adminclaimed that authorities were going to evict the community who have been based in the southern settlement of Ranyane for generations.
But Botswana government spokesman Jeff Ramsay said the allegations from what he described as the “London-based neo-apartheid organisation” were false.
“The government of Botswana has no plans to remove those who wish to stay at Ranyane,” Ramsay said in a statement. The Bushmen, the indigenous people of southern Africa, live off the land, hunting and gathering, grow their own food, and have limited access to health care.
Survival International last Friday raised concern over reports that local government officials would send trucks to evict hundreds of Bushmen from Ranyane.
The Bushmen live on the site of a proposed wildlife corridor that lies between two of the country’s premier safari reserves, the Central Kalahari Game Reserve and the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park.
According to Survival International, Botswana’s nature-loving president, Ian Khama, sits on the board of the US organisation Conservation International that is implementing the wildlife corridor.
Ramsay said that most residents had in fact asked to be relocated.
He said authorities had five meetings with the Ranyane Bushmen, who numbered just 182, according to 2011 electoral data.
Botswana has in the past been widely condemned for its treatment of the Bushmen who have lived in southern Africa for tens of thousands of years. Botswana evicted Bushmen from their ancestral lands in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve in the late 90s and early 2000s.
In 2006 the Bushmen successfully challenged their eviction, but government continued to obstruct their return by blocking access to water until another court ruling in 2011. — AFP.
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