Botswana Government Forces Bushmen From Their Homes

JOHANNESBURG, Oct. 10 -- All but a few of the Bushmen living in Botswana's Central Kalahari Game Reserve have been forcibly removed from their homes in recent days in what spokesmen for the affected communities said is a final push by the government to end human habitation there after tens of thousands of years.

The First People of the Kalahari, an activist group in Botswana, said Bushmen villages have been cut off from their main sources of food and water, and outsiders have been prohibited from entering to provide relief for the past six weeks. A heavy contingent of police, military and park rangers trucked out most of the remaining residents at gunpoint on Friday and Saturday, the group said, and the stragglers face constant harassment.

Even such basic activities as hunting game and gathering water-filled roots are now prohibited, and government officials have seized goats, sheep and other livestock the Bushmen used for food, said Jumanda Gakeredone of the First People of the Kalahari, speaking by phone from Gaborone, the capital of Botswana.

"The situation is really, really bad," he said. "Every day, they are there with guns."

Botswana officials gave a strikingly different account, saying that police activity has been prompted by a quarantine made necessary by a disease affecting the goats kept by many Bushmen. The officials also said that all those who left have done so voluntarily.

But they acknowledged that one of the game reserve's two main villages, Malapo, was deserted after 25 residents were trucked out by the government on Friday. The other substantial settlement in the game reserve, Metsiamanong, lost nearly half of its remaining residents when 14 left on government trucks on Saturday.

They are not permitted to return as long as the quarantine remains in force, the government has said. No date has been set for the end of the quarantine, and Bushmen activists say it is a pretext for removing them at a time when their right to stay is being argued in a major court battle.

Government officials have long sought to drive the Bushmen from the game reserve, saying their increasingly sedentary lifestyles -- including keeping domestic animals and a few motorized vehicles -- make them incompatible with a game reserve. It is a major tourist attraction for Botswana, a landlocked southern African nation of 1.6 million people and some diamond deposits.

The total number of Bushmen remaining in the game reserve, which is larger than Switzerland, is 27 spread across three now-tiny villages, said Ruth Maphorisa, the top government official for the district that includes the game reserve.

"There was no harassment whatsoever," Maphorisa said by phone from Gaborone. "The reason why there are still people in the [game reserve] is that we didn't force anybody to leave."

She added that a videotape of the removals, made by government officials, shows the villagers leaving freely. Police and military only were there to help load household belongings onto waiting trucks, she said.

Told of her comments, Gakeredone responded angrily. "It's a lie. No one has [left] Malapo by choice," he said. "Every day the police are there and threatening with guns."

He also said he cannot verify the number of Bushmen left inside the game reserve because he and others active with the First People of the Kalahari have been barred during the quarantine. His accounts of incidents there was based, he said, on conversations with those who have been removed.

Bushmen -- who say they prefer that term over Basarwa, San or other names used frequently by outsiders -- once roamed most of southern Africa before the encroachment of white settlers moving up from Cape Town and African Bantu farmers migrating down from the north squeezed them nearly out of existence.

Among the final places where Bushmen have maintained traditional ways is the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. But in its campaign against them, the government has cut off water deliveries and medical services while forcing schoolchildren to study beyond the borders of the game reserve, in classrooms dominated by speakers of Tswana, the national language of Botswana.

An estimated 2,000 Bushmen lived in the game reserve before the government mounted forced removal campaigns in 1997 and 2002, relocating most to New Xade, a government settlement community beyond the western border of the game reserve. Dozens and perhaps hundreds eventually migrated back, though most were elderly or children. Young adults generally stayed in New Xade, where the government provides water, schools and medical treatment but where there are few jobs.

Bushmen who left during previous forced removals said they grew despondent in New Xade, separated from their homes and the graves of their ancestors, who often appeared in dreams to express their displeasure.

The First People of the Kalahari loaded five trucks full of corn meal, water and tobacco on Sept. 24 in an attempt to defy the quarantine. The confrontation grew violent, and police fired rubber bullets to disperse the crowd, injuring one, the government has said. Twenty-one people were arrested.