Organisationen Survival International, der kæmper for oprindelige folks rettigheder, har lanceret en kampagne for at påvirke regeringen i Botswana til at stoppe forskelsbehandlingen af landets oprindelige befolkning san-folket eller ”buskmændene”, som flere kalder dem – herunder organisationen selv.
Kampagnen kommer op til landets 50-års jubilæum og et af budskaberne er, at regeringen kan nå at rette op på en dårlige behandling af san-folket.
Landet blev selvstændigt 30. september 1966.
Botswana anses ofte for at være noget nær et mønsterland i Afrika. Det har været politisk stabilt siden uafhængigheden og det har formået at tjene penge på sine råstoffer, der primært bestå af diamanter.
Survival International skriver:
Survival International has launched a campaign calling for an end to a draconian system in Botswana which has broken Bushmen families apart and denied them access to their land. Critics such as veteran anti-apartheid activist Michael Dingake have compared the system to the apartheid-era pass laws.
The call comes in the fiftieth anniversary year of Botswana’s independence.
After having been brutally evicted and forced into government camps between 1997 and 2002, the Bushmen won a historic court victory in 2006 recognizing their right to live on their land in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve.
Since then, however, this right has only been extended to the small number of Bushmen named in court papers. Their children and close relatives are forced to apply for permits just to visit them, or risk seven years in prison, and children born and brought up in the reserve have to apply for a permit when they turn 18. Many fear that once the current generation has passed away, the Bushmen will be shut out of their land forever.
On the subject of the fiftieth anniversary, one Bushman told Survival: “I don’t even know anything about these celebrations. They are doing this so that people will not think they are a bad government. They are celebrating; we are not. We’re still feeling the same way. They’ve been celebrating for the last 49 years.”
Survival’s Director Stephen Corry said: “The Botswana government has viciously persecuted the Bushmen for decades, first with violent evictions and then with a permit system designed to break families apart. If Botswana still wants to be seen as a “shining light” of democracy in Africa, it needs to listen to the Bushmen, uphold its own court’s ruling and end this appallingly unjust restriction on the Bushmen’s right to live on their ancestral land in the Central Kalahari reserve. I hope that this historic year will mark the end of the decades long persecution of the Bushmen.”
