Survival International reported last week that the High Court of Botswana will finally, “as a matter of urgency”, hear the case brought by more than 200 Bushmen last year. The court will rule on whether the Bushmen were unlawfully deprived of their land, water and cultural rights by government policies of forced resettlement from their ancestral homes in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR). More than 1500 Bushmen have been forcibly relocated and been placed in resettlement camps, where there is little access to water and their traditional food resources. The government has harassed and even prosecuted Bushmen for hunting on their traditional lands without a ‘permit’. The case was thrown out on a technicality at the request of the government last April.
