The United States Embassy in Gaborone says it does not comment on classified documents, which may have been leaked in the wake of the latest WikiLeaks revelations on Botswana.
“Any unauthorized disclosure of classified information by Wikileaks has harmful implications for global engagement among and between nations. Given its potential impact, we condemn such unauthorized disclosures,” said John Warner, US Public Affairs Officer in Gaborone, responding to the Telegraph.
Warner said the US government cannot speak to the authenticity of any documents provided to the press.
“We can speak to the diplomatic community’s practice of cable writing. Cables reflect the internal day to day analysis and candid assessments that feed the governments’ foreign relations deliberations. These cables are often preliminary and incomplete expressions of foreign policy, and they should not be seen as having standing on their own or as representing U.S. policy,” Warner said.
In the same breath, the government of Botswana says it is not in a position to confirm or deny the said documents authenticity.
The WikiLeaks revelations, which have irked some governments in as many weeks, claims that former US ambassador to Botswana, Joseph Huggins, condemned, in 2005, the government of Botswana’s ‘forced eviction’ of Basarwa from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve.
“The date appearing on the alleged document is March 18 2005, thus making its content of limited relevance to current circumstances at New Xade settlement, which is of course open to anyone to make their own assessment. It is at best a snapshot of an individual’s assessment at a point in time,” the government spokesman, Dr. Jeff Ramsay told the Telegraph.
Ramsay said it has been and remains government’s view that the establishment of New Xade has increased both the immediate and long-term opportunities for economic and social development of its residents, as is reflected in the villages’ ongoing growth.
With respect to the allegation that people were dumped into an ‘economically unviable situation’, Ramsay said government at the time of the relocation and in the years since has engaged in a wide range of economic empowerment initiatives in support of New Xade, such as provision of livestock.
Added to this, the government spokesman said with respect to the development of New Xade, public officers have worked in close consultation with the community’s own freely elected authorities.
“Since 2005 Botswana, through Government and non-government stakeholders, has continued to engage the USA and other members of the international community in dialogue aimed at building greater mutual understanding on issues related to the challenges facing New Xade and other Remote Rural Area Settlements,” Ramsay said.
The US Embassy said it understood that there are ongoing discussions over the CKGR between the various parties, including the Government of Botswana and representatives of the Basarwa.
“We strongly support dialogue in this case, as all parties work toward a mutually acceptable solution. The Government and people of Botswana must decide on the best and most sustainable use of the country’s land and other natural resources,” Warner told the Telegraph.
According to WikiLeaks, Huggins told Washington that Basarwa (commonly referred to as Bushmen) had been ‘dumped in economically unviable situations without forethought, and without follow-up support. Huggins is said to have said this after visiting New Xade relocation camp.
After visiting New Xade relocation camp, Huggins, it is claimed, noted ‘despair among youth’. The cables also reveal Huggins’ frustration with Botswana’s then Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ernest Mpofu. Having suggested that the government reconsider its approach to the Bushmen, Huggins found that Mpofu ‘dismissed all such suggestions’ which were ‘met with thinly veiled scorn’.
The cables also detail Huggins’ discussions with a representative of a local NGO who criticized the government for ‘the lack of consultation, and the lack of transparency in decision-making when it came to the treatment of [the Bushmen]’. The representative, who has not been named, also told Huggins that Bushmen ‘are systematically being discriminated against by the [government], which moves them away from wherever there might be an income-generating opportunity’, and that they ‘believed that plans for mining were the reason that the [Bushman] groups were removed’.
Basarwa launched litigation against the government in a bid to gain access to their well before a panel of five judges. A High Court judge dismissed their case in 2010, expressing sympathy with the government, and an appeal hearing was held on Monday whose ruling will be delivered by the end of this month.
The day after the hearing was held, Gem Diamonds announced that the Botswana government had issued it a license to open a diamond mine at one of the Bushman communities inside the reserve. While the government had always maintained that the concession was sub-economic, Gem Diamonds values the mine at $3 billion.
Survival International’s director, Stephen Corry, said Thursday: ‘Yet again, the Botswana government is shown to have been behind needless suffering, scorn, discrimination, and even death, for its most deprived citizens, the Bushmen. This is not just the opinion of some human rights activists and the Bushmen themselves. It is a matter of fact as reported by the US government.
However much wealth they bring to the few, diamonds should not be bought at the cost of the destruction of these Bushman peoples’.
