The Botswana government continues to sustain substantial public relations damage in the legal battle being waged against it by the San people it displaced from their ancestral home in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR).
Recently Rudolfo Stavenhagen, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms of Indigenous People, said the government should have consulted the San before moving them in 2002.
Stavenhagen, who plans to visit the displaced people in the facilities specially constructed for them by the authorities, was careful not to pronounce on the case currently before the Lobatse High Court.
Nevertheless, his assertion amounts to an accusation that the Botswana government has, at best, behaved insensitively.
Claiming the San were hunting certain animals out in the CKGR, the Botswana authorities cut off their water and power supplies inside the park and stopped providing food for children. The San were moved to facilities provided by the authorities, which argue that they are better equipped to provide health and education.
Assisted by NGO Survival International the San have mounted a legal battle. The NGO has also led a campaign against De Beers, alleging that the San have been moved to make way for diamond mining.
In the Lobatse High Court this week, that argument took a knock, with a number of defendants admitting that diamond mining is not the root cause of their eviction.