Thursday, November 7, 2024

Have we learnt anything from CKGR?

We are sleep walking into yet another international public relations land mine.

The controversy surrounding the relocation of Basarwa from Ranyane settlement has all the hallmarks of d├®j├á vu.

It has uncanny similarities with that which happened at the Central Kalahari Game Reserve a few years ago.

The only difference is that unlike with the CKGR, this time around are we are doing it with our eyes wide open.

There is a piece of history from which we can learn, but which for strange reasons our government is electing to cast aside.
To start with, maybe we should be generous enough and give our government the benefit of doubt.

It may well be that there is a genuine reason why people have to be moved from Ranyane.

It may well be untrue that government is using unsavoury tactics to get people out.

There have been allegations that government is coercing, bribing, cajoling and even intimidating people to move.

We hope it’s all lies, for if there is even a grain of truth in it then ours is a government that should be shorn of all the respect that we have traditionally given it.

When he came into office, President Ian Khama promised to resolve the impasse at CKGR.

Not only did he call Basarwa leadership into his office, he at one point even visited the CKGR no less than three times in a month.
This created an impression of seriousness and sincerity on his part.

We also received commendation and goodwill, including from such belligerent quarters such as Survival International.
But that has since all evaporated with the wind.

There is a growing perception that President Khama, far from being a solution, is now a problem, not least because of his commercial interests in a tourism company that has invested inside the CKGR.

Compromised as he is, the minimum that the president can do is to insist on his government officials to be honest with the reasons why Basarwa are now being moved from Ranyane.

Unfortunately, that is not what has been happening.

The problem, just as was the case during the deplorable CKGR debacle, is that government is not being upfront, much less honest and open with what those reasons might be.

People are never moved just for the sake of it.

At the CKGR, people were told that they were being moved because government wanted to provide them with services.

When people argued that government would have to take the services to where they had been staying for centuries, government came up with another reason that being a Game reserve, it was incompatible to allow people to stay side by side with wildlife.

When it was put to government that actually Basarwa had stayed side by side with the same animals in the same place for centuries, the government yet again changed the story ÔÇô not for the last.

The upshot of it was that we kept going around a mulberry bush until such time that the whole world opinion moved against us.
And we could have paid a very dear price had Survival International gone ahead full steam to campaign against Botswana diamonds and Botswana tourism as they had at one point threatened.

But still the last time we were in a position similar to what is happening in Ranyane, we took a battering.

Not only did the reputation of our country suffer, our government also lost the battle at the courts of law.

Regretfully, the loss put to the fore, the kind of government that we have.

Instead of fully respecting, honouring and implementing court judgments, the government resorted to technicalities, including throwing tantrums by moving goal posts to say only those Basarwa that had put their names before the court would be allowed into Reserve and not their immediate families.

This has been an unmitigated disgrace.

We call on the government to tread the issue of Ranyane with care.

Botswana’s economy is today much weaker than it was ten years ago.

As a result, we cannot, as a country, put up with effects of negative international public the way we did then.

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