Africa’s oldest inhabitants are on the march. It was announced last week that the Kalahari Bushmen are returning to court in a new battle with the government of Botswana. The ancient tribe claim they are denied access to a water borehole on their land, one of the driest regions on the planet.
The Bushmen won a court case in 2006 against their eviction from a game park in the central Kalahari, hailed as a victory for indigenous peoples around the world. Since then, hundreds have returned to their home villages.
But the Bushmen — the oldest tribe in Southern Africa, going back about 30 000 years — claim that the government capped a borehole close to their villages and is refusing to reopen it, or to allow companies to be contracted to sink pipes for fresh water sources. Instead they are forced to truck in water from the nearest settlement with a public borehole, 480km away.
The case, due to begin this week, is the latest dent in the reputation of Botswana, feted by Barack Obama, the US president, and others as a beacon of good governance and economic growth in Africa. Among its harshest critics is Survival International, a British charity campaigning for minority peoples’ rights. “In desperation, the Bushmen are going to court to assert their basic human right to water,” it said last week. “At the same time as denying Bushmen water, the government has drilled new boreholes for wildlife and allowed the opening of a tourist lodge in the reserve, complete with bar and swimming pool.” Survival International quoted the UN’s top official on indigenous rights, Professor James Anaya, as condemning Botswana for its treatment of the Bushmen, stating that it falls short of the “relevant international human rights standards”. The charity also recently condemned a decision by the world travel and tourism council to present a prestigious award to the Botswana tourism board for “a programme of sustainable tourism management”.
In recent years Ian Khama, Botswana’s president — a former military chief of general staff who was born in Chertsey, Surrey, and educated at Sandhurst — has faced growing accusations of autocracy and intolerance of dissent. Last year the Law Society of South Africa said that human rights lawyers in Botswana were being prevented from seeing their clients. It linked the Botswana Defence Force with up to 12 killings of criminal suspects. The unrest reached a watershed last week, when a new political party was launched after breaking away from Khama’s ruling Botswana Democratic Party, which has been in power for about 44 years, citing strong differences with the president.
The split came after some MPs were suspended last month for what Khama, son of Botswana’s founding father, Seretse Khama, described as indiscipline. The move prompted speculation that a snap election would be held. Such a contest would be the biggest test yet of Botswana’s claim to be a model for Africa. – guardian.co.uk