Botswana bushmen sue
over land rights issue www.coastweek.com
In 2008, President Ian Khama met with Basarwa leaders in
a highly publicized event hailed as marking the end of
Basarwa’s relations with Survival International
SPECIAL REPORT BY XINHUA CORRESPONDENT MONKAY GAO
GABORONE (Xinhua) -- The leader of Botswana’s Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR) based bushmen, Roy Sesana has declared that talks with the government over possible solution of their land issue are over, saying they would take the government to the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
Sesana told Xinhua that talks with President Seretse Khama Ian Khama failed to yield any fruit.
The bushmen, or Basarwa in Local Tswana language, are now determined to take the government of Botswana to the ICJ, for trampling the bushmen’s rights and ignoring the High Court of Appeal order of 2006 when they won the landmark case, he said.
He did not say when they will be taking their case to the ICJ.
"We have taken the Government of Botswana to Court on several occasions but Court orders were not implemented," said Sesana, a Botswana bushman who won the Right Livelihood Award, or the "Alternative Nobel Prize" in 2005, for his fight for the land rights of Basarwa.
"We took them to Court when the wildlife officers were confiscating our livestock inside the CKGR, but some Basarwa up to now have not been compensated," Sesana said, adding that:
"We also fought in Court to be allowed to hunt with permits inside the CKGR, but up to now a number of us do not have the hunting permits."
"We also won the land case after Appeal, but majority of us were not allowed to return," he said.
"We are convinced we should now go back to the courtroom, but it will be a different court room, not in Botswana.
"We want our matter to be heard by an International Court this time.
"It looks like when it comes to Basarwa Botswana court cases have a different meaning," Sesana said, some two weeks since Survival International, a London-based human rights NGO, re-ignited its global campaign for the land rights of Basarwa.
In 2008, President Ian Khama and some cabinet ministers met with Basarwa leaders in a highly publicized event hailed as marking the end of Basarwa’s relations with Survival International.
However, it would seem Survival’s efforts to add pressure on Botswana government to recognize Basarwa’s land rights have found willing hearts among the Basarwa once again.
And it comes at a time when disillusioned bushmen, who thought they had won a landmark land rights case in 2006, have gone back to the High Court seeking to force the government to provide them with water and other amenities inside the CKGR.
When Basarwa delegation first met Khama, Sesana was assigned to identity two representatives from each of the communities in the CKGR and surrounding settlements to constitute a team to engage in consultations with government, in order to work out a sustainable management plan for the CKGR.
However, this was where all the problems started, Sesana said.
He claimed that due to the sparseness of the CKGR it has never been possible to consult the communities in the five settlements of Metsiamanong, Mothomela, Gugama (Kukama), Gope, and Molapo.
"How do they expect me to round all of these people on foot ... some of these villages are 70 km apart, and I’m supposed to walk there and convene meetings for government.
"It was not going to work", he said.
"In any case my people also set conditions which the Government failed to meet.
"They wanted water so that they can come to one central place because lack of water causes them to scatter all over the CKGR searching for tubers," Sesana said.
The bushmen remain the most despised ethnic group in Botswana.
They are found in the poorest areas of the country, including the harsh desert of the Kalahari, and around the Tsodilo Hills in the northwest Botswana.
Traditionally the bushmen have served majority of the Tswana ethnic groups as slaves and cattle herders.
