Bushmen appeal to President
December 17, 2007
This page was created in 2007 and may contain language which is now outdated.
On the first anniversary of their historic court judgment, the Bushman organisation First People of the Kalahari released an open letter to Botswana's President Mogae, detailing the ways in which the government is still preventing them from returning to their ancestral land.
On December 13 2006, the Bushmen won the right to return home to the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, from which they were evicted by the government in 2002. Their right to hunt on their land was also recognised.
In the letter, the Bushmen write that they are not allowed to use the water borehole on their land, nor are they allowed to hunt, and many of them require visitors permits to enter the reserve.
The letter requests the government to properly investigate incidents of torture, beating and harassment of Bushmen living in one of the resettlement camps outside the game reserve.
Read the Bushmen's letter
