The San

At times of the year, the Kalahari desert is a misnomer.

Following the seasonal rains it becomes a living carpet of green lushness and blossoming wild flowers.

It is a good time for the San, gathering berries, roots, leaves which they will roast or press for an evening meal.

The San people that have lived here for at least 40,000 years, but their future is not as certain or clear as the sudden abundance of food that they are foraging for.

The Botswanan government is trying to force them off their ancestral homeland, cutting off water supplies, closing hospitals and health clinics and stopping pensions to the disabled and elderly.

The Central Kalahari game reserve was made a national park in 1961 to protect the San and their way of life.

There are an estimated 60,000 San among Botswana's 1.6 million people.

The government is claiming that they are trying to 'persuade' the San to leave their ancestral lands, to give themselves and their children the benfit of of modern development, a claim that invites comparison to the shameful way that Aboriginals in Australia were treated during the Lost Generations.

The government further claims that it is it cannot afford to remotely supply the services that the San used to enjoy as citizens of Botswana.

However critics point out that more money is being spent on relocating those San willing or forced to move than they ever did in providing them meagre services.

There is another, more sinister possibility for the goverment to remove the San from their ancestral lands.

Diamonds.

Time and again, when there are resources to be plundered, indigenous people the world over are re-located and exploited.

At those settlements where the government has moved those San that are willing to leave, there is a sadly all too common problem that seems to affect displaced peoples.

The only economic activity in places such as New Xade appears to be in the beer halls.

Alchoholism is rampant.

Visitors are beseiged by beggars, the once proud San have lost their connection to their land, their culture and their feeling of belonging and purpose.

This has been witnessed the wolrd over from the North Americas to Australia to New Zealand and now Botswana.

These ancient people are being shoe-horned into a way of life that that they have no understanding of, are disconnected from, feel alien to.

And in return they are being robbed of their ancient birthrights.

yechydda,