Roy Sesana has seen a lot of the world. Last year the seventy-six year old Bushman travelled to the United States, in order to draw attention both to the ” First People of the Kalahari”, an organisation he had founded in 1991, and to his own tribe. On 9th December 2005 he was awarded the Alternative Nobel Prize in Stockholm.

He is sitting beside me in the East Side Hotel in Berlin, and patiently awaiting the questions I am about to ask him. He scrutinizes everything around him. "Here, in the northern hemisphere, the "White” people live at the expense of the people of the South."
These people are the main reason for his consternation and for his journey to Europe. It is here that the diamonds are sold, for which his tribe has to pay so dearly. Roy Sesana lives in Botswana, a country which is rapidly developing economically. At Independence in the 60´s, Botswana had only one asphalt road of about 8 km in length, and Garborone, the capital, consisted of merely a handful of houses, Botswana can now be considered a flourishing country. In 1991 the Government founded the mining company Debswana in co-operation with the diamond concern De Beers. Each has a 50% share in the company. Since 2002 at the latest, Debswana has held a key position in the economy of Botswana. 70% of export revenue, 50% of the state income and 30% of the
gross national product are contested by Debswana(www.debswana.com). This is, therefore, an important fact for the Government of Botswana. De Beers itself, a firm that was founded in 1881, had a turnover of 8,1 billion dollars in the international diamond trade in 2001 alone. Roughly two-thirds of the turnover belongs to De Beers.

Though highly praised even by the international press, the price humanity has to pay for this success is often overseen. Once again elementary human rights are ignored by the international press in the interests of capital, and infamously violated by the Government of Botswana.
The aboriginal people of the Kalahari, the Bushmen, are being driven out of their land, forced to live in ghettos and are maltreated in the interest of diamond mining.

The Government of Botswana maintains that it is necessary to resettle the Gana and Gwi Bushmen in order to provide them with a proper education. They say this has nothing to do with diamonds. I asked Roy Sasana what this type of "development aid” looked like. He replied:” We are driven into reception centres in New Xade, far away from our ancestors, whom we need for survival. Our people die of Aids, violence is rampant under the influence of alcohol, and many of us commit suicide. These are things which did not occur among our people in the past. (…) I am convinced that the aim of the resettlement of the Bushmen is to exterminate them. It is as if you dug a grave, threw the people in and carefully covered them up with sand.”
It has been proven that the Bushmen have been living for twenty thousand years in the Kalahari, a savannah-like desert stretching from Angola to South Africa. In 1965 the British Protectorate of Botswana decided to establish a Reserve for the Bushmen. In keeping with the laws which were then in power, the reserve was called the "Central Kalahari Game Reserve”. And so the Bushmen were left in peace for some years. In 1997, however, they began to be driven out of their ancestral land in the Kalahari. At the same time the evaluation of the diamond deposits in Bushman land was completed, and concessions for the excavation of the diamonds distributed. First the Bushmen were forbidden to hunt and their water tanks were destroyed. Festus Mogae, the President of Botswana is of the opinion, that if the Bushmen are allowed to go hunting, they would have enough to eat and would not work any more. Roy said: "We are not economic beings, because we do not need to shop. We do not need to go to the shops because we do not have to go to work in the way you think. Our work looks like this: Everyone gets up early in the morning and goes into the "Bush” to gather or hunt something to eat. That is our work. At the end of the day we bring something home to eat so that our families can survive. If something has to be changed, then it is for us to change it from generation to generation to generation according to our culture.”

All over the world indigenous peoples have to fight against this inconsistency. Their way of life just does not fit in with the modern world. The Bushmen are not a recognized minority. They are not represented in the government and they do not want our type of school education. Roy is convinced that the children must be taken out of school in order that they can learn the art of hunting, the meaning of tracks on the ground and the art of fruit gathering in order to enable them to pass this knowledge down to their grandchildren and great-grandchildren. For most of them school has not been a positive experience. They are now wanderers between two cultures which do not fit together .They are not allowed to hunt, yet at school they do not learn enough to gain a perspective, in as far as there is a perspective for them at all. ”Do not say you must develop us. Let me develop you”, says Roy Sesana.. He knows both the modern and the traditional world. He sees the wars that are being waged in the world for things the Bushman does not need. He sees the environmental destruction and informs me in my interview of innumerable practical ways of protecting the Savannah which a Bushman practices as a matter of course
There are various ways we can help the Bushmen. We can, for example, write to travel agencies telling them why we are NOT going to visit Botswana. We can abstain from buying diamonds, or write to members of the Government of Botswana and take them to task. Above all we should accept the fact that many forms of civilization still exist outside our form of civilization. One must be wary of organizations which supposedly work for the good of the Bushmen. Roy Sesana speaks clearly on this theme as well: "Those organisations or enterprises”, he says,” which use the knowledge of the Bushmen and interrogate the Bushmen about everything, neither support us, nor do they give us money.” (…) There are no Bushmen among the members of these organisations (…) I am afraid of people who, in the name of the Bushmen, work for their own ends.”

Asked about his dreams or himself and his children, Roy Sasana said:” Above all I wish that my children and grandchildren can return to their land, can learn their culture and learn those things that their great-great grandfathers, their great-grandfathers, their grandfathers, their fathers and my brothers and I have learnt before we were driven out of our country. And that they can live under the same conditions under which we lived previously.”

The long version of this interview can be found under www.naturvoelker.org.
Under www.survival-international it is possible to send letters to the Government.
Note: Author: Daniel Habenicht
Freunde der Naturvölker
www.naturvoelker.org
e-mail: d.habenicht(at)fPcN-global.org