A drilling company has started operations for diamond exploration in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, an area that Bushmen believe they were evicted from, Survival International said on Thursday.
TH Drilling confirmed to two members of the First People of the Kalahari organisation that it had started operations in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, Survival International spokesperson Miriam Ross said.
Survival International lobbies for Bushmen to return to their ancestral land.
”The Bushmen have said again and again that they were evicted from their land because diamonds were found there.”
The Botswana government has denied this but Ross said the announcement of drilling in Gope, from where Bushmen were evicted, emphasised the truth of the Bushmen’s claims.
”Survival International believes there should be no drilling or diamonds exploration on the land of the Gana and Gwi Bushmen as long as they themselves are not allowed to return home.”
Ross said that most Bushmen from the reserve now lived at government resettlement camps and a few dozen still lived in the reserve.
TH Drilling appeared to be operating on behalf of Petra Diamonds which had also confirmed that they were starting a large exploration and drilling programme inside the reserve, she said.
Botswana is the world’s number one producer of diamonds by value.
Petra has identified possible diamond-bearing rock in the Gope area which is a former Bushmen community, Ross said.
”As the diamond companies move in, the Bushmen who inhabited the land for thousands of years are starting to succumb to Aids and other illnesses.”
The issue made headlines earlier this year when Leonardo DiCaprio was asked to help the cause. DiCaprio is the star of a film on the diamond conflict in Sierra Leone which will be released shortly.
The Bushmen are fighting relocation from their ancestral homelands in the reserve in Botswana’s longest running post-colonial legal battle.
A ruling is expected next month. – Sapa