Indigenous Consultation

When I read the address below from the Kalahari Bushmen to "their President" Robert Mugabe, I can see the "consultation" that supposedly occurred was a farce. It always is. Indigenous people are used to being bullied or tricked through consultation. Many simply give in and agree with anything now, while those who oppose proposed actions against their people are silenced in favour of those willing to agree with anything for personal gain.

In the Bushmen situation, consultation was used in this way to make their forced removal (for diamond mining interests) seem to be "voluntary and based on choice".

The following was an address to President Mugabe on June 2003, from the Bushmen of the Kalahari.

"We are aware that our honorable president is visiting the United Kingdom in his endeavor to justify to the British the removals by his regime of /Gwii and //Gana Bushmen and other people from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. It is our wish that the honorable president will not forget to tell the British that some of our people were relocated forcibly against our choices and wishes.

The rest of the world is being told by our administration that the relocations in the CKGR were voluntary and based on choice. However, if this were so, we fail to understand the following:

• Why some people continue to vocally resist relocations in all of the Relocation Settlements despite the allegation that they have chosen to relocate.
• Why some people who were relocated during 1997 and 2002 have managed, despite onging hindrances by your regime, to return to the CKGR.
• Why your regime imposes stringent measures to prevent those who have relocated from visiting their families and relatives who resisted relocation and are still living in the CKGR."

Read about the plight of the San Bushmen and many others at the hands of mining companies around the world, in the article Manifest Destiny.