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Kalahari Bushmen—The
San
win ancestral land case
By Alex Duval Smith
The Botswana High Court has given
more than 1,000 Kalahari Bushmen the right to return to
their ancestral hunting grounds by ruling they were
wrongly evicted by the Botswanan government four years
ago.
Campaigners said the landmark
decision will advance the rights of indigenous people
all over the world. Supporters of the Bushmen -
traditional hunter-gatherers whose proper name is the
San - accused the government of evicting them to exploit
the potential diamond and mineral wealth on their
reserve.
A panel of three judges in the
southern Botswanan town of Lobatse ruled that the San
were illegally moved from their ancestral land in the
Central Kalahari Game Reserve.
After a 2-1 ruling, Judge Mpaphi
Phumaphi, who delivered the swing vote, said the
government had forced them out of the reserve by
depriving them of their livelihood. "In my view, the
simultaneous stoppage of the supply of food rations and
the stoppage of hunting licences is tantamount to
condemning the remaining residents to death by
starvation," he said.
Miriam Ross, of the London-based
pressure group Survival International, said the ruling
was historic because it added to a "growing body of case
law and a mounting international consensus that
recognises the rights of indigenous peoples".
She said a similar case in South
Africa three years ago had granted the San rights to
mineral revenues from their ancestral land. But the
Botswana case marked the first time a modern African
court had recognised the ancestral land access rights of
indigenous people, she added.
The Botswana government would not
comment on the ruling but said it was considering
appealing.
There are estimated to be 100,000
Bushmen in southern Africa, and about half are in
Botswana. None live the 20,000-year-old traditional
hunter-gatherer life centred on tracking and killing
game on foot using poison arrows.
Because of their change in lifestyle,
it is unlikely that many San will return to the Central
Kalahari Game Reserve, which is the size of Belgium. The
ruling gives them the right to do so, but does not
compel the government to provide services such as water,
clinics and schools in the park.
The San have suffered decades of
discrimination at the hands of the local Setswana
population whose name for them, Basarwa, means "people
without cattle".
White settlers once hunted them for
sport. Renowned for their ability to track game by
reading delicate signs in the sand, the San in South
Africa were used by its armed forces as frontline
"trackers" in the Apartheid era.
Yesterday's ruling reverses 20 years
of a Botswana government policy to "encourage" the San
to leave the reserve. From 1997, the authorities began
to cut services to them, such as mobile clinics, in the
park. Payments were offered to those who volunteered to
move to a resettlement camp 30 miles away.
For that reason, the government has
always argued that it did not evict anyone. However,
human rights campaigners in Botswana say the authorities
took advantage of the San's low levels of education by
spreading rumours that boreholes in the park would be
sealed and those who remained would be killed by the
Botswana Defence Force.
San advocacy groups say they have
been watched by police. Most anthropologists have been
denied research permits to study them in the park.
But it is unlikely that many San will
return to the park. Even before the evictions began 20
years ago, most had given up their nomadic existence in
the park and had settled around boreholes in it.
Nevertheless, life in the park -
close to the ancestors who are crucial to the wellbeing
of the San - was better than at the New Xade
resettlement camp, where residents have no jobs,
resettlement grants are spent on alcohol, and Aids is
rife.
Desire for tourism in the Kalahari
and concern for its dwindling wildlife are the
government's principal motives for resettling the San.
Claims from European pressure groups
that the government is motivated by a desire to allow
diamond mining in the park have been discredited. Even
if true, the move would produce such an international
outcry that it would be unlikely.
But it will take major investment to
make the park viable for tourism. Animal populations,
down to a mere 5 per cent of levels 30 years ago, were
decimated by government-built cattle fences around the
park, which cut off game from natural migration routes
and water.
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De Beers boycotters ask DiCaprio
for support
The creators of a new website
designed to promote an international boycott of the De
Beers diamond company have placed a full-page
advertisement in Variety, the Hollywood entertainment
newspaper, appealing to the actor Leonardo DiCaprio to
help with their campaign.
The site,
www.boycottdebeers.com, accuses the company of
complying with the government of Botswana in forcing
bushmen from land in a park in the Kalahari desert,
created to protect them from the encroachments of modern
civilisation.
The diamond giant has denied any
connection with the eviction of the bushmen.
However, several international
models, including Imam, Lily Cole and Erin O'Connor, who
have previously worked for De Beers, are supporting the
campaign and have vowed not appear on behalf of the
company again.
DiCaprio plays the lead role in the
newly released thriller Blood Diamond, which highlights
the money-trail from diamond mining to conflicts in
Africa. De Beers has responded to the film by saying its
diamonds are 100 per cent untainted by war and violence.
David Usborne
Source:
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/africa/article2073037.ece
/
http://www.theartofafrica.co.za/serv/ennie.jsp
posted 15
December 2006
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 |
Super Rich: A Guide to Having it All
By Russell Simmons
Russell Simmons knows firsthand that
wealth is rooted in much more than the
stock
market. True wealth has more to do with
what's in your heart than what's in your
wallet. Using this knowledge, Simmons
became one of America's shrewdest
entrepreneurs, achieving a level of
success that most investors only dream
about. No matter how much material gain
he accumulated, he never stopped lending
a hand to those less fortunate. In
Super Rich, Simmons uses his rare
blend of spiritual savvy and
street-smart wisdom to offer a new
definition of wealth-and share timeless
principles for developing an unshakable
sense of self that can weather any
financial storm. As Simmons says, "Happy
can make you money, but money can't make
you happy." |
* * * * *
|
The New Jim Crow
Mass Incarceration in the Age of
Colorblindness
By Michele Alexander
Contrary to the
rosy picture of race embodied in Barack
Obama's political success and Oprah
Winfrey's financial success, legal
scholar Alexander argues vigorously and
persuasively that [w]e have not ended
racial caste in America; we have merely
redesigned it. Jim Crow and legal racial
segregation has been replaced by mass
incarceration as a system of social
control (More African Americans are
under correctional control today... than
were enslaved in 1850). Alexander
reviews American racial history from the
colonies to the Clinton administration,
delineating its transformation into the
war on drugs. She offers an acute
analysis of the effect of this mass
incarceration upon former inmates who
will be discriminated against, legally,
for the rest of their lives, denied
employment, housing, education, and
public benefits. Most provocatively, she
reveals how both the move toward
colorblindness and affirmative action
may blur our vision of injustice: most
Americans know and don't know the truth
about mass incarceration—but her
carefully researched, deeply engaging,
and thoroughly readable book should
change that.—Publishers
Weekly |
 |
* * * * *
The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
* *
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Ancient African Nations
* * * * *
If you like this page consider making a donation
* * * * *
Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
1950
1960
1965
1970
1975
1980
1985
1990
1995
2000
____ 2005
Enjoy!
* * * * *
The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
/
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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update 13
December 2011
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