Survival International responds to Khama

| Thursday December 16, 2010 00:00

Not content with starving the Bushmen off their lands, he launched an  attack on their way of life, calling it 'primitive', 'primeval' and  'backward'.

This has sinister echoes of racial superiority which  should have no place in any modern democracy.

Survival has never said that the Bushmen should remain in the CKGR or  follow any particular way of life.

All we have said is that the  Bushmen must be allowed to stay on their lands if that is what they  want, and to decide for themselves whether and how they should be  'developed'.

This is not racist, but simply a statement of the rights of the Bushmen under both national and international law. 

The government still seems unable to accept this: it is determined to  clear the Bushmen out of the CKGR. 

This is why in 2002 the government  had to force the Bushmen out of the CKGR against their will.  It is why  even now the government refuses to allow the Bushmen access to the only borehole that can provide them with a reliable source of water,  and refuses them hunting permits. 

The only Bushman 'tourist objects' in the CKGR are in fact those few  Bushmen who live outside the reserve and are employed by Wilderness  Safaris at its luxury lodge (complete with swimming pool) on Bushman  land.

Having been illegally evicted by the government, they are now at the hotel where they dress in skins and show wealthy tourists fake Bushman houses, bows and arrows etc.

The president's personal lawyer  and nephew are directors of this so-called 'ethical' company.

Well, at  least those Bushmen have access to water, unlike the rest in the CKGR  who are denied this most basic of human rights.

If President Khama  really doesn't want Bushmen as tourist objects, he should join  Survival's boycott of Wilderness Safaris.

Yours, Stephen Corry