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/ 24 November 2007
Botswana’s government denied on Friday accusations it was preventing Bushmen from returning to their ancestral lands despite a court ruling last year granting them that right. The Bushmen have accused the government of refusing to transport them back, let them hunt or supply them with water.
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/ 7 November 2007
Two of Africa’s most respected elder statesmen, Botswana’s former president Ketumile Masire and Mozambican ex-leader Joaquim Chissano, believe the continent is finally shedding its reputation as a theatre of conflict and corrupt governance.
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/ 26 October 2007
Gaborone businessman Thlomamo Patrick Dibeela has little sympathy for his Zimbabwean narrator as he listens to his tales of arrest and assault at the hands of the security services in Botswana. ”You don’t have a permit. You are a border jumper,” he tells Morris Mahlangu Lorenzo.
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/ 13 October 2007
Botswana President Festus Mogae hosted his counterparts from South Africa and Namibia at the opening on Friday of a new border crossing to allow for easier movement between the three countries. The crossing is situated in a desert area where the borders of Botswana, South Africa and Namibia meet.
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/ 6 September 2007
Its sleepy nature was an essential ingredient to the book, but tourist bosses are hoping a film version of <i>The No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency</i> will provide a shot in the arm to Botswana’s laidback capital. Oscar-winning director Anthony Minghella has brought a rare bustle to Gaborone since he and his crew arrived 10 weeks ago.
Hosts Botswana upset Angola to win Sunday’s Cosafa Castle Cup Group C final with a 3-1 victory on penalties following a goalless draw after 90 minutes. Goalkeeper Modiri Marumo was the hero in the shoot-out as his saves denied Angola, who played in the 2006 World Cup finals.
Botswana’s government came to the defence on Friday of the makers of Top Gear after the BBC motoring show was accused by environmentalists of damaging the famed Makgadikgadi salt pans during filming. The show had been widely criticised earlier this month for driving an assortment of vehicles across the sun-baked salt flats.
Botswana is pinning its Hollywood hopes on a new film based on the bestselling fiction series The No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. In a controversial move, the government has gambled -million to promote the Southern African country’s star power to movie buffs around the globe.
South African actress, poet and television personality Lebo Mashile has won the 2006 Pan-African book prize, the Noma Award, for her first published collection of poems. Mashile’s poetry collection, In A Ribbon Of Rhythm, published in 2005, scooped the award late on Thursday in the Botswana capital, Gaborone.
Botswana, better known for its dazzling diamonds and abundant wildlife, is looking to draw in investors by showcasing its vast reserves of coal in a region facing a growing energy crisis. Delegates meet in the capital, Gaborone, this week for a government-organised conference designed to illustrate the sector’s potential.
While Botswana has succeeded in decreasing its poverty rate, it is unlikely that the country will achieve the United Nations’s fourth Millennium Development Goal of decreasing child mortality rates by two-thirds by 2015. Figures have shown an increase in child mortality between the 1990s and the 2000s.
Tumi Makgetla speaks to fashion designer Mpho Kuaho from Botswana who has dressed models for the Durban July horse race.
Botswana has tightened its border controls in response to political unrest in neighbouring Zimbabwe that it fears could lead to a renewed flood of illegal migration, a senior police spokesperson said on Monday. Border officers in Botswana have been told to more carefully check those entering or seeking to remain in the Southern African nation.
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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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/ 18 December 2006
Botswana’s government said on Monday it will not appeal a High Court ruling that hundreds of Bushmen had been wrongly evicted from ancestral hunting grounds and should be allowed to return. The president’s office said in a statement it will not initiate an appeal in the case that saw Africa’s last hunter-gatherers take on one of the continent’s most admired governments.
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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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/ 13 December 2006
Botswana’s High Court ruled on Wednesday that more than 1Â 000 Bushmen had been wrongly evicted from ancestral hunting grounds in the Kalahari Desert and should be allowed to return. The court ruled 2-1 for the Bushmen in the key issues of the case, which saw Africa’s last hunter-gatherers take on one of the continent’s most admired governments.
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/ 11 December 2006
A Botswana court will decide this week whether hundreds of San Bushmen can return to their ancestral land in a dispute activists say pits Africa’s last hunter-gatherers against the world’s hunger for diamonds. The Bushmen say Botswana illegally forced them off hunting grounds in the Kalahari Desert to make way for diamond mining.
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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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/ 13 November 2006
Kenalemang Moitsheki squints through an eyepiece at a tiny diamond as a cutting tool etches heart-shaped facets on the gem. Moitsheki had never seen a raw diamond before she secured a training place at Botswana’s new Eurostar cutting factory, even though her country produces a quarter of global supply.
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/ 6 November 2006
The diamond industry’s watchdog launched a meeting on Monday amid calls to crack down on smuggling of ”conflict diamonds” from Côte d’Ivoire. The problem of illicit gems financing civil wars is expected to get widespread publicity next month upon the release of the new Hollywood movie Blood Diamond.
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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.
Final arguments in Botswana’s longest-running court case, in which San Bushmen are fighting for rights to ancestral land, will be heard next month after judges agreed to an adjournment request on Monday. The Bushmen’s lawyer said he had applied for an extension as he had only received written submissions from state attorneys last Wednesday.
Botswana’s longest-running court case, in which its San Bushmen are fighting for rights to ancestral land, will hear final submissions next month as the trial nears completion, lawyers said on Tuesday. State lawyer Dittah Molodi said that ”final oral submissions before the court are expected to start on August 28”.
A pact for a new transfrontier game park straddling the borders between Botswana, South Africa and Zimbabwe was signed on Thursday. The environment ministers of the three countries endorsed the agreement in Botswana on the dry bed of the Shashe River. Once proclaimed, the Limpopo-Shashe Transfrontier Conservation Area will cover 4 872 square kilometres.
A new centre in Botswana is piloting some innovative strategies to address the emotional and medical needs of HIV/Aids healthcare providers.
De Beers chairperson Nicky Oppenheimer and the Botswana government will launch a new joint-venture company, the Botswana Diamond Trading Company, on Tuesday, De Beers said. A number of new mining releases are also to be signed. The diamond partnership between the two goes back to before the country attained independence from Britain in 1966.
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/ 8 February 2006
Botswana’s San Bushmen fighting for rights to Kalahari land went back to court on Wednesday with lawyers mooting the possibility of an out-of-court settlement. The Bushmen are taking the government to court to challenge their eviction four years ago from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve.
When Botswana first offered free HIV/Aids treatment, health authorities in one of the world’s most infected countries braced for a rush. It didn’t come. Most people were still too afraid to get tested for the deadly scourge. The startling reluctance to seek help in one of the few African nations able to provide it prompted a radical rethink of how testing is done.
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/ 30 November 2005
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Botswana has shown that developing countries can successfully distribute anti-retroviral (ARV) treatment in their public health-care systems, the country’s Department of Health said on Wednesday. The country has also exceeded its patient enrolment targets in the ARV programme, Health Minister Sheila Tlou said.
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/ 26 October 2005
Twenty-six Bushmen appeared before a Botswana court on Wednesday for allegedly staging ”violent protests” over their relocation from ancestral land in the Kalahari, but the case was postponed until next month. Duma Boko, the Bushmen’s lawyer, said the 26 Bushmen were told to return to court at the end of November.
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/ 17 October 2005
The international community has been called upon to assist the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in its peace-building initiatives, the office of Botswana President Festus Mogae said on Monday. The call was made by the Botswana/Zimbabwe Joint Permanent Commission on Defence and Security, Mogae said in a statement.