Free Republic

Early in September, international news was awash with the claim that 87 elephants had been “killed by poachers” in Botswana. The story originated from the NGO Elephants Without Borders, which received massive publicity – and presumably donations – as a result. Even the beleaguered UK Prime Minister tweeted the story, while a petition calling for wildlife guards to be re-armed surpassed 150,000 signatures. I know a little of Botswana. A few years ago, I was declared “public enemy number one”, threatened by a government spokesman on television, and banned from the country. This was because Survival International was instrumental in...

West African bushmen are denied U.S. visas They'd been recruited to build a mud-hut village at a Staunton museum Thursday, Jul 03, 2008 - 12:55 AM By CARLOS SANTOS TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER • PDF: Letter STAUNTON -- Three West African bushmen recruited to build an authentic mud-hut village at the Frontier Culture Museum of Virginia were denied visas because they are too poor and inarticulate. In a letter to Sen. John W. Warner, R-Va., Debra Heien, chief of the consular section for the U.S. in Nigeria, said one applicant "could not articulate anything about the project. . . . The...

Bushmen win rights over ancestral lands David Beresford in Lobatse Thursday December 14, 2006 The Guardian (UK) The Bushmen of Botswana yesterday appeared to have won a famous legal victory in their long-running battle to hang on to ancestral lands in the giant Central Kalahari game reserve. The Botswana high court ruled that the Bushmen, whom the government had tried to evict by cutting off their water supplies and other services, lawfully occupied the land. Three judges found that they had been deprived of possession of the land "forcibly, wrongly and without their consent". The court also found that the...

Braam Le Roux has lived among the Kalahari Bushmen for 23 years A London-based organisation which accuses the Botswana government of ethnic cleansing against the Kalahari Bushmen has come under fierce criticism for allegedly distorting the true picture. Survival International has led a global media campaign with headlines such as "Ethnic cleansing reaches final phase". It has also used phrases like "the last chapter in the 200-year-old genocide of the Bushmen", and acts "tantamount to genocide" or "perilously close to genocide". But now one of the largest Bushmen groups in Botswana, the Kuru Family of Organisations, claims that is...

Bushmen accuse Mbeki of treating them as 'unpure bastards' By Christopher Munnion in Johannesburg (Filed: 07/10/2005) The ancient Khoi-San people, commonly known as the Bushmen, have accused South Africa's government of implying that they are not African at all but mixed race "bastards". Chief Elwin White said the refusal by President Thabo Mbeki's government to grant his 5,000-strong community official status as the country's earliest inhabitants was insulting. He said the government treated them as "highly-stressed coloureds [mixed race people] who are without a sense of belonging, with any creative spirit, confused, anxious and mostly drunk". "The government officially and...

THE Bushmen of the Kalahari — among Africa’s last indigenous peoples — are on the verge of losing their ancestral homeland after the Government of Botswana stepped up a campaign to force them into squalid resettlement camps. The Government has sent heavily armed wildlife guards into the Central Kalahari Game Reserve — an area promised to the Bushmen “in perpetuity”. Some 200 to 250 Gana and Gwi Bushmen live in the area, having drifted back after previous evictions. The Government banned all outsiders, including journalists, from the area. It said a disease had been discovered in the Bushmen’s goats, which...

Judge rejects Kalahari bushmen's land claim By Karen MacGregor 20 April 2002 Botswana's bushmen suffered a setback in a court battle against eviction from their ancestral lands in a game reserve yesterday when a court rejected their lawsuit because their papers were not in order. Judge Maruping Dibotelo dismissed a suit by the Baswara or San people of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, an arid area of 20,000 square miles in central Botswana, who are challenging their eviction from land where they continue their traditional lifestyle of hunter-gatherers. The San people say they cannot abandon their land because it contains...