The European Parliament will be asked to pressurise Botswana to immediately restore water supplies to the Basarwa people (Bushmen) still living in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, a MP said on Monday. The Botswana government will also be urged to allow the Basarwa and others of their group who have moved out of the reserve, to return and be given jobs.
Water supplies were cut after a relocation exercise which the government said was to allow tourist developments in the reserve (CKGR). It also said it was too expensive to continue providing social benefits and water to the more than 500 people.
The government continued to insist relocation was voluntary, but a member of the European Parliament who has spent the last three days talking to the Basarwa in the CKGR, on Monday said they were forced to move in the face of threatened eviction by troops. The few that remain were in life threatening situations.
”They are in pretty desperate circumstances, lack of water is their main concern. What little they have is used over and over again, for washing their bodies, for washing clothes. It has become filthy. ‘We are thirsty and we are going to die,’ they told me,” Richard Howitt (MEP, UK, Labour) said.
”I intend to table a question Tuesday to ask the EU to explore ways in which the Bushmen can be helped to develop inside the CKGR, and agree to fund it.”
Howitt wanted Botswana President Festus Mogae and his Minister of Local Government (Margaret Nasha) to honour a promise to him that they would re-examine a draft proposal for the management of the CKGR.
The proposal included the reinstatement of provisions for the Basarwa to take part, inside the reserve, in community tourism and other projects. The humanitarian issue of water supplies was also on the agenda.
The management proposal had not been totally rejected, but the suggestions relating to development of the Basarwa had been removed.
”President Mogae told me, ‘It is part of our democracy that once we have a proposal, it remains on the table. We are willing to listen. We do not say that we know all the answers,’,” Howitt said.
Attempts to relocate the Basarwa outside of the CKGR have been ongoing for several years. Some have accepted to move for compensation.
In September 2001, the government warned those remaining, which it said totalled 500, they could stay but that services including water would be cut. It said the services of 50 000 pula per month were too expensive to continue.
Earlier this year the government said all but 34, now down to 17, had moved. Howitt said there were about 50 ”holding out”.
”A conservative estimate, there could well be more.”
Howitt said he would tell the EU Parliament that cost was not the reason for the termination of services, nor that any of these latest moves of Basarwa out of the reserve were voluntary.
”The cost of trucking in water was 50 000 pula a month, to sink one borehole would cost only 65 000 pula, this disproves cost was a reason for the resettlement,” he said. – Sapa