Botswana: Country 'Frees Hunting Bushmen'
7 August 2009



Gaborone — Six Botswana bushmen found guilty of hunting without a permit on their ancestral land have been set free with a caution, a lobby group says.

Survival International said the "attempt by the Botswana government to punish Bushmen for hunting to feed their families has backfired".

The San bushmen of the Kalahari have faced years of legal rows for the right to live on their ancestral lands.

The six men were arrested in 2007 in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve.

A year earlier San bushmen had won a landmark legal victory against the government allowing them to return to land in the reserve and hunt without permits.

Many returned to the reserve but Survival says they have struggled with access to water and still have to obtain permits to hunt, although "not a single permit has been awarded".

"The bushmen are not allowed access to their own water, they're refused hunting permits, and they're arrested when they do hunt, which is the only way they can feed their families," said the group's director Stephen Corry.

But he said he was thankful that the magistrate had taken "a more humane view of how to treat people".