Decades of Basarwa persecution
Oarabile Mosikare | Friday April 8, 2016 18:00
The British human rights advocate says in 2002 the government arbitrarily withdrew services from the CKGR to make Basarwa vacate the area against their will. “This was an abuse of power.
If the government now intends to restore some of these services, it needs to show the Bushmen (Basarwa) and the Botswana public that it will not do the same again. It should agree that in future it can terminate services only on reasonable notice and for proper reasons, and that the Bushmen should be able to challenge these reasons before an independent tribunal. This is the only basis on which the government can hope to rebuild the Bushmens’ trust and confidence,” says Bennett.
He also talks about the government’s policy to deny the majority of Basarwa access to the CKGR. He thinks the government is in contempt of the High Court order of 2006. “I think it probably is, unfortunately. During the High Court proceedings the government formally admitted that the 200 Bushmen named in the court papers had brought the action on behalf of not just themselves but of all those who had been relocated in 2002. If it had won the case this would have allowed it to keep everyone out of the Reserve, whether named or not.”
He however explains that since government lost the case, it has insisted that the named individuals acted only for themselves. He says: “This change of heart, which it has never explained, has allowed the government to refuse access to everyone who was not named, although they have the same legal rights as those who were. The United States, the UN Human Rights Committee and the African Human and Peoples Rights Commission are just some of those who have urged the government to abide by the judgment and allow all those evicted in 2002 to return to their homes. The government’s refusal to do this has done no favours to its reputation abroad.”
He also took time to talk about the hunting ban imposed nationwide in 2014 by the government, except for trophy hunters. “Two of the judges in the Sesana case thought that the government’s refusal to issue hunting licences to the CKGR Bushmen was in violation of their right to life under the Constitution. I agree. When I met the Director of Wildlife in South Africa last year, I asked him how the government expected the Bushmen to feed themselves in the CKGR if they could not hunt and were refused food rations. He just smiled and looked the other way.”
Lastly, the Briton revisits the government’s policy to deny the majority of Basarwa access to the Reserve. Bennett says the government’s policy separates parents from children and denies older people the right to return to the place of their birth before they die. He concludes: “I have seen the pain that this causes. I cannot think of a better way to celebrate 50 years of independence than to reach a long-term agreement with the Bushmen, which will strike a sensible balance between their right to live in the CKGR and the interests of wildlife preservation. This will be nothing as difficult as the government seems to think it is. If the government does not want this controversy to rumble on for yet another decade, it should at least give it a try.”