Kalahari Bushmen Plea for Help in Securing their Botswana homeland

Another story that seems to have been neglected by the mainstream media.  I haven't been able to verify this but it seems authentic.  Coming from southern Africa, I am well aware of how the Bushmen have been persecuted and neglected. They once roamed much of southern Africa. Now they are left to pleading for their one remaiining refuge - in the Kalahari Desert of Botswana.

LETTER FROM ROY SESANA TO PRESIDENT BUSH
Posted By FPK Botswana - [email protected]
9 June 2005

Dear President Bush,

My name is Roy Sesana and I am leader of the Bushmen of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve in Botswana. Right now our people are crying because the Botswana government has taken us from our land where we have lived for thousands of years and now we are dying from AIDS and hunger and despair.

Your State Department has written a very true report on our situation here. That report says we were forcibly resettled and that our people now have many problems with alcohol and poverty and that we can't hunt for our food. Instead we have to survive on what the government gives us. Perhaps since you have written such a good report you can use it to heal our hearts.

Our President, Festus Mogae, is coming to visit you next week on Monday in Washington DC. Please can you tell our President that he should let us go home.

Also we have a big problem with the constitution in our country. I know in America you have a constitution and it is very important to you. In our constitution there is a section that protects Bushmen rights. Now the government is removing that section. They say that it is because they don't like the word "Bushman" but actually it is so that we will not ever be allowed to go home. We have a court case now in Botswana and we are relying on the constitution for our court case. Now the Government is removing our protection before the court case is even decided. We know this is not a coincidence.

I am sending you a copy of our press release about the constitution. I hope you will tell President Mogae that we are dying. We need to go home so we can live near our ancestors and they can heal us.

Thank you very much.

Roy Sesana Leader, First People of the Kalahari

See also:  Bushmen to be Denied Homeland

Comments

[JN]

KALAHARI BUSHMEN EVICTIONS TAKE THE SPARKLE OFF DE BEERS'S
NEW YORK OPENING
Survival International Press Release
June 23, 2005

http://www.survival-international.org

Prominent feminist Gloria Steinem and more than thirty protesters last night
picketed the opening of De Beers's first store in America. Steinem said the
Bushmen are "the real diamonds" of the Kalahari.

Survival and many independent observers believe the Kalahari Bushmen have
been evicted from their ancestral homeland in Botswana because of diamonds.
All diamond mines in Botswana are run by De Beers.