Original Article Here: http://www.cs.org/publications/win/win-article.cfm?id=2914
In a stunning endorsement of indigenous land rights, a court in Botswana ruled today that the Botswana government had illegally evicted the San people from their ancestral lands in what is now the Central Kalahari Game Reserve.
The three-judge panel ruled two-to-three that the eviction was unconstitutional, and that the San were entitled to return to their lands. The ruling was a stinging rebuke to the government. Judge Unity Dow, one of the two judges who ruled in favor of the San, said that the government "did not inquire into the consequences of the relocation. In some cases, wives who wished to relocate were turned against their husbands who did not want to do so, and children were also turned against their families."
The government began moving San out of their lands in 1997, to make way for tourism and commercial hunting (and, some people claimed, to allow for diamond mining). The San filed their suit against the government in 2002, when the eviction took full effect. To force people out, the government confiscated communities— water tanks and outlawed hunting in the reserve, a policy that Judge Mpaphi Phumaphi said was "tantamount to condemning the remaining residents of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve to death by starvation."
Hundreds of San were there to hear the ruling, and they were elated with the court—s decision. Roy Sesana, a spokesman for the First People of the Kalahari, said, "Finally, we have been set free. The evictions have been very, very painful for my people. I hope that now we can go home to our land."
Sources and Further Reading:
[First People of the Kalahari] December 13, 2006