Botswana safari lodge under attack for failing Bushmen

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A safari lodge operating on the traditional lands of the Gana Bushmen of Botswana has come under fire from Survival days before the company is listed on the Botswana and Johannesburg Stock Exchanges.

Wilderness Safaris’ Kalahari Plains Camp opened on Bushman land inside the Central Kalahari Game Reserve in 2009, although the company failed to obtain the prior consent of the nearby Bushman community.

The Bushmen are the Indigenous people of southern Africa, and have lived there as nomadic hunter-gatherers for tens of thousands of years – since ice-sheets covered much of the world. The reserve was created in 1961 to protect the traditional territory of the 5,000 Gana, Gwi and Tsila Bushmen and the game they depend on.

However, in 2002, the Botswana government forcibly evicted the Bushmen from the reserve; an act that was declared illegal and unconstitutional by the Botswana High Court four years later. Despite the ruling, the government has continued its persecution of the Bushmen, banning them from accessing a borehole on their lands, on which they rely for water. At least one woman has died from dehydration.

The UN Special Rapporteur for Indigenous peoples, James Anaya, recently condemned the government for falling short of ‘international human rights standards’. He also found that Bushmen in the reserve ‘face harsh and dangerous conditions due to a lack of access to water’. The Bushmen have launched further litigation against the government to gain access to the borehole, and a court hearing is set for 9th June 2010.

While Bushmen struggle without access to water, which Wilderness Safaris itself describes as ‘the most precious commodity in the desert’, tourists visiting the Kalahari Plains Camp are treated to a bar and swimming pool, as well as a ‘Bushman walk’.

Wilderness Safaris will list on the Botswana and Johannesburg Stock Exchanges on 8th April 2010, in a move that its CEO, Andrew Payne, describes as a ‘significant step in its evolution’.

Survival’s director, Stephen Corry, said today, ‘The reserve is largely traditional Bushman land, tourists shouldn’t be going there at all until the Bushmen are treated fairly.’

Facts about the Bushmen:
• There are 100,000 Bushmen in Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Angola, belonging to many different peoples.
• In times of drought, Bushmen traditionally stored water underground in ostrich eggs sealed with beeswax.
• They drink the juice of wild tsamma melons
• Bushmen men are expert trackers and hunters, hunting animals such as the kudu, springbok and gemsbok
• Bushmen women gather fruits, roots, tubers and berries
• Bushmen speak a variety of languages, all of which incorporate ‘click’ sounds represented in writing by symbols such as ! or /
• In Bushman society, decisions are made by discussion and agreement by consensus: they have no official leaders, and recognize no ‘chiefs’