Khoisan told to move from ancestral lands

The government of Botswana has threatened to cut off water and other essential services to the Basarwa (Khoisan) still living in the central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR), the BBC reported this week.

The government, since 1996, has been trying to persuade the Basarwa remaining in the reserve to move to relocation camps hundreds of kilometres away. The authorities' initial argument was that their removal would allow better wildlife conservation. That has since changed to stress that better services can be provided to the estimated 600-700 Basarwa in the CKGR if they move out of the reserve.

"The government says that it is very expensive to provide services in the reserve and accuses the Basarwa of wanting to remain in the stone age rather than developing," a human rights activist in Botswana told IRIN. "The government claims that those that remain are not enough to warrant the expense of taking services there."

She said that the resettlement camps to which the Basarwa who chose to move out of the CKGR were sent are "not pleasant", and some Basarwa have returned to the game reserve. "There's not much to do there, they are not educated and are not farmers. They are hunter-gatherers and you tend to find they turn to alcohol because there is a lot of despair."

"We are against them being relocated," the activist said. "They should be allowed to keep their ancestral land and have a choice over where they live."

The Basarwa represent a tiny percentage of diamond-rich Botswana's 1.5 million population.