‘We wanted to see how we could help the Bushmen get title to their land’
Interview with barrister Gordon Bennett about his recent return to the Kalahari Desert in Botswana
Earlier this year British barrister Gordon Bennett travelled into the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR) in Botswana, southern Africa. Bennett is the lawyer who, almost two decades ago, won an historic human rights victory acting for more than 700 indigenous “Bushmen” when Botswana’s High Court ruled that their eviction from the CKGR by the government some years before was “unlawful and unconstitutional”, and that they have the right to live there on what is their ancestral land. At the time, Bennett was supported by the NGO Survival International, where I was working, and which led to me first meeting him.
Bennett’s visit this January - funded by the US-based Sacharuna Foundation, which has backed his work with the Bushmen for many years - was the first time he had been in the CKGR in over 10 years. Here, via email, he explains what prompted his return and how he found things:
DH: Gordon, it was a very long time since you were last in the Kalahari with the Bushmen. What was your reason for going?
GB: Unfinished business. The court cases hadn’t given the Bushmen title to their lands, and we wanted to see how we could help them get one. We also wanted to see whether, if they got their title, they wanted the game reserve to be scrapped or to remain in place.
DH: Ok. How did the meetings with the Bushmen go when you discussed the possibility of them obtaining legal title?
GB: It’s what they want more than anything. Many were removed in 1997 and almost everyone else was evicted in 2002. It took a famous court case to get them back in 2006, but this didn’t give them title to the land. Without this, they fear they could be evicted again.
DH: When you say “they”, how many people are you talking about?
GB: Over 1,500 people were relocated in 1997 and another 700-odd in 2002. After the second relocation - or eviction, to call it by its proper name - only 17 people remained in the reserve. Over the months and years which followed, however, more than 200 of those evicted in 2002 slowly trickled back to their old settlements.
DH: Tell us a bit about how it was for you when you were there. How much time did you spend in the CKGR, and were you driving between villages to discuss things with the Bushmen?
GB: We spent about a week in the CKGR and visited four of the five settlements. At each settlement we had at least one meeting and often two. We tried to identify the major problems and what people want the government to do about them. For most people, water was the first problem, but elephants were a close second. They bash down borehole fences and grub up bush food and cultivated crops. The Bushmen don’t know how to deal with them. Of course, everyone also wants a title to the land.
DH: If the Bushmen obtained title, how significant would that be in legal terms - in Botswana or across Africa as a whole? Precedent-setting?
GB: It would set a precedent if it works. Other countries - notably South Africa - have given land rights to indigenous groups over protected areas which were once their home, but I’m not aware of any which have granted full title to a group to allow it to continue to live on their ancestral lands indefinitely. We will need to show that it is perfectly possible for an indigenous people to own and live in a game reserve and have no - or no significantly adverse - impact on the wildlife. You’d think past experience has already shown this plenty of times, but that’s not how these things seem to work.
DH: So that will be your legal strategy - to show the Bushmen and a game reserve can co-exist - rather than try to have the reserve scrapped?
GB: The legal strategy is two-fold: to win legal recognition of the Basarwa or Bushmen's title to a large part of the CKGR and to have that part converted into a Private Game Reserve under Botswana’s Wildlife Conservation Act. The Bushmen are keen that their land should remain in a game reserve because they believe this will give them better protection against outsiders.
DH: Going back to what you said about elephants. . . You said they were a major problem for the Bushmen. Is this a relatively new thing? And have the elephants always been in the CKGR, or are they coming in from somewhere else?
GB: Elephants only started to come into the CKGR in any numbers in about 2015, probably as a result of population pressures in Chobe [a district and national park] and the Okavango Delta. They used to move north from these areas, but it is thought that poaching there might have prompted them to go south instead, into the reserve.
DH: When you say “population pressures” in the Okavango Delta, are you referring to tourists?
GB: Pressures from other elephants in the Okavango. Botswana has too many elephants altogether, which is why the last President offered to dump some in Germany when it protested against proposals to cull the population.
DH: I’d like to go back to what you said about the Bushmen having problems with water. Can you explain that? Are you referring to the way the government blocked up their boreholes?
GB: When we were in the CKGR in January there were only two boreholes, both in the same place but neither of them actually in operation. Even if both have since been repaired, people in other settlements have to depend on water being bowsed to them by truck from one of these boreholes. This is supposed to happen every month, but deliveries are sometimes late and there is never enough water for both people and livestock. I understand that aquifers are relatively few and far between, and that a desalination kit has to be installed before the water is potable.
DH: How is that difficulty in accessing water affecting the Bushmen and their animals?
GB: The rainy season is only finishing now and there has been quite a lot of rain this year, so people are probably not too badly affected at the moment. It may be a very different story by June. Of course, the Bushmen collect as much rain water as they can in oil drums and they now have a few rainwater harvesters too. It is always a problem to find enough water for horses and donkeys. Usually they can rely on wild melons for water, but the elephants now take any they find: they are desperate for moisture too.
DH: Penultimate question. You mentioned earlier the threat of eviction. How concrete is that, and do you think it is connected to interest in exploiting the CKGR's natural resources?
GB: I was thinking long-term. Until you have a land title you are always going to be at risk, but I don't believe the current administration will try to move anyone against their will.
DH: And finally. . . I remember, in Survival’s office years ago, hearing the name of lawyer Duma Boko a lot, given his collaboration with you on the Bushmen’s case. Now, of course, Boko is Botswana’s President, and just six days after assuming office, last November, one of the things he did was revoke the need for you and several Survival and ex-Survival employees to obtain a visa to enter the country - something that was understood to have effectively been a ban. One of those other people was Kali Mercier, who accompanied you on your trip this year. Was it the lifting of this ban, so to speak, that ultimately prompted and/or enabled the timing of your return?
GB: The removal of the ban made it possible, obviously, to return to Botswana after a 12 year absence. We went back because the change of government also meant that for the first time in perhaps 40 years there was at least a chance that Ministers would be prepared to talk openly about what lies ahead for the people of the CKGR.
DH: Gordon, thank you very much and good luck with everything!