Botswana’s president promises to restore Bushmen rights after yearslong delay in burial

GABORONE, BOTSWANA — Botswana’s new president has promised to restore some rights, which were taken away from the Bushmen, an indigenous tribe of hunters and gatherers found across southern Africa.


This week, the government allowed the tribe to bury Pitseng Gaoberekwe who died in December 2021 on the group’s ancestral land, ending a drawn-out impasse.     


The courts had barred the family from burying Gaoberekwe in his ancestral home in the vast and arid Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR), from which most of his relatives were forcibly removed to protect the wildlife zone. 


International tribal rights advocacy group Survival International has argued the Bushmen were pushed out of the game reserve because there are diamonds in the area. 


The previous government denied those allegations, saying it wanted the Bushmen to move closer to modern amenities and life. 


 




Before Gaoberekwe’s burial Tuesday, President Duma Boko, who took power six weeks ago, promised to restore the Bushmen’s rights, including allowing them to resume hunting wild animals. 


Boko, a former opposition leader, is a human rights lawyer who represented the tribe in court against the state before he became Botswana’s president. 


Itumeleng Johanne, an officer at local human rights advocacy group Ditshwanelo, said the new government is on the right track and should do more to protect minority groups. 


“We, therefore, note with appreciation that finally the body of Mr. Pitseng Gaoberekwe, which has been in a mortuary for over two years, will be laid to rest. His family will be able to lay him to rest on his ancestral land with dignity to which he had, hitherto been denied by our courts,” Johanne said.          

 

Survival International has been involved in legal battles against the Botswana government, notably against the group’s eviction from the CKGR in 2006. 


“This is an incredibly significant moment for the new government,” said U.K.-based Jonathan Mazower, Survival International communications director. “The fact that the new president in one of his first acts in office has done this — that he has signaled that it is important for him and his administration — I think that will give a lot of people hope, especially the Bushmen who fought so long for their right to return to the Central Kalahari Game Reserve and especially for their rights to bury their elders on their ancestral land.”   


Mazower said better days could lie ahead for the tribe under Boko’s administration. 


“No one would have ever imagined that the President of Botswana will be the very lawyer who helped them (Bushmen) in court in the long legal battle to return to their ancestral land and to live there once more,” Mazower said. “For many of them and for some of us who supported them from the outside, it is a historic event and one that signals, hopefully, better days ahead.”   


There are more than 100,000 Bushmen spread across southern Africa, but most live under pressure from area governments to abandon their traditional lives of hunting wild animals and gathering wild plants and roots.