2 December 2012

Week 49: 'My land is my dignity.'

Wonder spawned in: Two million years ago
Wondered into being by: Early hominids and, today, the San bushmen of the Kalahari
Wonderspan: 7 minutes
To experience this wonder at its best: Make sure you can hear the sound and click 'full screen'

Two million years ago we evolved the ability to run and this became our earliest form of hunting large animals.  Before we invented spears, slings, arrows, we simply ran after our quarry them until we caught them.  This is still done today by the San bushmen of the Kalahari in Botswana and in this BBC film, which explores the human being as a hunting mammal, we follow the hunt from start to finish:
Extra...

But did you notice that the BBC categorised the film on Youtube under 'Pets & animals'?  Hang on, these are people.

And would you guess from the BBC film that the same people were violently evicted from their land by the Botswana government to make way for diamond mines?  Or that bushmen who tried to return say they were 'beaten, tortured and taken court for hunting'.  It would have been good to know that from the narration, don't you think?

After their eviction, the bushmen struggled in the courts for their legal right of return and after many years' work, eventually won it.  Since then they have been fighting the Botswanan government to allow them to return in practice.  Here's a very good film about their story (apart from the early 'noble savage' reference): www.survivalinternational.org/films/reportersbushmen

So it seems a whole people were evicted from their land - when they were there long before anyone else - so that posh City chaps in London and New York could buy their ladies a fancy type of stone.  Diamonds... It might be better not to bother with them at all and instead give the money to the Kalahari Bushmen's campaign.  You can find out more about that here: www.survivalinternational.org/tribes/bushmen

But isn't this cultural violence a specifically African kind, symptomatic of corrupt governance?  After all, the British government would never do such a thing, right?  Wrong.  Britain did just the same to to the Chagos Islanders in the 1960s so that the US could use the tiny British Indian Ocean Territory atoll of Diego Garcia as a base for its nuclear bombers.  When the islanders won the right to return in the High Court, the government used the Royal Prerogative to get the Queen to overrule the judgement.  The Chagossians are still fighting for their right to return - from Crawley in Sussex.  There's more about that in John Pilger's film here: http://archive.org/details/John_Pilger 
____________________
www.waysofloving.com

No comments:

Post a Comment

Please leave a message here. Like the blog? Let your friends know.