A ruling on Botswana’s longest-running and most expensive legal battle brought by Kalahari Bushmen against the government will be made next month, Survival International said on Wednesday.
The case was filed after the Botswana government evicted the Bushmen from land in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve in 2002, said spokesperson Miriam Ross.
”The Bushmen are fighting for their right to live on their land and to hunt and gather freely there.”
At least 12% of the original 239 applicants had died in government resettlement camps since the case was filed, she said.
Survival International is a London-based international organisation that supports tribal people and is helping the Bushmen in the case.
This year, 135 more applicants asked to be added to the original list.
”We are feeling it in our hearts, waiting for the court case to resume, and if we win it we can go back,” Bushman Sellalefatse Gaexhoro said in the statement.
Earlier this year a full page advert was taken out in a magazine asking actor Leonardo DiCaprio to help their cause, Ross said.
DiCaprio stars in a film on the diamond conflict in Africa, which will be released in the United States just before the ruling.
In their appeal, the Bushmen said they were evicted after the Botswana government found diamonds on their land.
Ross said the case was the longest and most expensive in Botswana’s legal history.
Ruling will take place on December 13.
”Together with their children they number [about] 1 000 people,” said Ross. — Sapa