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Lord Pearson of Rannoch: My Lords, I have been on only one political junket in my life: to Botswana in September 2002—and very agreeable it was. Not only were the noble Baroness, Lady Tonge, and the noble Lord, Lord Jones, part of the group, but we were given first-class air travel and generally treated as visiting royalty. I should point out that all this was paid for not by the Botswanan or United Kingdom taxpayer, but by Debswana, the diamond mining joint venture between De Beers and the government of Botswana.
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I was invited because for some years I had been asking questions in your Lordships' House about the mistreatment of the Bushmen of the Kalahari. The idea was to convince me and the other members of the group not only what a great place Botswana was but that the Bushmen had not been mistreated and that, even if some of them were unhappy about their forced eviction from their ancestral lands and way of life, it was really in their best interest.
This latter part of our hosts' plan backfired badly, at least as far as I was concerned, but not, it would seem, for the noble Baroness, Lady Tonge, and the noble Lord, Lord Jones. I took the precaution of hiring my own interpreter, so I was able to hear exactly what some of the 200 Bushmen and their families who had recently been forcibly resettled in a camp at New Xade were saying. I heard them describe it as a place of death, where they had nothing to do but drink, take drugs and catch AIDS. Many of them felt that they had been evicted because Debswana wanted their land for its diamonds. They said that they did not want the diamonds; they just wanted their way of life. They said that there was plenty of room for diamond mining and for them, as indeed there is.
I, for one, came home more convinced than ever that a great injustice was being done to these peaceful and dignified people. Since then, however, their treatment has grown even worse. Only some 30 Bushmen remain in the reserve after continuous evictions and 22 have been arrested for attempting to take food in for their relatives. Armed guards have prevented them hunting and gathering and have confiscated their livestock. One woman has recently starved to death and one man has died after he and seven others were tortured last June in the Kaudwane resettlement camp.
In an attempt to regain their rights, which were guaranteed in Botswana's constitution when we gave it independence in 1966, 242 heads of families have brought a case against the government, which the latter is spinning out disgracefully. Nastier still, the government have removed Section 14(3)(c) of the constitution, thus prejudicing the judges' decision in their case, which relies upon that section.
Why should one of the more reputable governments in Africa behave like this towards a minority of a different race? Certainly the reasons and justifications given by the government of Botswana are almost entirely without foundation. I had the benefit of seeing this at close quarters when I had a long conversation in June 2003 with the President, Mr Festus Mogae. He had come to London to promote Botswana's new financial services initiative, which I had helped with some valuable commercial information in the area of international insurance, in which I work. He was grateful for this but he wanted to persuade me that I was wrong about the Bushmen.
What I found most distressing—and it has been worrying me ever since—was how entirely misinformed he was on pretty well everything he said about the Bushmen. He said it was not possible to retain the central Kalahari as a game reserve because the Bushmen were decimating the game with modern
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rifles, which they fired from trucks. Yet I knew from the game wardens and the evidence of my own eyes that this was not true; that game was plentiful after being nurtured by the Bushmen for centuries. He said they were no longer capable of practising their ancient arts of hunting and gathering, which was also untrue. He said the Bushmen leaders were making lots of money out of the dispute, driving around in smart cars and sending their children to private schools. This also turned out to be pure fiction.
I mention this conversation because it seems inconceivable that President Mogae did not think he was telling the truth. So the conclusion must be that he is being very badly briefed by those around him, which is a pity because the Bushmen's treatment is doing the otherwise good reputation of his country no good at all.
President Mogae made one other less obviously erroneous, more debatable point, which has been echoed in spades by the noble Baroness, Lady Tonge, the noble Lord, Lord Jones, and, I regret to say, the noble Lord, Lord St John of Bletso, tonight. This is that the Bushmen must be dragged into the joys of our 21st century, whether they like it or not. I have not time to deal with all the reasons why this policy is mistaken. Suffice it to say that it goes against all modern conventions and agreements on the treatment of indigenous people.
I fear that the real cause of the Bushmen's plight is our old friend racism. The African herdsman looks down on the hunter gatherer. I know this is a strong accusation to make against the government of Botswana—and I make it with considerable sadness—but at this point somebody has to say it because it is the truth. I can but hope that President Mogae and his colleagues will reflect on it and, having done so, will allow the Bushmen to return to their ancient lands and chosen way of life, to the benefit of all concerned.
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Lord Avebury: My Lords, when I went up to Balliol 61 years ago, my greatest friend there was Seretse Khama, as my noble friend Lord Jones has reminded me. He used to say that when he became chief he would invite me to stay with him. Some 20 years later, when the CPA proposed to send only two Members—one Labour, one Tory—to the independence celebrations, Seretse personally intervened and insisted that an invitation be extended to me as well.
He was a great democratic leader of his people, following the ancestral tradition of the kgotla, a public consultation place and process, in which everyone could participate, predating our own ideas of community politics by centuries. Because of his legacy, Botswana is cited as a model for the rest of Africa. We have heard that from several noble Lords today.
But things are not perfect. One local NGO has said that the government have become insensitive to public opinion and that Parliament is now known for serving the interests of the ruling party and not of the people. The general state of democracy has deteriorated over the past decade, they say, with regard to the rule of law,
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corruption and general aggression on citizens. So perhaps I may, as a friend of Botswana, offer a few words of advice.
First, following the noble Lord, Lord St John, I shall deal with the subject of corruption. The recent Botswana Technology Centre scandal and the allegations about the Department of Road Transport and Safety point to the need for the powers and resources of the Directorate on Corruption and Economic Crime to be strengthened, and for declarations of interest to be required from elected members and officials at every level of government. Freedom of information should be enshrined in law, and Botswana should have a timetabled strategy for ratifying the African convention against corruption, joining 11 other African states.
Secondly, as the noble Lord, Lord St John, also mentioned, there is the issue of relations with Zimbabwe. Some 800,000 people fled Zimbabwe for Botswana between 1999 and 2004, but as he said, the Botswana authorities have refouled thousands of them back over the border to the tender mercies of Mugabe, contrary to international law. The Minister said in South Africa last week that a collapse in Zimbabwe would have strong negative neighbourhood effects, with instability spreading across borders, and yet Botswana, like South Africa, treats Zimbabweans as illegal economic migrants and turns a blind eye to the crisis.
Thirdly, the government must uphold freedom of expression. Last July, Australian Professor Kenneth Good was kicked out of the University of Botswana and expelled for criticising government policies. The Zimbabwean journalist Roderick Mukumbira was given seven days' notice to leave the country for unspecified security reasons. The Committee to Protect Journalists said that his expulsion was linked to his reporting on sensitive subjects such as the eviction of the San people from their ancestral lands in the game reserve. The government have banned educational materials about indigenous people that were distributed to 40 other countries.
That brings me to the point made by several other noble Lords: the treatment of the San people. Compulsory assimilation is not the answer. All over the world, the result of such policies has been deterioration in the quality of indigenous people's lives, through disease, alcoholism and loss of social cohesion. Clearly, the individual members of these peoples have the same rights as anyone else to the services provided by the state, as my noble friend Lady Tonge has said. If they decide that they want to continue the sustainable way of life that they have followed since time immemorial, however, they should have that right, too.
The UN has been discussing the Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples for the past 11 years, and a text is at last being submitted for approval to the UN Commission on Human Rights. That would provide an interim yardstick by which the policies of states might be assessed. Article 7 says that indigenous peoples and individuals have the right not
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to be subjected to forced assimilation or destruction of their culture. It goes on expressly to prohibit the deprivation of their integrity as distinct peoples, their cultural values or ethnic identities, dispossession of their lands and resources, forced population transfer, forced assimilation or integration and propaganda promoting or inciting racial discrimination.
While I join my noble friend Lady Tonge in sending congratulations to Botswana on the approaching 40th anniversary of its independence, on its impressive economic gains, adherence to the letter of democracy and achievements in education and health, particularly in dealing with the scourge of AIDS, I urge the government of Botswana to root out corruption and to address the problems of the weak and vulnerable, whether they be the San, asylum seekers or dissenters from the conventional wisdom.
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