Botswana High Commissioner targeted by Survival protestors

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Botswana’s High Commissioner to the UK, Roy Blackbeard, will be met by protestors when he attends the opening of an exhibition celebrating Botswana in central London today.

Where: Rebecca Hossack gallery, 2a Conway Street, Fitzroy Square, London W1T 6BA
When: Wednesday 10th February, 6:30 – 7:30pm

The protests will highlight Botswana’s continuing persecution of the Gana and Gwi Bushmen of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. Although Botswana’s High Court ruled that the Bushmen had been evicted from their ancestral lands in the reserve illegally, the government is trying to make life impossible for those Bushmen who want to return.

In particular, it has banned them from using a water borehole, which it has sealed and rendered useless; without it, the Bushmen are forced to walk for miles to find water. The Bushmen have now launched legal proceedings against the government in a bid to access the borehole.

In an interview for the Safaritalk website, Blackbeard defended the government’s evictions of the Bushmen claiming that they were ‘displaced for the national interest of the rest of its citizens’, and dismissed the Bushmen’s plea to use the borehole, claiming that ‘they don’t use boreholes’.

Blackbeard also defended the government’s policy of forbidding the Bushmen from hunting in the reserve; an action condemned by one of the High Court judges who ruled that it is ‘tantamount to causing death by starvation’. Although the reserve was created for the purpose of providing a protected area for the Bushmen, Blackbeard argued, ‘A game park is to preserve the animals. So the government policy is that we do not allow any form of hunting whatsoever in a game reserve.’

Blackbeard continued by saying that the government gives Special Game Licences to Bushmen, ‘which are not given to every citizen’. However, he failed to note that not a single licence has been issued to the Bushmen in the reserve in the three years since the court ruling.

Survival Director Stephen Corry said today, ‘The ‘policy’ defended by High Commissioner Blackbeard is illegal and in violation of the Bushmen’s fundamental human rights. In spite of the continuing damage to the country’s reputation, this government seems determined to destroy the Bushmen. Tourists in the game reserve, where water is provided to the animals but denied to the Indigenous peoples, will be trampling over the Bushmen’s graves.’