Landmark legal case may be last hope for displaced San people of Botswana Rory Carroll in Kukama
Saturday July 10, 2004
The Guardian It was a little court in a big desert, and the lawyers grew uneasy as the shadows lengthened: lions are nocturnal hunters. Gordon Bennett, a British barrister, suggested the court adjourn. "Dusk is almost upon us and we are camping tonight."
To everyone's relief, the three judges wedged in the Land Cruiser agreed, and the convoy dispersed to collect firewood before another night under the stars.
It was a surreal safari, where baseball caps and sunglasses replaced wigs and robes, but there was no doubting the seriousness of this week's effort to bring justice to the Kalahari.
The San people, also known as bushmen, have challenged the government of Botswana over their expulsion from ancestral lands in what could be a landmark case for indigenous rights in Africa.
Before formal hearings open on Monday, the judges wanted to visit the government-run settlements where most bushmen now live, as well those still holding out in the Central Kalahari game reserve.
Driving under a blistering sun through endless sand in white four-wheel-drives, the cavalcade of legal teams, police, academics and journalists resembled a column of UN weapons inspectors.
The tour confirmed that many San were miserable in the settlements, which critics compared to refugee camps, and pined for their old hunting grounds.
"The government gives us food and water here, but mostly the people are not happy," said Maiteela Segwaba, 75, chief of the San living at Kaudwane settlement. "They earn their living gathering wild fruits, and those fruits are not here. Nor can we pray at our fathers' tombs."
The San accuse the government of illegally expelling them from ancestral land by cutting off water supplies and denying hunting permits. Their lawyers say that these measures are unconstitutional, and want water supplies to be restored to the reserve and hunting permits granted.
The government's case is that the San left the reserve voluntarily to avail themselves of schools and clinics closer to towns and cities. It also claimed it was too expensive to sustain water supplies that were never intended to be permanent, and that the San were depleting the wildlife.
According to Survival International, a London-based advocacy group which is partly funding the legal challenge, victory would help San in other countries as well as Pygmies in central and west Africa and hunting peoples in east Africa to claim indigenous land rights.
But even if the San win, it is too late to return to the days of loincloths and bows and arrows. That romantic image was popularised in the books and films of Lau rens van der Post, a conservationist who turned their plight into a cause celebre in the 1950s. A few bushmen still fitted such a profile, but for the rest, that 30,000-year-old way of life was over. Having tasted modernity, however bitter, there was no spitting it all out.
Roy Sesana, a spokesman for the 243 bushmen who launched the case, said that given the chance he would set aside his shoes, sunglasses and cigarettes to once again be a hunter-gatherer - but his eight children would only visit him during school holidays.
Another bushman, Kereeditse Kepese, 16, said that if he was able to return to the reserve, he would hope to find work with a non-governmental organisation or as a tour guide.
Inside the reserve at Kukama, a collection of stick-and-mud huts where 20 San lived, families wore ragged western clothing, raised goats and used donkeys for transport.
Lawyers for both sides acknowledge that there is no turning back the clock to when the San were "lords of the desert" with unsurpassed survival skills in one of the world's harshest environments.
The British colonial authorities set up the reserve in 1961 to protect its habitat and residents, a policy continued five years later by the newly independent Botswana.
There was a change in the 1980s, when the government decided to move 2,500 San from the reserve, offering compensation and the promise of development in what was said to be a voluntary relocation.
But many bushmen said cutting water supplies and withdrawing hunting permits amounted to coercion, stranding them in settlements with schools, water and food, but no jobs.
Bored and restless, with many turning to alcohol, they called their new homes "places of death".
"The issue is their right to reside on ancestral land," said Glyn Williams, their South African lawyer. "We believe they were illegally moved."
The government, accustomed to international praise for being one of Africa's most democratic and honest, bridles at accusations of mistreating the San. It was too expensive to keep water flowing into the Kalahari and the state had a duty to educate and develop all citizens, said Sidney Pilane, lead counsel for the government.
"We've come a hell of a long way since the 1960s, and that's why we hope [the San] will catch up with the rest of us. They belong in towns and cities like you and me. They are not animals, they are not a tourist attraction."
Survival International says the removals were intended to clear the way for diamond mining, but most critics of the policy blamed misguided paternalism. Even on this week's tour - partly a public relations pitch to international opinion - the authorities could not conceal their disdain for the bushmen.
A police chief guiding the judges through a settlement pointed to a church. "That's where we try to keep them busy. You know, with them there is a big problem of criminality."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1258104,00.html
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