Hitchcock and Babchuk recount the history of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR) of Botswana and draw on nearly two decades of interview data with its native inhabitants in an effort to evaluate their future prospects for survival and well-being inside the reserve.

The local people are of San and Bakgalgadi ethnicities and practice mixed livelihood strategies that include hunting and gathering. Their lands were declared a conservation area in 1961; it is the second largest on the African continent and one of the few that includes a human population. In the 1980s, the government began to encourage the local people to move out based on unfounded claims that they were over-hunting wild animals. Numerous NGOs collaborated to form a Negotiating Team committed to working with the Botswana government to find alternatives, but in 1997 and 2002, local people were removed from their ancestral lands and relocated to peripheral settlements. Families were split apart, some people were not granted the compensation that they had been promised and the integrated development and conservation schemes meant to provide livelihoods for the settlers were beset with problems. Many considered the relocation to be a human rights violation and in response, with the assistance of international lawyers the people of the Central Kalahari filed a lawsuit that became the longest and most expensive case in the history of Botswana.

On December 13, 2006 the case concluded with the people of the Central Kalahari gaining the right to return to inhabit their ancestral territories. They were allowed to hunt and gather, provided that they obtain hunting licenses. The government's implementation of the ruling denies them all services (e.g., schools, boreholes, health posts) and prohibits domestic animals inside the reserve. Furthermore, resettlement into the reserve is only approved for the 189 surviving individuals specified at the outset of litigation.

That these ethnic groups have become increasingly less dependent on traditional livelihoods is universally recognized. At the time of their eviction from the CKGR, they were relying on government provided services (especially food and water supply) and non-traditional forms of hunting. The authors analyze data on mobility, land use, territoriality, foraging, farming, and socioeconomic organization in order to assess the feasibility of returning to a traditional lifestyle that has been largely lost by younger generations. They conclude that though the constraints are severe, the returnees will be able to sustain themselves. A combination of traditional knowledge still held by some of the returnees and access to this kind of information from people living in the peripheral settlements will contribute to their survival and avoidance of conflicts over resources and spaces within the reserve.

Discussions continue over whether another court case should be filed to push for provision of water and fair hunting rights (inhabitants have not been granted the permits they were promised and there are reports of incarceration and torture of hunters). Another outstanding issue is whether private diamond companies operating inside the park should share benefits with the people of the Central Kalahari. The Negotiating Team continues to work with locals to define and propose possible solutions to the Botswana government.

Prepared by Megan Glore

For planners and scholars of community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) in southern Africa, Robert Hitchcock's article provides a useful overview of the indigenous San people's social activism for land rights, human rights, and natural resources rights. He offers an objective account of the forces that have shaped their political will and action in Botswana. The focus is on the case of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, where a conflict over land between its traditional inhabitants and the national government has smouldered since the mid 1980s. Hitchcock's vast experience in southern Africa with applied research in international development, settlement and resettlement, human rights of indigenous people, and CBNRM place him on solid ground to discuss this history.

Ethnic stigmatization is central to the geographic displacement and resource dispossession that the San suffer in Botswana and the author sets the scene by comparing the national government's official policy of disregard for indigenous minority status among its population with the rights that international standards demand for all indigenous people. After orienting the reader to the drastic changes that have challenged the San's existence in recent decades and the desire amongst the people to regain control over their destiny through a political voice, he organizes the paper into the following sections: San social movements, a brief history of San human rights issues, the Central Kalahari and the First Peoples, The First People of the Kalahari as a San organization, the resettlement of people from the Central Kalahari, and resource rights issues in the Central Kalahari.

Hitchcock provides details about the series of events that led up to the eviction of nearly all San and Bakgalagadi people from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve in 2002 and their relocation to inadequate settlements, an act that was viewed as a violation of basic human rights by the international community. Their mistreatment throughout history is depicted through a description of scant allocation of rights, virtual slavery, dispossession of their ancestral homes, and denied representation in court. In addition to their low status nationwide, the relative socio-economic advancement of the region's Bakgalagadi people has subordinated the San and some see themselves as the self-described 'serfs' of the Bakgalagadi. The political awareness that has grown in the San prompted them to further specify sub-categories of basic human rights as security rights, subsistence rights, and cultural rights, -all of which they feel have been violated through the relocation process.

Distinct characteristics of the San social movement are described. They purposefully internationalized their movement through attendance at international conventions, meetings with officials from global institutions, and alliances created with other indigenous groups of the world. In turn, they have successfully garnered considerable support from entities outside Botswana. Another characteristic is the distinction that the San emphasize regarding their indigenous ethnicity in contrast to the other minority group involved in the land struggle, the Bakgalagadi. Furthermore, their movement has been non-violent, relying upon consultation, negotiation and information sharing.

Hitchcock draws on the experience of the San to point out lessons for all NGOs concerned with the rights of indigenous people: community discussions and meetings are not sufficient for inducing change and prompt legal steps must be taken to instigate official action; heavy reliance upon outside support can be seen to weaken the integrity of a movement and grassroots support is paramount to justifying indigenous claims; and NGOs must publicly clarify their goals for the benefit of all constituents served and not employ strategies that unfairly emphasize one ethnicity over the other.

In light of numerous case studies that portray apathy amongst the San, this summary of political self-empowerment and strong international support provides hope for the emergence of a new sense of San dignity and entitlement, despite the loss of their ancestral lands in the Game Reserve. CBNRM planners that acknowledge the San potential for collective mobilization could take advantage of the collaborative opportunities that it may offer for securing them the rights that are fundamental to forming effective people-centred conservation.

Prepared by Megan Glore