When it comes to foreign relations travel, President Khama seems to be adhering to an inflexible and almost predictable script; never to attend an African Union meeting, never to go to New York for a United Nations meeting, only to go for a SADC meeting if Zimbabwe tops the agenda and never to miss an annual board meeting of Conservation International often held in Arlington, Virginia in the United States. But a domestic government decision to ban all kinds of hunting in the country now threatens to become a foreign relations dynamite that may force President Khama to wake up to a totally alien calendar of international geopolitics.
Five years into Khama’s hardnosed wildlife conservation program, Botswana is all of sudden feeling the pain of the president’s ambitious, wholesale, abrasive, multi-faced and now increasingly divisive wildlife conservation and environmental program. It is however not entirely surprising that on account of this program President Khama has lately been receiving all sorts of awards across the globe.
This week an American organization calling itself Conde Nash joined a long list of foreign based organizations to heap praise on President Khama as a champion of conservation.
An obscure organization not much known outside conservation and development circles, Conde Nash said it was giving President Khama a Global Visionary Award for among other things “pushing economic and environmental plans, beginning with the measurement of natural resources” that will become “the foundation for economic growth which doesn’t harm habitats.”
He was also recognized for hosting the 2012 Summit for Sustainability in Africa which was partly organized and funded by Conservation International of which he is a senior Board Member.
The Conde Nash Award is the latest in a string of overseas awards that President Khama has been receiving over the years on account of his vaunted dedication to environmental and wildlife related conservation efforts.
The awards include the Africa Conservation Award which he received from the Safari Club of Washington in 1991, the International Conservation Caucus Foundation, Paul Harris Fellow and the Endangered Wildlife Trust Statesman Award which he bagged in 2001, Honorary Membership of IUCN as well as the Teddy Roosevelt Conservation Award that he received in 2011, to name but a few.
While the Botswana Government official propaganda machine has gone full throttle to overplay the President’s latest award, there have been few celebrations beyond the Government enclave.
Instead all attention has been hogged by what will be the implications of an announcement by President Khama in his State of the Nation Address last year when he said his government had decided to indefinitely suspend hunting of all kinds save in private game farms.
At best the true ramifications of the President’s fiat remain hazy and at worst outright scary.
Perhaps waking up to reality that Khama’s word was neither a threat nor a bluff, this week professional hunting companies for the first time went public and challenged the president to produce scientific evidence justifying his hunting ban.
The ban threatens to put a sharp wedge between Khama and his erstwhile club of privileged fanatics that control and dominate Botswana’s tourism sector.
Accustomed to the President’s personal largesse and patronage, a section of the tourism sector that thrives on hunting is for the first time showing an unprecedented preparedness to break ranks with the patron who has for years ensured their upkeep, influence, unaccountable power and access to the highest office in the land.
A popular but unspoken word within the conservation and wildlife circles is that President Khama made the decision at the instigation of both Wilderness Safaris and a National Geographic film-maker, Dereck Joubert, with Conservation International following not too far behind.
Khama is a shareholder in Wilderness Safaris, an association the Presidency has in the past gone an extra mile to deny and later hide.
He is also a personal a friend of Dereck Joubert a recent recipient of one of Botswana’s top-most Presidential honours.
Conservation International is President Khama’s kind of crowd.
He joined the NGO’s Board of Directors in 1999.
As Deputy Chairman of this multi-million Dollar NGO, he today sits atop the organization as one of its longest serving Board Directors.
While President Khama’s love for nature and outdoor life is acknowledged by all including even his fiercest critics, it is the real motives behind the president’s decision to ban hunting that invites an acrimonious and increasingly bitter name calling debate that is in no way short of rancor.
His admirers say at the heart of his motives is an instinctive desire to preserve Botswana’s wildlife and environmental heritage to near pristine levels.
Detractors point out that the President is driven not so much by conservation instincts as money-making motives underscored by his associations with such organizations like Conservation International and Wilderness Safaris.
But whose interests is President Khama really advancing?
In his views a decision to impose moratorium on hunting was made in the context of a growing concern about the sharp decline in the sharp populations of most of wildlife species.
“Besides contributing to the conservation of wildlife it is anticipated that, in keeping with international trends, the moratorium on hunting will further facilitate the sustainable growth of the tourism sector, as hunting zones are converted into photographic areas,” says a statement run by a ministry responsible wildlife and environment. It is worth noting here that the ministry is led by none other than the President’s younger brother, a refrain often pointed by detractors who go on to say government has not provided any empirical proof that species have been on the decline.
They aver that the President is succumbing to pressure from such organizations like Conservation International which has for years been putting pressure on Khama to parcel the country into zones for photographic tourism, with Joubert, a film-maker for National Geographic as the most articulate proponent who has been clever to use his friendship with the President to get what he wanted.
Professional Safaris hunters go as far as to say when it comes to hunting ban, Joubert has this time overreached himself not just by placing an imposing nudge on the president but also going as far as to explicitly peddle his influence to determine a national policy with potentially explosive international consequences for the country and the president.
Debbie Peake, who is a director at Mochaba Development, which is a trophy safari in Maun, says as a matter of fact that Joubert was influential in the government decision to ban trophy hunting.
She goes further to accuse Joubert of sabotage.
“His [Joubert’s] position against hunting safari is a personal vendetta against some individuals. He just makes wild claims that are not scientifically proven. His sentiments are just a public stunt meant to put him on the map as a National Geographic filmmaker,” said Peake.
Graeme Pollock of Safari Botswana Bound agrees, adding that everybody should be worried that for all his influence on President Khama, Joubert has no scientific background to guide a decision which as it turns out he now enjoys the singular ignominy of almost single-handedly having forced on government.
“What scares me is that he has no scientific background. People who like to make movies and go to Hollywood like to make noise because they come up with these crazy ideas to get attention. Unfortunately they are the ones who the authorities listen to,” added Pollock.
Joubert, who also owns Selinda Reserve in the Okavango has not made any attempt to underplay let alone hide his friendship with Khama.
He has however brushed off insinuations that he used his hold on the president to orchestrate a hunting ban.
“I don’t have influence in the decision making of the government. When you see the declining of wildlife species, hunting and poaching cannot be tolerated. I had a conversation with the president and I don’t think I would be held responsible for influencing the ban because one person cannot influence such a move,” said Joubert.
While government says it will continue to issue special game licenses on a case by case, Stephen Corry who is the Director of Survival International, a Non-Governmental Organisation fighting for the rights of indigenous people says that for Basarwa such a promise coming from the Government of Botswana rings hollow.
According to Corry, Botswana Government and especially President Khama are given to creating a falsified impression of pristine wilderness about the country’s Game Reserves and National Parks when the reality is that such Parks and Reserves have been built on the land of displaced people, especially Basarwa.
“… In reality parks and reserves are built on the eviction and destruction of countless tribal people,” says Corry.
Corry’s crescendo reached its peak when just over two months ago Botswana Government, no doubt with direct consent of President Khama put extra immigration requirements on a British national, Gordon Bennett – a lead lawyer in Basarwa’s litigation against government. Basarwa had not only wanted to be allowed permission back into the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, but also to be allowed to hunt.
The upshot of extra visa requirements on Bennett was that he was unable to enter the country for the trial. Basarwa went on to lose that particular round of litigation.
When the High Court dismissed an application by Basarwa to be allowed to go back into the Reserve and hunt, Corry went ballistic, hitting back in both anger and thinly veiled frustration; “the High Court has dealt a cruel blow to the Bushmen, but the battle for their land won’t stop here. Survival will not rest until the tribe’s rights are restored ÔÇô the wheels are in motion for a full-blown international campaign once again,” he said.
True to his word, in just under two months Survival International launched a boycott of Botswana tourism which though still in its early stages is from the look of things already giving Botswana Government bouts of sleepless nights.
Ominously, Corry has not ruled out extending the campaign to include an international boycott of Botswana diamonds, by far the country’s economic mainstay.
“Is that what Batswana deserve from their ‘elected government’? Surely in this time of world austerity, Botswana, like everywhere, needs what goodwill it can muster. After all, it’s not the only country rich in diamonds, and it’s been shown before that the world’s rich and famous are happy to find ethical reasons to purchase gems from elsewhere, or not at all. Will they really want their tokens of eternal love to be ripped from under the feet of mistreated Basarwa? For their part, tourists are spoilt for choice about safari destinations. Will they be happy to gorge on juicy steaks (kudu, anyone?), and relax by the Kalahari Plains Camp swimming pool, in the certain knowledge that the Basarwa are once again being starved off their land no more than a day’s walk away? Let’s see.”
While Corry has repeatedly accused President Khama of indebtedness to all sort of commercial interests, the harshest criticism is often spared for Wilderness Safaris and Conservation International which he alleges to be a front for some of America’s biggest corporate underworld with seedy and checkered brand images.
“The president may of course be trying to shore up his credentials with the controversial American NGO ‘Conservation International’ (annual income over 140 million dollars) ÔÇô With representatives of companies such as Wal-Mart, Unilever and JPMorgan Chase on its board, the organization is little more than a mask for Western corporate interests. This is known as ‘greenwashing’ ÔÇô large profitable corporations claiming to care for the environment, trying to present an ‘ethical’ face to the public to clean their appalling brand images.”
Making reference to government’s treatment of Basarwa during and following the original court case against Government, since dubbed the lengthiest and most expensive in the country’s history, Corry sees not much difference between Botswana Government, Conservation International and the NGO’s corporate handlers.
“It [Botswana Government] has spent huge amounts on London PR companies to invent reasons why the Bushmen can’t stay on their land, and it now threatens magazines by withdrawing its tourist advertising when they report what’s going on,” says Corry.
“The Bushmen won their case ÔÇô finally ÔÇô but then had to return repeatedly to court to reinstate their water borehole, and to counter constant harassment, beatings and accusations of ‘poaching’. That of course is the term now used when hunting tribes try and provide for themselves in the self-sufficient way which has underpinned their independence since forever. Such self-sufficiency if of no value to governments, of course: tribes people are neither workers nor taxpayers and so fail to contribute their mites to the elites’ coffers.”
While Botswana Government went out of its way to distance itself from more recent official efforts to yet again relocate Basarwa from Ranyane settlement just outside the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, Conservation International has on the other hand gone full steam to claim credit for the relocations.
In an article published on their website, Conservation International says together with Botswana Government, British High Commission and the French GEF (FFEM) it has conducted a scoping exercise that brought about the birth of what is called Western Kgalagadi Conservation Corridor.
“CI was appointed the implementing Agent and is undertaking this exciting four year project in partnership with Botswana Government through its Department of Wildlife and National Parks, in the Ministry of Environment, Wildlife and Tourism. A team of five permanent staff is spearheading the project implementation in collaboration with a number of local partners such as Kalahari Conservation Society, Botswana Community Based Organisations Network, Phytotrade Africa, Cheetah Conservation Botswana, Cybertracker, the Botswana College of Agriculture and the Kuru Family of Organisations.”
Clearly making inferences to President Khama’s much exulted conservation credentials, Conservation International says in the same statement that political will to establish the Wildlife conservation corridor in the Kgalagadi always existed.
“The explicit intent of CI’s effort in the WKCC [Western Kgalagadi Conservation Corridor] was to improve both the ecological sustainability of key areas that form ecological corridors linking the KTP [Kgalagadi Trans-Frontier Park] with the CKGR, and to improve quality of life and livelihoods for the local people living within the project region. A strict adherence to principles of consultation and community engagement guided CI in its efforts to sustain the natural wealth of this region while ensuring the flow of benefits and decision making authority to its local people.”
Corry would vehemently disagree.
“Not a single special game licence for subsistence hunting in the reserve has been granted for over a decade; and the Basarwa’s handful of goats and donkeys are frequently stopped from entering the reserve along with Basarwa themselves ÔÇô some are given only one month’s ‘permit’, with threats of arrest if they ‘overstay’,” he has said.
