Botswana’s Kalahari Bushmen are seeking the support of Hollywood actress Angelina Jolie in their fight to reclaim their ancestral lands, a London-based organisation supporting them said on Thursday.
Jolie — a United Nations Children’s Fund ambassador — is currently in neighbouring Namibia, having recently given birth to a daughter, Shiloh, her first child with fellow actor Brad Pitt.
”We have heard that you are very interested in human rights,” reads the open letter to Jolie from Bushman organisation First People of the Kalahari and released by Survival International. ”The government is trying to destroy us and we are asking for your help in our battle to save our people.”
Survival International, which helps tribal people ”defend their lives, protect their lands and determine their own futures”, has waged a 30-year campaign in support of the San Bushmen.
It maintains they were driven out of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve — one of the world’s largest sanctuaries — to make way for diamond mining, a claim the government has denied.
The government in the capital, Gaborone, has maintained that it resettled the Bushmen in villages where it could provide them with water and social amenities.
Writing before the birth, the Bushmen extended their ”blessing and good luck” to Jolie on her pregnancy.
They added: ”Those who remain inside the game reserve are not allowed to hunt and gather and have no access to water.
”The health situation is bad in the resettlement camps. Young people are getting HIV and are drinking. This is not the way of our people. The death rate is now high.”
About 240 San Bushmen have taken the Botswana government to court to secure the legal right to return to the reserve they have called home for the past 20 000 years.
Once numbering millions, roughly 100 000 San are left in Southern Africa, with almost half of those — 48 000 — in Botswana. Others are spread across Angola, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe. — Sapa-AFP