A long way from the Kalahari

The Gana, Gwi and Tsila Bushmen have lived in the Botswana's Kalahari game reserve for thousands of years. However, after diamonds were discovered on the land in the early 1980s the inhabitants were packed off to resettlement camps where they were banned from hunting and introduced to lives of boredom and alcoholism. Although the Bushmen won the right to return to their land in 2006, one year later prohibitive measures are still in place to stop them from doing so. Fiona Watson was a regular visitor to the Kalahari communities until the Botswana government recently banned her from going back

Having been out to Botswana and visited the Central Kalahari game reserve several times, I can see the difference between the independent way the Bushmen lived before and the way they are living now. Through several waves of evictions, first in 1997 and then in 2002, the government cleared them off the land and placed them in resettlement camps.

As the crow flies the camps aren't that far away – one of them is on the edge of the game reserve and another is about 40 miles away to the west. However, it's quite far when you think of the rough terrain; for any Bushman attempting to turn back it would be a journey of several days.

Although the Kalahari is arid and a challenging environment to live in, it has a great beauty about it. The skyline is vast and you can see the most amazing constellations in the evenings, all of which the Bushmen have names for. It is also the place where their ancestors are buried and has a lot of spiritual meaning for them.

In the resettlement areas there is no wildlife; it has all been cleared away leaving nothing for the settlers. They are effectively living in concentration camps – and with thousands of people living on top of each other it is very concentrated. One woman I know, who is a shaman, told me that she cannot perform healing dances as she is now so far from the land where her ancestral spirits reside that she can't communicate with them.

What the Botswana government sees as "bringing development to the Bushmen" is having the opposite effect. Having seen them living self-sufficient and happy lives on their land, I found it difficult to visit them in the alien environment of the camps. There's nothing for them to do; they're living off the state with rations of food and water. There is no hunting; people are bored and depressed.

The Bushmen have been cut off from everything that has meaning for them and it has disempowered them. All their indicators of happiness have plummeted. It's something that came across clearly when I visited the resettlement camps. They are full of shabeens, or makeshift bars; the Bushmen drink all day. One guy said to me: "I wake up in the morning, I look out of my hut and I feel depressed: I don't know what to do with my life."

The camps mean business and there are all sorts of government employees going in there to run programmes. There are also those who want to take advantage of the meagre compensation money given to the tribes; alcohol-sellers and prostitutes have moved in. The Bushmen are now exposed to Aids and other diseases.

When I talked to the children in the camps they said that they weren't being taught in their mother tongue, that they were confused and unhappy at school, and that no one taught them about their own history.

After years of trying unsuccessfully to persuade the Botswana government to let them back on their land, the Bushmen took the state to court and in 2004 a case began. It was a landmark victory when the High Court ruled in their favour. That the Central Kalahari is the traditional land of the Bushmen was officially recognised – also that the government had acted illegally and unconstitutionally in evicting them.

It was the first time that a Botswana court had recognised "native title", meaning that although the Kalahari tribes didn't have bits of paper that proved they owned the land, they were still the rightful owners by dint of having lived there for thousands of years.

The Bushmen would even be allowed to hunt again, which had previously been prohibited by the government to protect the animal population. The High Court found that the government had acted illegally in stopping the tribes from hunting. Surveys of wildlife in the Central Kalahari game reserve had shown that most species of antelope had in fact increased over the past 10 years. The Bushmen were demonstrably experts in sustainable hunting.

Since the ruling, however, the government has made it as difficult as possible for them to return. It has restricted access for many of them and put a blanket ban on hunting. The Bushmen still have to carry permits to set foot on their land and there have been several cases of harassment and torture over the past months.

The other crucial issue is water. In the parched game reserve, there was a borehole that pumped water to the surface. The government has since concreted over the borehole and now refuses to let the Bushmen re-open it on the grounds that it is government property.

Most Bushmen believe that they have been evicted to make way for diamond mining on the land. In one of the villages, Gope, there is a significant diamond deposit. De Beers used to have the retention licence but has since sold it to a new company called Gem Diamonds, which is made up of former employees of De Beers. They have indicated that they want to go ahead and mine in the area.

A number of Bushmen that I've spoken to over the years say that their evictions were a preamble to diamond mining in the area and that they were told this early on by government officials. The Botswana government claims that they are being moved for development purposes. Millions of dollars have been spent on evicting tribes that don't want to move from their land. As they themselves say: "If it is really about development, why not bring the development to us?"

At the moment, a lot of the Bushmen are neither for or against mining. They were never consulted and haven't had the opportunity to make themselves heard. If the government were to adhere to international law (for example, the International Labour Organisation's convention on indigenous peoples, and the UN declaration on indigenous rights, which was approved by Botswana) there are clear guidelines about consulting people about developments on their land and obtaining their free, informed and prior consent. The tribes should know what the impact will be and what benefits they might receive.

I've now been banned from Botswana. Through the support I've given to the Bushmen and their organisation, the First People of the Kalahari, the Botswana authorities have added me to a blacklist, made up mainly of journalists and campaigners. I had been in Botswana for the High Court ruling in December 2006 and was banned soon after that.

Everyone is looking at the climate change talks in Bali and the future of the forests, and here you have the Kalahari Bushmen, who are in many ways the archetypal tribal society, who have perfected amazing techniques for caring for their environment. They have a huge amount to teach the rest of us.

Fiona Watson was talking to Anna Bruce-Lockhart.