Botswana's High Court has ruled that hundreds of San had been wrongly evicted from ancestral hunting grounds in the Kalahari desert and should be allowed to return.
The court ruled 2-1 for the San in the key issues of the case, which saw Africa's last hunter-gatherers take on one of the continent's most admired governments in a dispute over diamond rich land and development priorities.
Judge Mpaphi Phumaphi, who delivered the swing vote in the case, said that Botswana had been wrong to force the San out of the Kalahari reserve by cutting off their livelihood.
"In my view the simultaneous stoppage of the supply of food rations and the stoppage of hunting licences is tantamount to condemning the remaining residents of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve to death by starvation," he said.
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Wearing a waistcoat of animal hide over his shirt and tie, Roy Sesana, head of a San pressure group, did a little dance on coming out of the courtroom.
"My heart today is nice!" he said in English, adding through an interpreter: "My ancestors told me I was going to win."
Jumanda Gakelebone, another activist, said: "I'm very very glad. I'm expecting to go back tomorrow."
The San's lawyer, Gordon Bennett, said the court had opened the way for the San to return to lands that their ancestors have lived on for about 20 000 years.
Chief government lawyer Sydney Pilane stressed that the state had not lost outright because the ruling did not require it to provide essential services to the San in the reserve. He said the government might appeal.
The court said it saw no grounds for out-of-court claims by the San that the government and diamond giant De Beers wanted to clear the land for diamond mining - the basis for a publicity push by Western pressure groups who've backed the Bushmen's cause.
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