It is unclear whether this had anything to do with the government stinting on its indulgence of Central Kgalagadi Game Reserve residents or whether the logistics of reaching a desolate, off-the-grid area proved daunting. Whatever the case, a group of long-suffering people whose plight has inspired the sympathies of King Charles of England and Hollywood A-list movie stars never got to make representations to a commission of enquiry into the review of the constitution.
The Commission, which was chaired by former Chief Justice Maruping Dibotelo, visited a total of 132 places across the country. Enclosed in its report is a Botswana map speckled with differently-sized purple-red circles to indicate all the places the commissioners visited. The CKGR is a vast expanse of parched land that sits smack bang in the middle of the country. Larger than the Netherlands, the game reserve covers an area of 52 800 square kilometres – which is almost 10 percent of Botswana’s land area.
It is the second largest game reserve in the world after Kruger National Park in South Africa. On the map, there is not a single purple-red within the CKGR and not one of its four settlements appears on the list of places that the Commissioners visited. That notwithstanding, the residents have a lot of complaints and would certainly want to see constitutional entrenchment of their rights. In terms of tribal composition, the reserve’s culturally homogenous inhabitants are G//cui in roughly the western half as well as the G//ana and Babolaongwe in the eastern half.
The 2002 High Court judgement reflects this tribal mix. Babolaongwe are now considered Bakgalagadi but Gary Okihiro, a Japanese-American who conducted an extensive ethnographic study on Bakgalagadi in the late 1960s and early 1970s, says that they are descended from Barolong. In 1550, one Barolong section hived off from the main, followed the Molopo River westward and settled at Lobu-lwa-iZutshwa (Shekgalagari for Zutshwa Salt Pan) in the present-day Kgalagadi District. By 1650, two clans with different totems had emerged: Babinaphiri and Babinanare.
The former section headed northward toward Dithejwane while the latter headed east toward Lesotho. At Dithejwane, the Babinaphiri found the Bakgwatlheng with whom they lived side by side in peace. The arrival of the Bakwena during the latter part of the 18th century disturbed this order. On being attacked, Dithejwane residents scattered in all directions and as a result, some Babolaongwe not only ended up living among the Khwe (Bushmen) but acculturated into their identity. If you accept Okihiro’s theory, these Babolaongwe are probably the only Tswana-origin tribe whose members all but became Khwe. Ahead of independence in 1961, the British colonial government created the CKGR as a sanctuary for both game and the Khwe. The reserve did indeed serve that function until 1997 when, under President Sir Ketumile Masire, the human residents were forcibly relocated to the settlements of New Xade and Kaudwane.
The first batch of 1740 left in 1997 and the second (of 530) left in January 2002 when the government stopped providing essential services in the form of water, food, health, education and relevant social services. The government’s explanation was that it was expensive to provide services to them, that it was necessary to integrate them into the modern way of life and that they couldn’t co-exist with wildlife. Resistance was swift and took the form of the First People of the Kalahari (FPK), a Khwe rights group, sending an SOS to international sympathisers, among them a London-based pressure group called Survival International.
The latter claimed that the Bushmen were being “relocated” to make way for a De Beers diamond mine at a place called Gope. In a marathon legal case that attracted international attention and under the leadership of FPK Coordinator, Roy Sesana, the CKGR residents litigated for their right to return to the game reserve. The outcome was almost a draw because while a three-judge panel ruled that the litigants could return, it also stated that the government was under no obligation to provide any services to them.
Three years later, Xoroxloo Duxee, an elderly woman from Metsiamanong, died in 2005 from what Survival attributed to dehydration and starvation “after the government blockaded the reserve.” Only in 2016 (14 years later), under President Ian Khama, were the services restored. This development followed face-to-face dialogue between Khama and Sesana. A year before, a high-powered delegation led by ministers Pelonomi Venson-Moitoi (Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation), Slumber Tsogwane (Local Government and Rural Development) and Tshekedi Khama (Environment, Wildlife and Tourism) had been helicoptered to the CKGR as part of a process to resume provision of the full range of essential services that had been stopped in 2002. However, CKGR residents still have some more grievances. They want their hunting rights restored and during Khama’s administration, suspected poachers reportedly found themselves on the receiving end of airborne sniper’s rifle.
This information was provided by Survival and was never refuted by the government. The government has allowed only litigants in the High Court case to return but there is agitation for all former residents to be granted the right of return. Were such right to be granted, Kaudwane and New Xade would become ghost towns overnight. These resettlement villages were built at tens of millions of pula – New Xade’s medical clinic is among the largest, if not the largest, in the country. The resettled Khwe have been introduced to a sedentary lifestyle (as well as diet) that a study says has, for the first time in their history, given them alien diseases like sugar diabetes and high blood pressure. The New Xade councillor in the Gantsi District Council, Jumanda Gakelebone, has told Sunday Standard that his constituents have complained that rather than bring the riches that they were promised, the resettlement has brought them HIV/AIDS – a result of social (and sexual) interaction with construction workers who built government buildings in their new home.
Unable to hunt, adult Bushmen have, for the first time in centuries, also not been able to pass on hunting and other cultural skills to their children. Meanwhile, a slew of multinational companies are tearing up the CKGR prospecting for minerals. Fracking has also been alleged but denied by the government. Nothing suggests CKGR residents are making any real benefits from this apparent mineral boom. The Dibotelo Report says that those who appeared before the Commission on behalf of the Khwe in general “demanded” that their ancestral land “should be returned to the rightful owners with reparation.”
Interestingly, a member of the British House of Lords called Sir Douglas Glover saw all this happening 33 years before it did. During a debate on the Botswana Independence Bill in July 1966, Sir Douglas said that he didn’t think it was a good idea to give Botswana independence before extracting cast-iron guarantees from the country’s future leaders about the welfare of the downtrodden CKGR residents. “What safeguards for the future of these people have been written into the constitution, and what shall we in this country do to safeguard their future interests?” posed Sir Douglas, who wanted the British government to ensure that “the Bantu would not continue to ill-treat the Bushmen.”
