Botswana's Bushmen

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Botswana has decided to relocate Bushmen from their ancestral lands in the Kalahari desert to other parts of the country.

What I find just gross is the argumentation used to justify this move:

While I don't have a problem with protecting endangered species, in a wider sense the Bushmen are just that as well, but as human being *they* IMO should have priority.

Weird, weird. What do you think?

 

Ragusa I think having "Bushmen" in the topic is a mistake since many might avoid this thread assuming it will be about a certain Bushman in the USA.

In any case this case is quite interesting. I would have nothing against relocating the Bushmen if the conditions they were moving to would be pretty much the same but from the article I get the feeling that the conditions these "relocation camps" (read: Consentration camps) are only a tiny step away from hell.

This may sound a bit strange now but in a way the Bushmen are also an endangered species. Native people are quite few and far between and most of them have been robbed of their native lands long long time ago. I think this might even end up in destroying an anicient culture which in my opinion is more horrible than the extinction of any animal being.

Unfortunately it's pretty much the right of the government to this and I don't think much could or even should be done about it. We in the west can allways play hypocritical and condemn this action when we ourselves have "dealt" with the native populations centuries ago.

 

Maybe there is some sort of comprimise that can be had?

 

Tough call. On one hand, pygmy bushmen, the ones who use click languages, represent the most long lived culture on the globe, and from the few things I've read, they lead (or have lead) happy and stable lives, even in harsh desert conditions. Whether their culture can survive Africa's efforts to modernize itself is an open question, and I'm not so optimistic. Given the West's history of colonialism and the way the West treated their own indigenous peoples as they first began to modernize, they might not have so much credibility by butting into Botswana's affairs and telling them to leave vast sections of their country untouched as a Bushman reservation. And it could be that modernization has already broken the Bushman culture, if it's true that they rely on government aid. Still, very sad; in the study of human migration and population genetics, pygmy bushmen represent the well-spring from which everyone came.

 

It looks like the protections of animals may not be the case at all..

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4480883.stm

[ April 27, 2005, 17:23: Message edited by: Cesard ]

 

This makes me think of Tad Williams Otherland series, wherein a Bushman's wisdom helped in a VR setting. In any event, relocating those Bushmen based on the argument that THEY are endangering the flora and fauna is stupid beyond belief. If they're going to move these people, they should at least call it like it is -- modern progress (put that in quotes if you like) displacing an ancient culture. It may be inevitable, but we still don't have to like it.

 

@Bion, im sorry, I don't mean to go off topic, but did his refrances to a "bushman reservation" give anyone else flashbacks to 'A brave new world'?

 

Its all about the diamonds...