Kalahari Bushmen win ancestral land case

The Botswana High Court has given more than 1,000 Kalahari Bushmen the right to return to their ancestral hunting grounds by ruling they were wrongly evicted by the Botswanan government four years ago.

Campaigners said the landmark decision will advance the rights of indigenous people all over the world. Supporters of the Bushmen - traditional hunter-gatherers whose proper name is the San - accused the government of evicting them to exploit the potential diamond and mineral wealth on their reserve.

A panel of three judges in the southern Botswanan town of Lobatse ruled that the San were illegally moved from their ancestral land in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve.

After a 2-1 ruling, Judge Mpaphi Phumaphi, who delivered the swing vote, said the government had forced them out of the reserve by depriving them of their livelihood. "In my view, the simultaneous stoppage of the supply of food rations and the stoppage of hunting licences is tantamount to condemning the remaining residents to death by starvation," he said.

Miriam Ross, of the London-based pressure group Survival International, said the ruling was historic because it added to a "growing body of case law and a mounting international consensus that recognises the rights of indigenous peoples".

She said a similar case in South Africa three years ago had granted the San rights to mineral revenues from their ancestral land. But the Botswana case marked the first time a modern African court had recognised the ancestral land access rights of indigenous people, she added.

The Botswana government would not comment on the ruling but said it was considering appealing.

There are estimated to be 100,000 Bushmen in southern Africa, and about half are in Botswana. None live the 20,000-year-old traditional hunter-gatherer life centred on tracking and killing game on foot using poison arrows.

Because of their change in lifestyle, it is unlikely that many San will return to the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, which is the size of Belgium. The ruling gives them the right to do so, but does not compel the government to provide services such as water, clinics and schools in the park.

The San have suffered decades of discrimination at the hands of the local Setswana population whose name for them, Basarwa, means "people without cattle".

White settlers once hunted them for sport. Renowned for their ability to track game by reading delicate signs in the sand, the San in South Africa were used by its armed forces as frontline "trackers" in the Apartheid era.

Yesterday's ruling reverses 20 years of a Botswana government policy to "encourage" the San to leave the reserve. From 1997, the authorities began to cut services to them, such as mobile clinics, in the park. Payments were offered to those who volunteered to move to a resettlement camp 30 miles away.

For that reason, the government has always argued that it did not evict anyone. However, human rights campaigners in Botswana say the authorities took advantage of the San's low levels of education by spreading rumours that boreholes in the park would be sealed and those who remained would be killed by the Botswana Defence Force.

San advocacy groups say they have been watched by police. Most anthropologists have been denied research permits to study them in the park.

But it is unlikely that many San will return to the park. Even before the evictions began 20 years ago, most had given up their nomadic existence in the park and had settled around boreholes in it.

Nevertheless, life in the park - close to the ancestors who are crucial to the wellbeing of the San - was better than at the New Xade resettlement camp, where residents have no jobs, resettlement grants are spent on alcohol, and Aids is rife.

Desire for tourism in the Kalahari and concern for its dwindling wildlife are the government's principal motives for resettling the San.

Claims from European pressure groups that the government is motivated by a desire to allow diamond mining in the park have been discredited. Even if true, the move would produce such an international outcry that it would be unlikely.

But it will take major investment to make the park viable for tourism. Animal populations, down to a mere 5 per cent of levels 30 years ago, were decimated by government-built cattle fences around the park, which cut off game from natural migration routes and water.

De Beers boycotters ask DiCaprio for support

The creators of a new website designed to promote an international boycott of the De Beers diamond company have placed a full-page advertisement in Variety, the Hollywood entertainment newspaper, appealing to the actor Leonardo DiCaprio to help with their campaign.

The site, www.boycottdebeers.com, accuses the company of complying with the government of Botswana in forcing bushmen from land in a park in the Kalahari desert, created to protect them from the encroachments of modern civilisation.

The diamond giant has denied any connection with the eviction of the bushmen.

However, several international models, including Imam, Lily Cole and Erin O'Connor, who have previously worked for De Beers, are supporting the campaign and have vowed not appear on behalf of the company again.

DiCaprio plays the lead role in the newly released thriller Blood Diamond, which highlights the money-trail from diamond mining to conflicts in Africa. De Beers has responded to the film by saying its diamonds are 100 per cent untainted by war and violence.

David Usborne