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| Bushman elder, CKGR, Botswana 2004
© 2004 Stephen Corry/Survival |
In a debate in the UK House of Lords last night, Baroness Tonge called the Kalahari Bushmen's
method of hunting with bows and arrows 'primitive' and their way of
life 'stone age'. She dismissed the court case the Bushmen are taking
against the Botswana government, and repeated claims about their way of
life that have been proved false in the Botswana high court.
Baroness Tonge is the former Lib Dem MP Jenny Tonge, fired from the
front bench for saying she 'empathised' with suicide bombers.
Tonge said that a few Bushmen, along with Survival, were 'holding the
Government of Botswana to ransom' over the evictions from the Central
Kalahari Game Reserve. In fact, 240 Bushmen, who are among the
country's poorest inhabitants, have taken the government to court for
forcing them off their ancestral land. She claimed that the Bushmen
hunt in the reserve using guns and 4×4 vehicles – but Director of
Wildlife Joseph Matlhare, the government's own witness, testified in
court he knew of no evidence that this had ever happened. She also
claimed that the presence of the Bushmen's few domestic animals was
harming the reserve's ecology – but the government's own figures show
that wildlife numbers in the reserve doubled in the ten years before
the evictions.
Tonge, along with Lord Jones and other British parliamentarians, spent
half a day visiting one of the Botswana government's Bushman
resettlement camps in 2002, and was shown around by government
officials. Lord Pearson, who was part of the same delegation, revealed
last night that De Beers had paid for the parliamentarians' trip,
including first-class air travel. De Beers is exploring for diamonds on
the Bushmen's land.
'The idea was to convince me and the other members of the group not
only what a great place Botswana was but that the Bushmen had not been
mistreated…' said Lord Pearson. 'I took the precaution of hiring my own
interpreter, so I was able to hear exactly what some of the 200 Bushmen
and their families who had recently been forcibly resettled in a camp
at New Xade were saying. I heard them describe it as a place of death,
where they had nothing to do but drink, take drugs and catch AIDS.... I,
for one, came home more convinced than ever that a great injustice was
being done.'
Lord Jones, who according to the Mail on Sunday newspaper is known by
political rivals as 'Junket Jones', regularly defends the Botswana
government's expulsion of the Bushmen. He has recently bought a luxury
villa in Botswana owned by a company called 'Dolce Vita' – 'the good
life'. It is built on land belonging to the son of a former Botswana
cabinet minister.
To read a transcript of the debate click here
For more information call Miriam Ross on (+44) (0)20 7687 8734 or email mr@survival-international.org
