Botswana buries indigenous elder after three-year rights dispute

Botswana buries indigenous elder after three-year rights dispute
Residents gather during the funeral and memorial service of the late Pitseng Gaoberekwe in Metsiamanong village, Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR), on December 10, 2024. Pitseng Gaoberekwe, a prominent San elder and historical figure, died in 2021, sparking a legal battle over his burial in his ancestral land, the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR). After nearly three years of disputes, the Botswana government finally agreed to his burial wish in December 2024. (Photo by Monirul Bhuiyan / AFP)

By AFP

Botswana's President Duma Boko helped to bury a Bushman elder on his ancestral land Tuesday, ending a three-year legal battle that fanned accusations of poor government treatment of the region's oldest indigenous group.

 

Boko made the burial of the tribesman a priority when he took office in November, overturning previous court decisions preventing the return of his body to the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, a diamond-mining and tourism centre.

 

Botswana has in the past been widely condemned for its treatment of the Bushmen who have lived in southern Africa for tens of thousands of years but are today mostly poor, marginalised and excluded from government welfare services.

 

"It marks the end of an era of sustained injustice and the beginning of a respect, demonstrable respect and upholding of human rights," Boko said at a ceremony to bury Pitseng Gaoberekwe attended by his family, people from the tribe and government officials.

 

Gaoberekwe's body had been held in a morgue in the capital Gaborone since his death in 2021 as his family fought legal battles to have him buried alongside his forefathers, in land that today falls in the reserve, one of the biggest in southern Africa.

 

The government evicted the Bushmen from their ancestral land in the national park in the 1990s and early 2000s, after diamonds were discovered there in the 1980s.

 

In 2006, a court overturned the evictions and in 2011 the tribe's right to access water in the reserve was restored, leading some people to return.

 

Gaoberekwe, born in 1947, spent most of his life in the protected area but reportedly moved out in later years to be closer to his children and medical facilities. The courts said he had to be buried where he died.

 

The Survival International group that protects tribal peoples said in 2022 the Botswana government was "inhumane" and, in trying to prevent Gaoberekwe's burial in the reserve, appeared to be trying to force the Bushman from the zone.