Thursday, April 28, 2005

Bushmen fight for homeland - BBC News

The Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR) in Botswana is a vast, arid, yet immensely rich area, which for tens of thousands of years has been one of the chief hunting-grounds in southern Africa for the Bushmen.

(...)

But there are diamonds under the CKGR - potentially an important source, controlled by an offshoot of the gigantic De Beers organisation.

The Botswana government decreed that the Bushmen should be moved out of the reserve, and onto relocation sites outside, and this started in 1997. Their villages were pulled down, and they were expelled. It was often an ugly process.

Another cheerful story from a beautiful place. Words fail me. At least there seems to be some hope in this example, but I fail to understand how anybody can get themselves into such a powerful position, with the support of their countrymen, and then turn around and treat them all with so little respect.

EDIT: Oh, sorry, it's not all of them, is it? The ones who aren't "Stone Age Creatures" are just dandy.

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