Botswana and Survival International Continue to Clash

Will an area with a 40 km radius be cordoned off in Botswana’s Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR) in favor of a diamond mine or just 40 sq km? That is at the heart of the latest salvo of words and counter statements by NGO Survival International and the government of Botswana.

A leaflet distributed outside a Survival International (SI) event in London by a Botswana mission stating, “a small area immediately around a mineral deposit, i.e. within a 40km radius, is cordoned off” set off the latest response by SI. In a statement released Friday, the NGO said “This means that an area 10 percent of the total size of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR) would be impacted”.

But according to Dr. Jeff Ramsay, President Festus Mogae’s press secretary, this was nothing more then a typo that should have read “a small area around a mineral deposit, e.g. 40km2, could be cordoned off”.

What SI viewed as a “surprise revelation” was rebuffed by Dr. Ramsay as a “tireless and insincere effort” on the part of SI “to falsely link the resettlement of people out of a game reserve with diamonds” adding they “appear to be desperate”.

Without much love lost between the sides, SI believes the Botswana government plans to close off 5,027 square kilometers of land in the CKGR adding that mining in the reserve “draws ever closer”.

But Botswana is flatly rejecting this, calling SI’s claims “concocted” and “otherwise absurd”. And so while Survival's director Stephen Corry says, “We believe the issue is now about the destruction of a large part of one of Africa's largest reserves, as well as of the Bushmen,” Dr. Ramsay insists that SI knows well that “there is no mining activity going on anywhere inside the CKGR”.