The struggle for the ancestral land of the Basarwa Khoisan in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve in Botswana has resurfaced with a desperate cry for help from a resident.
The unnamed woman gave a letter to an Italian tourist, who made it public. The tourist did not want to be identified, because she wants to return to Botswana.
”We ask you to tell other countries about this situation that there is no freedom in this country,” she wrote.
Botswana’s government has cut the water supply for the 14 remaining Khoisan in the village of Gugamma in the reserve for almost eight months. They are also not allowed to hunt, gather food or collect firewood in the reserve.
”To go to Salajwe to get water riding a donkey takes about two to four days, because it is far and dangerous because of lions,” she wrote.
”We don’t want to move from here because this is our area.”
The Khoisan are the original inhabitants of Southern Africa, but have no ownership rights to their ancestral land. In 1997 Botswana evicted many Khoisan from the reserve and resettled them in urban areas. Since then the government has been trying to evict the Basarwa from the reserve to relocation camps so it can develop tourism in the reserve.
Sophie Thomas of Survival International, which supports the Khoisan struggle, says life is almost impossible in the reserve.
”Even people entering the reserve are not allowed to take in water for … the Bushmen communities,” she said.
It has recently become increasingly difficult for NGOs supporting the community to enter the reserve.
”This may be an attempt by the government to stop the world knowing what is really going on there,” Thomas said.
Thato Raphaka, coordinator of Remote Area Development Programmes with Botswana’s Ministry of Local Government, says the reserve is accessible to anyone with a permit. He says it is ”not at all” difficult for organisations to get permits.
”Survival International is the most malicious organisation that I have seen in this world,” Raphaka said.
But Survival International is not the only organisation that is critical of Botswana’s policy on the Khoisan. The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination expressed concern about the discriminatory character of laws in Botswana that only recognise Tswana-speaking groups. A report last August severely criticised the government.
”Especially the Basarwa-San peoples are reported to suffer from cultural, social, economic and political exclusion; do not enjoy group rights to land; and do not participate in the House of Chiefs.”
Raphaka says the UN committee’s statement that there would be ”prejudice against Basarwa” is wrong.
”Within the remote area dweller settlements there are economic empowerment schemes specifically aimed at alleviating Basarwa from poverty,” he said.
In her letter, the woman from Gugamma wrote that people in the relocation camps were forced to eat dogs because of hunger.
Last month Margaret Nasha, a former minister of local government, reportedly told resettled Khoisan that they were free to return to their land. But those who tried to return to the reserve were stopped at roadblocks and were fined by the Botswana police, said Thomas.
Raphaka said he has not heard of the roadblocks. He also denies that the Khoisan were told they could go back to the reserve.
”It has to be noted, though, that like any other place in the country the police may mount roadblocks for the purpose known to themselves,” he said.
Thomas believes that most of the 700 Khoisan who lived in the reserve before the second round of forced evictions in February want to return.