Basarwa By Fiona Watson_Survival)
Survival International (SI) has claimed that a host of big names are supporting its global campaign for Basarwa in the 50th anniversary year of Botswana’s independence. These include actors Dominic West, Gillian Anderson, Joanna Lumley, Sophie Okonedo and Mark Rylance, as well as musician and photographer Julian Lennon and illustrator Sir Quentin Blake.
They join Survival’s campaign to secure the right of the Bushmen to return to their land in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, established fifty-five years ago to protect the Bushmen’s rights and ancestral home.
In protest at the Botswana government’s ongoing mistreatment of the Basarwa, Survival is urging the authorities to allow all Bushmen access to their land.
The Basarwa won the right to return to the reserve in a landmark 2006 court ruling. Despite this, the government continues to enforce a permit system limiting the number of Basarwa who are allowed to live in or visit the reserve.
The government’s response to the 2006 court ruling has been widely criticised, including recently in a US state department report.
Outside the reserve, most of the Basarwa live in resettlement camps, where disease is rife and the provision of vital services, including healthcare, is completely inadequate.
SI, which is the global movement for tribal peoples’ rights, is appealing to the Botswana government to respect its own high court’s decision and recognise the Bushmen’s human rights in the country’s fiftieth anniversary year.
“For decades now the Botswana government has dragged its heels and refused to acknowledge that the Bushmen have rights that need to be respected. In this historic year, that surely has to change,” SI Director, Stephen Corry said.
“The country’s own high court has ruled in favour of the Bushmen’s right to their land, and to continue to limit access to the Kalahari to its first peoples is a sign of brutal authoritarianism in a country so often praised as a beacon of African democracy. Botswana needs to properly earn that reputation by ending this appalling mistreatment of its tribal peoples.
