Kalahari Bushmen to be Denied Land Rights

[chlamor]

Bushmen to be denied land rights

Botswana deprived native people of their right to land … after forcing them off it, finds Fred Bridgland in Johannesburg

 

IN a move that would likely have been denounced as racist if introduced by one of Africa’s former colonial powers, the government of Botswana is about to enact a constitutional change that will end for ever the rights of southern Africa’s bushmen to their traditional lands.

The move by President Festus Mogae has been made as Kalahari bushmen pursue a landmark case in Botswana’s high court seeking the right of return to their ancestral land in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve .

<snip>

Meanwhile, old bushmen in the awful camps to which they have been removed sense their impending demise. They sit around their fires at night and sing an old song: “The day we die a soft breeze will wipe out our footprints in the sand.

“When the wind dies down, who will tell in the timelessness that once we walked this way in the dawn of time?”

01 May 2005

http://www.sundayherald.com/49542

[MisterP]

1. don't forget Poppy, Quayle, and Schwarzkopf interfering on behalf

of their Safari Club and legalizing the hunting of male lions: the Bushman-crushing might just some more neocolonialism from the neofascists, I fear.

[chlamor]

2. The Healing Land

http://www.wnyc.org/__imageversions.py?item_id=37481&revision=0

The Healing Land: The Bushmen and the Kalahari Desert

[riverwalker]

3. because of diamonds

So sad. The San and the Bushman will be a tragic loss for the entire world.
DeBeers and other diamond mines forcing them off the land. I wonder if Pat Robertson's diamond and gold interests are involved as well.

[Igel]

4. Sad. They used to hold sway

probably up to Kenya in the east, most of Angola in the west.

Areas occupied by S. Africa, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Botswana Malawi, Mozambique, part of Congo were probably Khoi-san.

Those in Angola are still routinely discriminated against.