Indigenous Rights in Botswana

In our geography class we had to make short presentations about an international development issues that we were interested in.  I decided to do my presentation on Botswana so that I could learn more about where I am going to be living for eight months.  One of the most pressing issues in Botswana's history has to do with the treatment of the San people in Botswana. The San people are indigenous to areas all across southern Africa, but the portion that I am going to focus on are those who called the Central Kalahari Game Reserve home.

The Central Kalahari Game Reserve has recently been discovered as one of the richest diamond areas in the world. That discovery had the Botswana Government very interested in this land. They wanted the land so they could capitalize on the wealth, but in order to do so they needed the San people off of that land.  Promises were made by the Government to the San people as incentives for them to leave their land but rarely were followed through on. The government continued to make life hard for the San people by impeding their day to day life. In 1997, the Government evicted the first round of people.  By 2002, the government had evicted more people and they were stopping rations and destroying the wells on the Reserve.  That year was the year that there was a court case launched against the Government on behalf of the San people.  The third round of evictions happened in 2005, when many were sent to resettlement camps. The camps were very negative places for the San people who were used to their traditional ways of life. Moving to these camps lead to an increase in depression, alcoholism and HIV/AIDS in the San communities. 

 In what termed out to be the longest and most expensive court case in the history of the country it was determined that what the Government did to the San people was unlawful and unconstitutional and that the San people had the right to live on the Reserve and hunt without permits. But for the San people that did return to the Reserve, it was decided by the judges that the Government did not have to provide services to them.  Many small organizations, like TOCaDI where I will be working come September, have stepped in to attempt to fill the gap that has been left by the government for the San people.

When I first read this I felt shocked about how a Government could do this to their own people. But then I got thinking about Aboriginal people in Canada and the similarities between the Aboriginal  and the San people and there were a lot. This just shows that whether in a 'developed' or 'developing country', violations against human rights are still happening till this day. Too often people in the ‘developed’ world get the ‘us and them’ framework for looking at things, but this example shows that in a way we are not a lot different than people half a world away.  I am interested to get to see first hand what the current situation between the Government and the San people is today.  I am also interested to learn about what it would have felt like to the San people to have their own Government turn their backs on them for material gain.