What's the Problem?

Environmentalists recently pressured their government to eject the San from their only dedicated land in Botswana, a 32,000 square mile reserve specifically created for them in 1961 by the British leading up to Botswana's independence in 1966.

Worse, they have lost their land outside the reserves to environmentally destructive cattle. This is encouraged by the World Bank but especially by the European Community (EC) thru their 'sweetheart' beef contract with Botswana. Texas sized Botswana is 80% desert unfit for domestic cattle. Yet it has one of the highest ratios of cattle per capita in the world. The recently arrived Tswana who now rule the country are historically cattle herders. Bride prices in Botswana are in head of cattle, not the local currency. Unfortunately it is a few high government officials who line their pockets from the beef subsidies.

But then comes the final 'nail-to-the-coffin'. To protect the beef they don't need (Europe exports a surplus of beef) from the possibility of importing to Europe the wild game's hoof-and-mouth disease, the EC insists on the installation of hundreds of kilometers of cordon fences that kill tens of thousands of migrating animals, especially when driven by the all too frequent Kalahari droughts.

Botswana's wildebeast (Gnu) population is estimated to have declined from 500,000 to 3,000 in recent years due to the cardon fences. Greenpeace has labeled all this 'Financing Ecological Destruction'. If there is not a drastic change, the world faces a dust bowl Kalahari, strewn with the bleaching bones of the recently introduced cattle, the displaced wild game that survived there for eons, and the San themselves, mankind's oldest living legacy.

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.