The Botswana San/Basarwa/Bushmen communities from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR) have succeeded in dragging the Botswana government to court to overturn their forced removal from the reserve. The case is set for hearing at the Botswana High Court from July 5 to 30.
The San claim the reserve as their ancestral land as indigenous people of the country, while the government maintains that all tribes in the country are indigenous. The Gana and Gwi people say the state forcibly evicted them from their ancestral land and that such action constitutes gross human rights violations and is against international law — specifically the provisions under the United Nations Charter and the ILO Convention 169, which guarantees protection of indigenous people, their land and the resources on it, including mineral wealth.
Members of the San communities and their representative NGOs believe the removals are linked to the discovery of diamonds inside the reserve at a place called Gope, where successful test drillings have been carried out.
According to London-based NGO Survival International (SI): ”The number of diamond exploration licences given out by the government in the CKGR has increased dramatically since the communities were evicted.”
The government denies the communities were forcibly removed to make way for future diamond mining activities. Head of Research and Public Relations at the Department of Foreign Affairs Clifford Maribe says the removals were based on two factors.
Firstly, modern economic activities — be it hunting, arable and/or pastoral agriculture — have been deemed by the state to be incompatible with the primary purpose of the parks and reserves, which is to conserve Botswana’s wildlife heritage for its use in a sustainable and beneficial manner for all citizens of Botswana.
Secondly, owing to limited resources at the disposal of the state, it has been difficult to extend social services to the country’s remote rural settlements. ”People have thus been encouraged to move into settlements with schools, health clinics and other training and vocational opportunities,” says Maribe.
At the same time Maribe says: ”It is possible for a previous deposit to, over time, become economic as a result of changes in mineral prices, technological advancements and lower production costs.” University of Botswana professor of political science Kenneth Good says the forced removals are reminiscent of the coerced resettlement policies of repressive colonial and quasi-colonial situations — such as the Scottish Highlands Clearances, the settlement of colonial Australia, French Algeria and apartheid South Africa.
He says the San communities have been relocated on several occasions to make way for the intensification of cattle production, the promotion of wildlife and tourism, for bureaucratic convenience and the exploitation of minerals. ”In the past official policy has been that the San have no real land-use rights and could be told to move out by anyone who had been awarded such rights by the state.”
Good says mining exploration concessions intensified inside the reserve at the same time as the removals were taking place. SI is concerned about the great secrecy with which De Beers, as an interested company in Gope holding a retention licence, has been speculating — and says that only a handful of senior people in the government know the mining potential of the CKGR.
The NGO cites a statement in which mining company African Diamonds, which says: ”Ground geophysical surveys suggest that some of the kimberlites may be bigger than reported by De Beers.” SI maintains that De Beers’s intention might not be to mine in the CKGR for years until other mines are exhausted — keeping the find in the ground and out of reach of other mining companies, which might be just as profitable as actually extracting the diamonds.
SI says many of the new concessions have been secured by BHP Billiton, the world’s biggest mining company, which has chosen complicated mechanism to do so without risking a collision with local populations.
It also says the International Finance Corporation has invested more than $2-million in the Kalahari Diamonds Corporation and its subsidiary, Godi. Most of the other concessions and retention licences have been secured by De Beers Prospecting Botswana. — Â