Is There a Solution?

Yes!

Botswana is the size of Texas, but with a population of only 1.3 million compared to Texas with 18 million. 

Botswana is lucky to have first diamonds then copper-nickel as their first two foreign exchange producers (making it recently the second richest per capita country in Africa). Beef comes in third at only an insignificant 4.5 % of the top three. Tourism is fourth but rising and the real future with some 17% of Botswana (the country), set aside in reserves. This includes the Okavanga Delta, the largest inland delta in the world, teeming with exotic African game. and Chobe where President Clinton visited for a safari on his early 1998 African trip.

Once having it all, the San warrant some of their land back, along with self determination. But their government unfortunately looks down on them as 'pests', and 'stone age embarrassment'. It is suicidally shortsighted to destroy the Kalahari by introducing cattle in light of Botswana's other export 'assets'.

1. Get the EC and World Bank to stop the misguided and counterproductive beef subsidies.
2. Pull the environmentally destructive cattle back out of the desert 80% of Botswana.
3. Remove the killer 'cordon fences'.
4. Reintroduce the 'environmentally friendly' wild game into the Kalahari regions.
5. Harvest some of the game (redundant males) in a sustained yield operation, as in now being done by Botswana's neighbors, Namibia, Zimbabwe, South Africa, and in Kenya, reversing environmental decline and the extinction of wild game.
6. Let the Bushman be involved in the remote area 'game ranching'

But simultaneously rededicate significant 'useless' Kalahari land to the San, giving them a viable choice between:

a) staying nomadic, or

b) transition into a more sedentary 'mixed economy' around well spaced 'family clan' wells with some planting, game farming, hunting part time, or

c) take those who would so chose to town and teach then Setswana and English, transition them into the 'modern world', to act as spokesmen for their own people.

What will cause this to happen? The problem becoming exposed; the outcry from environmentalists, humanitarians, and the general public influencing drastic change in the current polices inside and outside of the Kalahari affecting the San and the ecosystem. In a complete turnaround, the Australian Aborigines reacquired land through the political process in 1972, after almost two centuries of genocide then neglect. The Inuit (Eskimos to laymen) were belatedly given 20% of Canada in 1990. It can happen!

also visit http://www.indigenousheritage.org/ where they are working to raise funds to lease or purchase ancestral lands in southern Africa, where communities of San can redefine their traditional way of life.