Botswana
World Bank support for controversial Batswana diamond project

afrol News, 17 February - The World Bank has agreed to provide a US$ 2 million funding of a diamond prospering project in a Batswana game reserve, which is also the traditional homeland of Botswana's San people ("Bushmen"). San societies have earlier been evicted from their homes, human rights groups protest.

Kalahari Diamonds Ltd has now obtained World Bank support to intensify it prospecting for diamonds in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, an enormous, almost unspoilt natural environ that was protected by the British ex-colonial power in 1961 to provide a living for region's marginalised indigenous population, the San people. 

The San, which earlier patronisingly were called "Bushmen", are a traditionally nomadic people, living as hunters and gatherers. After the Bantu people reached Southern Africa over 500 years ago, followed by white settlers, the indigenous population was pushed into the region's less fertile areas, such as the Kalahari Desert. The Game Reserve is one of the few remaining habitats and ancestral grounds of the San people.

The Batswana government however has led a harsh campaign to force the San communities to leave the park during the last decade, using the environmental scapegoat that the indigenous people is using the game resource in an unsustainable way. At the same time, the government has opened the reserve to game hunting tourism and started prospecting for diamonds. 

The campaign against the San people has had its effect, and presently, only some 100 San remain in the reserve. After the government cut off water supply to the San camps in the reserve last year, almost the entire community has moved to temporary housing outside the park.

As late as last year, the Batswana President, Festus Mogae claimed: "There is neither any actual mining nor any plan for future mining inside the Reserve." The human rights group Survival International however has obtained government documents showing that the entire park now has been "parcelled out in diamond exploration concessions" to various diamond companies.

Survival is now protesting the World Bank financial support of these explorations in the park, which the group holds, is documenting once and for all that the Batswana government has broken its promises.

Despite World Bank "requirements that indigenous communities are informed participants in the development of such a project," no San communities from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve "were consulted over the plans," the group says.

Meanwhile, the majority of the reserve's San population has been forced to give up it traditional nomadic life and have been sedentarised in what organisations call "dreary camps". Here, there are no forms of occupation or a way of making a living. Traditional hunting and gathering is close to impossible. The communities have made completely dependent on aid from the authorities to survive.

"Life in New Xade," the biggest of the government camps, "is unbearable," says one of the leaders of the San people. The situation is under close surveillance by Batswana police, which are hindering all attempts to return to the reserve. 

The government of Botswana on the other hand claims the movement out of the park has been completely "voluntary" and that any of the San are free to return whenever they want. 

A long history of resistance to the evictions and intents to return however seem to prove the opposite, and the government is getting increased support from the industry. Diamond company De Beers had even "increased its exploration concessions" in the reserve, while in November "threatened legal action against Survival for associating the evictions with diamond interests."

While Botswana is the country in Southern Africa with the longest traditions of democracy and respect of human rights, the dominant Bantu peoples however have a deeply rooted tradition of racist attitudes towards the indigenous peoples San and Khoi - which still generally are called "Bushmen and Hottentots", often also by the national press.

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