peoples, the Constitutional Court of South Africa ruled that an Indigenous people had both communal land ownership and mineral rights over their territory.
Five European Heads of Mission [Ambassadors] to Botswana recently produced a report on the Bushmen's relocation. All Survival's attempts to see a copy of this report have been rebuffed.
A motion tabled in the UK parliament, supporting the rights of the Gana and Gwi Bushmen of Botswana, has been signed so far by 42 MPs.
The European Parliament has this month adopted strong new resolutions supporting Indigenous peoples' rights in Africa.
London, 19 August 2003: Thousands of Gana and Gwi 'Bushmen' have been forcibly evicted from their ancestral lands in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR), Botswana, reports The Ecologist.