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Botswanas Bushmen The Worlds Last Surviving Hunter Gatherers
A Bushman woman in the street in New Xade in Botswana, a government eviction camp to which many Bushmen were located prior to 2006. Survival International

The Bushmen or San are one of the last surviving hunter gatherers in the world. They inhabit the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR) in the Kalahari Desert of Botswana and genetically are the closest tribe to human ancestors.

The basic right of these hunter gatherer nomadic people, which is to hunt for a living, is being threatened as fresh cases of arrests made for hunting have been reported in Metsiamenong, a Bushmen village in CKGR, according to Survival International, an organization working for the tribal people rights worldwide.

The Bushmen already have faced eviction and relocation from their lands since their area was found rich in diamonds. World's famous diamond making company De Beers was highly held responsible for the eviction of Kalahari Bushmen from their lands in Botswana.

In 2004, the Bushmen claimed that Botswana's government evicted their people from their ancestral land in the CKGR in order to make way for De Beers to mine diamonds. They protested in London and New York in front of De Beers stores with placards that read: "The Bushmen Aren't Forever."

Eviction and replacements of the San people leave them prone to much persecution and humiliation. There have been incidences when these indigenous people were exhibited like zoo animals in fairs in South Africa.

The Survival's statistics show that between 1997 and 2002, almost all Bushmen were forcibly evicted from their land. Though they won their right to the land where their ancestors speared wild game and foraged for wild plants for 20,000 years in 2006, a 2010 High Court verdict confiscated them from accessing water through the Reserve's bore holes that led to death of at least one tribeswoman.

The Bushmen overcame even this ban winning their rights back in January last year. Over a year now, the arrest of five Bushmen for hunting signals at new threats to the rights of San people, who are legally allowed to hunt inside the CKGR national park for their living.

To know about the Bushmen of Botswana, click on "Start."

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