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LAST BUSHMEN FIGHT FOR THEIR RIGHTS
***For centuries the Bushmen of Botswana have lived a life tuned to the harsh wilderness of the desert. They are one of the last surviving groups of hunter gatherers in Africa. Now the government is forcing them out of their last refuge — the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. Gemini News Service reports that the Reserve, originally created as a home for both wildlife and Bushmen offers them little hope for the future, by Damien Lewis
THE Kalahari is many things to many people, and to those that live there, certainly not a desert Their name for the Kalahari. Kgalagadf, means wilderness and the Kalahari, when compared to Namibia s harsh Namlb desert. Is well vegetated and teeming with wildlife.
It has long been the home and hunting ground of the nomadic Bushmen and other tribes, who collectively call themselves the ba-Kgalagadl •*-people of the wilderness.
The Bushmen are known to the outside world as an ancient people, whose supreme skill at hunUng and knowledge of the Kalahari's plants is second to none. But these people — recognised as the true experts of the Kalahari — are being forced out of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR) — the last area where their traditional hunter-gathering lifestyle has survived the pressures of contemporary Botswanan life.
Their are an estimated 75,000 Bushmen, over 40,000 of whom live in Botswana. Theirs has been a long and painful history of erosion of their traditional lifestyle and loss of their ancestral lands.
The Bushmen, who once Inhabited all southern Africa, found refuge In the Kalahari, when the land they once calk-d their own was taken over by the expansion of the other African people and the arrival of the Europeans.
In the early Seventies, 10,000 or so Bushmen still lived a nomadic lifestyle in the wilderness of the Kalahari. The men would hunt with the poisoned arrows, the women collect veldkos (wild insects, fruit, roots and tubers).
The highly mobile Bushmen would move frequently over a yearly range as large as 5.000 square kilometres. With southwest Africa, this was the last sanctuary where their traditional lifestyle still survived.
The 1,000 or so inhabitants of the CKGR are all that now remain of these traditional hunter-gatherer Bushmen. Their final demise has accelerated in the last few decades. In Botswana, a country that prides itself on its democratic tradition, the Bushmen have, in theory, complete legal equality and access to public services.
Yet government policies have been characterised by attempts to "gather these hunters together." settle them in villages and by a general denial of the Bushmen s rights to their land. In 1978, the main government legal body, the Attorney General's Chambers, said "the true nomad can have no rights of any kind except the right to hunting."
In a changing country, experiencing an explosion In large-scale cattle ranching, this was bond to force the Bushmen and cattle-men into conflict over land.
During the widespread expansion of ranching in the early Seventies, government surveys revealed large, highly mobile hunter gatherer Bushmen groups. In 1974, the Remote Area Development Programme (RADP) was launched to bring development
— in all Its forms — to these isolated rural people. Most Bushmen were settled in villages. with schools and health clinics and encouraged to keep livestock and lead a "settled" lifestyle.
The drought of the early Eighties, which forced many Bushmen to the brink of starvation and ushered in a highly effective government drought relief programme. resulted in many Bushmen becoming dependent on free government food handouts, or low-paid, labour-intensive government
By the late Eighties, the huge 52.347-square-kifometre Central Kalahari Game Reserve had become the
stronghold of the traditional Bushmen. The reserve was established tn 1961. on the advice of anthropologist George Silberbauer to protect Kalahari wildlife and people.
The CKGR makes up about half the total protected land in Botswana. Under the Fauna Conservation Programme, hunting and gathering within ft was banned, except for those people whose primary subsistence derived from wild plants and animals.
Although actual numbers living there dropped from 5,000 in the early Sixties to around 1,000 in the Eighties, many Bushmen living around the CKGR still relied on it for hunting and gathering. Robert Hitchcock, an anthropologist and authority on Bushmen, estimates that as many as 3.500 still claim land rights in the CKGR.
Recognising the failure of the much of the early RADP work, the government launched an Accelerated RADP in the late Eighties. This included measures supposedly to promote self-reliance among the Bushmen and Improve their socio-political integration. Yet the RADP now appears to involve the removal of the Bushmen from the CKGR.
Though the government says it will not force them,to move, new settlements are being built on the outskirts of the reserve and public services — water, health, clinic and schools — will be abandoned as
soon as these are completed.
"I would not say they are going to be move," says President Quett Masire. *1 will say that they will move themselves." Despite an official government study, which concludes that moving the Bushmen "Is neither convenient nor feasible.* and will increase reliance on government handouts, their resettlement has been sanctioned at the highest level.
Why? The government says the Integrity of the CKGR has been jeapordIsed by the activities of the Bushmen As many Bushmen are now pastoralists and hunt with modern weapons on horseback, they deplete the wildlife In the
They have deserted their traditional lifestyle and lost the right to remain in the CKGR. which was created for traditional hunter-gatherer peoples. Yet the real cause of the environmental crisis in the CKGR is cattle. Cattle ranching has caused widespread land' degradation across Botswana and ranchers are increasingly pressurising the CKGR.
Moreover, thousands of miles of Veterinary Cordon Fencing strung out across the Kalahari to control the sperad of foot and mouth diseases from wildlife to cattle, have decimated migrating wildlife herds.
Other powerful interests are also eyeing the CKGR. Mining companies want mineral prospecting rights within the Reserve. The Kalahari sands have been found to over-lie rich mineral desposlts and diamonds now account for 80 per cent of Botswana's export earnings.
Cattle ranches have been built on the periphery of the reserve and many believe the ranchers wish much of the CKGR to be de-gazetted and turned into grazing land. But whatever the hidden agenda behind the government's policies, jhe effect on the Bushmen will be disastrous.
"Until they move," says Soblcm Mayane, a Botswanan sociologist, "the Bushmen will remain happy and independent. They do not depend on government handouts.