How we defended the extinction of the Bushmen
‘Bushmen called the settlement to which most were removed the Place of Death’
Last week, I recapitulated the appalling story of how, for 20 years, the Botswanan government has been ruthlessly forcing the last Bushmen out of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR), where they had been guaranteed the right to remain undisturbed under Article 14 of the constitution by which we gave Botswana independence 50 years ago. But in comments online, several readers asked for some evidence to support my claim that Britain had “connived” in this tragedy.
Alas, the “conniving” began as soon as I first reported on it in 1996 when, in reply to a question from Lord Pearson of Rannoch, Baroness Lynda Chalker for the Foreign Office flatly denied contrary to all first-hand evidence that the Bushmen were being forced out of the reserve. Hansard reveals later Lords exchanges in which UK support for Botswana’s policy became ever clearer.
In December 1997, Baroness Symons introduced a line that was to become familiar: that many of the Bushmen were happy to leave the CKGR for places where they could have “access to clean water, clinics and schools”, even though the Bushmen soon called the grim settlement to which most were being removed “the Place of Death”.
In 2002, after their water supplies across the reserve had been blocked off, Lord Grocott for the Foreign Office repeated the claim that Botswana only wanted “these people to live in a settled community where health, education and other facilities can more easily be provided”. But a superb BBC documentary had already shown that, uprooted from their traditional way of life, they were falling miserably apart, lost in alcoholic stupor and dying of Aids. Over following years, other ministers shown on the Survival International website to have echoed the Foreign Office line included Hilary Benn, Chris Mullin and Lord Triesman.
After 2006, when Botswana’s Supreme Court upheld the Bushmen’s constitutional right to remain in the CKGR, neither the UK government nor the EU joined the UN and the US State Department in condemning Botswana’s ever more ruthless policy, even when in 2013 it repealed Article 14 of the constitution. In fact, to say that Britain has “connived” in what amounts to an act of genocide is far too mild.