Paul Olivier
The 13 Gana and Gwi Bushmen who are appearing in the magistrate’s court in Lethlakane, Botswana, on charges of illegal hunting, say they were tortured by wildlife officials who were trying to drive them off their ancestral land.
The hunters, who went on trial on Monday, are all from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve village of Molapo. In testimony collected by the international tribal watchdog organisation, Survival International, the Bushmen described how wildlife officials came into their village in August 2000 and subjected them to a six-day orgy of violence and torture.
Found guilty, they could face up to five years in jail. In sworn affidavits, they tell horror stories of how they had been tied to trees that were set alight to make them admit to hunting illegally.
Shackled to the front of the officers’ vehicles, they say, they were continuously beaten and interrogated for three days. In spite of having lived by hunting and gathering in the reserve for 20 000 years, the Botswana government is now trying to force the Bushmen out of the area in order to mine diamonds at Ghope.
“The government’s objective is to make the Bushmen’s hunting-and-gathering way of life impossible and force them into resettlement camps such as New Xadi on the outskirts of the reserve,” says Survival International director Stephen Corry.
“It is the accusers who are guilty in both law and international opinion. The beaten and tortured Bushmen should not be in the dock, but rather the government of Botswana, that is guilty of violating the human rights of the Bushmen.
“The case against the Bushmen should be dropped now and their land given back to them,” said Corry.
The reserve was proclaimed a safe haven for the Bushmen by the British colonial government in the 1930s a last vestige where they could hunt and gather according to their tradition dating back thousands of years.
Gakeitsiwe Gaorapelwe, one of the hunters on trial, described how he was dragged into his hut and beaten by wildlife officials. His clothes were torn off his body and he was forced to stand naked in front of his family.
“The wildlife officials took off their epaulettes and threw me to the ground. They jumped on my back with their boots on. My daughter was crying thinking the officials were going to kill me, and then they threw her and her 10-month-old baby to the ground. They dragged her naked on the ground and the child was seriously hurt,” he says in his affidavit.
Another hunter, Thekiso Thaadintshao, said he had shot a gemsbok according to his hunting licence. He was then handcuffed and forced to admit that he had, in fact, illegally hunted eland.
“They are doing this to us to drive us off our ancestral land. Recently, during the elections, we were told to vote for the government and to go to New Xade for development. The land in the [reserve] belonged to my great grandparents and not the government. We are suffering a lot because the government stops us from hunting and we cannot feed our families,” said Thaadintshao.
Survival International can be contacted at: [email protected] or http://www. survival-international.org
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