Final argument over Botswana Bushmen’s rights to ancestral land will be presented in court later in August, Survival International said on Wednesday.
The organisation, which has been helping the Bushmen to fight for their rights to hunt and gather in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, said in a statement that the last evidence was heard in May.
Lawyers are due to present their final arguments in the last week of August and a judgment is expected soon afterwards.
”We are very happy that at long last the end of our court case is in sight,” a spokesperson for the Bushmen said.
”While it has been going on more than 20 of the original applicants have died in the relocation camps.
”We hope justice will come soon before more of us die.”
The Bushmen were evicted from their land in the game reserve in February 2002 and have been fighting since April that year to regain their rights.
The case was first thrown out of court on a technicality, but an appeal was launched and the Bushmen won the right to have the case heard.
It started in July 2004 in the Botswana High Court.
It has been the longest and most-expensive court case in Botswana’s legal history, despite involving the country’s poorest inhabitants, London-based Survival International said. — Sapa