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| Bushman women, Namibia
© Mark Håkansson/Survival |
The judgment earlier this month in the Richtersveld case highlights once more
the issue of racial discrimination in Botswana. South Africa's highest court
ruled that the indigenous Richtersvelder people had both communal land ownership
and mineral rights over their territory. Laws which tried to dispossess them
were 'racial discrimination'.
As mining information website minesite.com reported this month, 'The ruling that
indigenous people who own land under their own, unwritten, law have the right to
have this upheld in spite of other legal systems which are subsequently imposed
by the state has interesting implications for Botswana… if the South African
ruling is applied, then the Bushmen own their ancestral land.'
At the KhoiSan development conference held in Botswana last month several
speakers denounced the government for 'discrimination',
'assimilation', 'forced evictions', and
'reducing them [the Bushmen] to permanent destitution'.
Last year the UN Committee on the elimination of racial discrimination
outlined its concern 'at expressions of prejudice against the Basarwa /
San [Bushmen] people, including by public officials' and 'at
the ongoing dispossession of Basarwa/San people from their land, and about
reports stating that their resettlement outside the Central Kalahari Game
Reserve does not respect their political, economic, social and cultural
rights.'
More information: Miriam Ross on (+44) (0)20 7687 8734 or mr@survival-international.org
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