The Botswana government on Thursday dismissed as ”suspect and mischievous” testimony given by a key witness in support of a court claim by the San Bushmen seeking to return to the Central Kalahari Game Reserve.
Australian George Silberbauer, who was commissioner for the district under British colonial rule, testified before the Botswana high court earlier this week that he helped create the reserve in 1961 to protect the San.
But state counsel Sidney Pilane, who cross-examined Silberbauer on Thursday, said the purpose of creating the game reserve was to keep the San Bushmen away from the white settlers who were migrating to Ghanzi in northwest Botswana.
”The evidence is suspect and mischievous,” said Pilane.
”The Basarwa were a nuisance to farmers,” he added, using the Tswana term for the San.
A group of 243 San Bushmen are challenging their relocation from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, one of the world’s largest sanctuaries and an area they have been calling home for the past 20 000 years.
Defense lawyers began arguing their case before the high court on Monday following an inspection by the judges of settlements from where they had been evicted since 1997.
The hearings are taking place in a makeshift court setup in a hostel in New Xade, a settlement built outside the reserve to house the relocated Bushmen.
The Botswana government controversially decided in 2002 to cut off water, food and health services to the hunter gatherers due to costs and regrouped them into these settlements.
London-based Survival International, which has been waging a 30-year campaign in support of the rights of the San, maintains that they were driven out of the Kalahari to make way for diamond mining, a claim the government has denied.
A former British colony called Bechuanaland, Botswana is among the world’s largest producer of diamonds, which contribute 70% of its hard currency earnings.
The San took the government to court in April 2002, seeking an order declaring it illegal to cut off services to the Kalahari reserve but the case was dismissed on a technicality.
Last month, the Bushmen won the right to have their claim heard again before the Botswana high court.
Once numbering millions, there are roughly 100 000 San left in southern Africa with almost half of those — 48 000 — in Botswana.
Others are spread across Angola, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe, according to rights groups.
The state claims that there are now only 17 Bushmen living in the reserve but rights groups say 200 have gone back in defiance of Gaborone’s campaign to resettle them outside. — Sapa-AFP