In common with many small countries, Botswana is known beyond its borders – when at all – by a few crudely drawn stereotypes. Most of these are positive: “Africa’s Switzerland”; a model democracy on a chaotic continent; the quaint setting for Alexander McCall Smith’s light fiction.
Rightly or wrongly, however, another image has fixed itself recently in a growing number of foreigners’ minds: Botswana, oppressor of the Bushmen. What began as a local land rights dispute involving the Bushmen, also called the San or the Basarwa, has become an internationally known issue.
