fPcN interCultural:

friends of Peoples close to Nature

Roy Sesana has seen a lot of the world. Last year the seventy-six year old Bushman travelled to the United States, in order to draw attention both to the ” First People of the Kalahari”, an organisation he had founded in 1991, and to his own tribe. On 9th December 2005 he was awarded the Alternative Nobel Prize in Stockholm.

He is sitting beside me in the East Side Hotel in Berlin, and patiently awaiting the questions I am about to ask him. He scrutinizes everything around him. "Here, in the northern hemisphere, the "White” people live at the expense of the people of the South."

1.Do the Bushmen have a representative in the Botswana government?

The bushmen don’t have any representatives in the Botswana government

2.The Botswanas governments says that the relocation of the Gana and Gwi Bushmen to New Xade would be necessary for providing educational development. Would you say that this kind of development is a good alternative for your people to live in dignity and self-determination?

My name is Roy Sesana; I am a Gana Bushman from the Kalahari in what is now called Botswana. In my language, my name is ‘Tobee' and our land is ‘T//amm'. We have been there longer than any people has been anywhere.

When I was young, I went to work in a mine. I put off my skins and wore clothes. But I went home after a while. Does that make me less Bushman? I don't think so.

JOHANNESBURG, Mar. 4, 2005 (IPS/GIN) -- The plight of an indigenous community in South Africa, the San, was placed in the spotlight this week with the launch of a report by the South African Human Rights Commission.

Entitled 'Report on the Inquiry Into Human Rights Violations in the Khomani San Community in South Africa', the 35-page document details what commission chairman Jody Kollapen said was "a sad story of neglect and of indifference".

The latest news out of Botswana is that the government is going to attempt to amend its own constitution to be "tribally neutral". Great idea on the face of it, right? Diffusing tribal and ethnic conflicts, thereby safeguarding Botswana from the dangers of ever descending into tribal war. Or is that why it"s being done?

This time, however, the Indians are determined. Traditionally warriors, they are willing to fight to prevent their lands from being invaded once more by miners in search of diamonds. The Cinta-Larga are fed up. During the visit of the Human Rights Congressional Commission to Roosevelt village, in the State of Rondônia, this past October 9, they complained to the representatives of the harassment they have been subjected to for more than 20 years and of the violence to which they are exposed every day.

The fate of one of southern Africa's oldest nomadic tribes, the San or Bushmen, could be sealed when the Botswana High Court hears argument on the issue of ancestral land rights. The court case, which commences on July 5 with an in loco inspection, could decide the future of the Gana and Gwi Bushmen communities.