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/ 19 January 2007
Botswana President Festus Mogae has met with a small number of Bushmen in an effort to persuade them not to return to their life of hunting and gathering in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. Only about 100 of the 2 000 Bushmen in New Xade attended Thursday’s meeting with the president.
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/ 15 December 2006
Botswana’s government on Thursday grudgingly accepted a High Court order to allow the country’s last hunter-gatherers to live in their ancestral lands in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, but attached tough conditions likely to frustrate the return. The court on Wednesday said the Basarwa were wrongly forced off the land.
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/ 3 December 2006
About 150 members of the main opposition Botswana National Front held a protest march on Saturday against government moves to relocate Bushmen from their land in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. Botswana’s high court is expected to rule on December 13 on a legal challenge by the Bushmen against their eviction.
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/ 9 September 2006
A three-judge panel said on Friday it would rule on December 13 on a plea by the Basarwa, also known as Bushmen, to stay on ancestral homelands that also harbour vast mineral and diamond potential. The suit, the longest running legal battle in Botswana’s post-colonial history, followed the government’s attempt to evict the Basarwa from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve.
Botswana’s police commissioner said on Tuesday that officers had fired rubber bullets to disperse a group of about 35 Bushmen protesting their eviction from ancestral lands in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. The Basarwa tribesmen had been trying to break through blockades and enter the reserve on Saturday, police commissioner Edwin Batshu said.
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/ 3 September 2005
Botswana’s government on Friday announced the temporary closure of southern and central parts of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, saying this is necessary to contain an outbreak of contagious disease that endangers wildlife. But Survival International said the real reason is to restrict the movement of Basarwa tribesmen.
The 13-member Southern African Development Community (SADC) is facing mounting international pressure to act against Zimbabwe, where the destruction of townships and markets has left an estimated 700 000 people without homes, livelihoods or both, according to a United Nations assessment.
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/ 27 February 2005
A dozen HIV-positive women donned flowing evening gowns and glittering jewellery in Gaborone, Botswana, on Saturday to compete in a beauty pageant aimed at fighting the stigma that still surrounds the deadly virus in this Aids-ravaged Southern African country. Botswana has one of the world’s highest rates of HIV infection.