Hunting Justice
Displacement, Law, and Activism in the Kalahari

Follows the activist campaign that contested the Botswana government's removal of indigenous peoples from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve.

Maria Sapignoli (Author)

9781107191570, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 15 February 2018

436 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 2.4 cm, 0.82 kg

'As indigenous peoples gain greater visibility in their demands for recognition and rights, a book detailing the situation of injustice faced by the San (Bushmen) of Botswana and how they took their claims to the national courts and the UN is a truly welcome contribution. In Sapignoli's meticulous and superbly evocative account, we are given an insider's story of how an ignored and abused people fought against expulsion from their homelands and took their cause internationally.' Julian Burger, University of Essex, and Former Coordinator, Programme on Indigenous Peoples and Minorities, UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights

This book presents a long-term study of the activist campaign that contested the Botswana government's much-publicized removal of the San and Bakgalagadi people from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. Sapignoli's multiple points of observation and analysis range from rural Botswana to the nation's High Court, and a variety of United Nations agencies in their Headquarters, focusing on rights claimants and officials from NGOs, states and the United Nations as they acted on the grievances of those who had been displaced. In offering a comprehensive discussion of the San people and their claims-making through formal institutions, this book maintains a consistent focus on the increased recourse to law and the everyday experience of those who are asserting their rights in response to the encroachments of the state and the opportunities inherent in new indigenous advocacy networks.

1. Introduction
2. Unsettling the Central Kalahari
3. The 'bushman problem'
4. Getting organized: the social lives of San NGOs
5. The San in the United Nations
6. The court
7. After judgment
8. Litigating for a way of life
9. Conclusions.

Subject Areas: Law & society [LAQ], Law [L], Anthropology [JHM]