Central Kalahari Game Reserve Rights Restoration: Community Consultations

Smith Moeti (Red T-shirt) consulting with the community at Molapo in the CKGR.

Between 1994 and 2006, the 3000-strong indigenous hunting and gathering G/wi and G//ana San population was forcibly relocated from Botswana’s 52,800km Central Kalahari Game Reserve. Government argued that their presence in the CKGR was incompatible with the area’s conservation status; that the San’s way of life was primitive and that  they needed to be relocated to state settlements in order to benefit from state services. The relocations triggered a deluge of international condemnation, an NGO led global campaign to boycott Botswana’s diamonds and a sequence of protracted and bitter legal battles between Government and San advocacy organisations.

In November 2024, the newly elected UDC Government in Botswana committed to restoring the rights of San forcibly evicted from the CKGR and to developing a CBNRM framework for the reserve. This was done as part of a broader commitment to implementing a new and comprehensive human and indigenous rights agenda to remedy historical injustices suffered by Botswana’s San population.

If successfully implemented, this initiative :

• Will result in the largest structured land return to indigenous populations within a protected area in Africa

• The CKGR and adjacent conservancies under community management in Ghanzi and Kgaligadi Districts will become the largest CBNRM initiative on the continent in terms of contiguous land area (circa 140,000 km²)

• The CKGR will be largest single protected area in Africa operating under a unified, indigenous people led rights-based co-management framework

Anthropos is facilitating this complex process and has developed a four-year roadmap for the restitution with the long term goal of establishing the CKGR as a flagship community-based conservation area where communities rights to land and natural resources are legally affirmed.

The first milestone in the roadmap is the establishment of representative organisation or a community working group with a clear mandate to represent both CKGR residents and resettled communities in their engagements with government to develop a framework for the future management of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR).

This process is currently underway. With support from Anthropos, community leader and Ghanzi District councillor, Smith Moeti undertook a full round of consultations in all CKGR villages over a two week period. On the strength of these consultations Anthropos is now working with CKGR village representatives elected during the consultations and Councillor Moeti to develop an institutional framework for the organisation and secure resources to ensure it is able to effectively execute its mandate of mapping a future for the CKGR with Government.