/ 16 August 2001

BOTSWANA HALTS AID TO TRIBE IN GAME RESERVE

THE Botswana government will cut services to members of the nomadic Basarwa tribe living in the southern African country’s largest game reserve because it has become too expensive to maintain them, a minister said on Wednesday. Assistant Local Government Minister Gladys Kokorwe said services to the nomads, living in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, would be cut in January, forcing them to move off the land. “Because there are people who refuse to leave the reserve, government spent 55 000 pula ($9 600) every month catering for such people. This has become unsustainable,” Kokorwe said. Some 560 Basarwa nomads — who belong to the San or Bushmen people of Southern Africa’s desert regions — chose to stay inside the park as the government resettled 2,160 others from mid-1997. – AFP