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<< Sites under Threat >> Kalahari Bushmen in legal battle for their homeland - Diamonds link?

Submitted by Andy B on Monday, 25 July 2005  Page Views: 3536

Site WatchCountry: South Africa The Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR) in Botswana is a vast, arid, yet immensely rich area, which for tens of thousands of years has been one of the chief hunting-grounds in southern Africa for the Bushmen.

Botswanan President Festus Mogai has a particular hang-up about the Bushmen - "Stone-Age creatures", he once called them. He believes they do not belong in a modern, go-ahead state, and should be forced to integrate into Botswanan society.

The Bushmen are small, hardy, intelligent and gentle people, who have eked out a life for themselves while the rest of humanity developed along completely different lines.

Bushmen is the term they themselves use.

They speak a series of remarkably intricate languages, involving a variety of clicking sounds. And they can live comfortably in terrain where you and I would die of thirst within two days.

But there are diamonds under the CKGR - potentially an important source, controlled by an offshoot of the gigantic De Beers organisation.

The Botswana government decreed that the Bushmen should be moved out of the reserve, and onto relocation sites outside, and this started in 1997. Their villages were pulled down, and they were expelled. It was often an ugly process.

Read the rest of John Simpson's column at BBC News, and follow the story in detail at Survival International.

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"Kalahari Bushmen in legal battle for their homeland - Diamonds link?" | Login/Create an Account | 2 News and Comments
  
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Re: Kalahari Bushmen in legal battle for their homeland - Diamonds link? by Anonymous on Tuesday, 26 July 2005
Thoroughly recommend reading some Laurens Van Der Post, he spent time with the bushmen and is a verry powerful writer.
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Re: Kalahari Bushmen in legal battle for their homeland - Diamonds link? by Anonymous on Tuesday, 26 July 2005
Those who are familiar with the way land was taken away from the peoples of the British Isles during the Clearances and Enclosures many years ago and given to the rich surely must empathise with the Bushmen. Without land tribal people have nothing and will be dependent on charity.
Please support the Bushmen by writing letters (look at the Survival website), and passing on the message about this terrible tragedy.
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