Botswana Bars Bushmen's Lawyer As Landmark Case Starts

In an unprecedented move branded 'vindictive and repressive', Botswana's government has prevented British attorney Gordon Bennett from entering Botswana, where he was due to represent Kalahari Bushmen at an important High Court hearing about the tribe's access to their ancestral land.

Mr Bennett was put on a 'visa list' after he represented Bushmen clients at a successful hearing in June 2013 to prevent the eviction of the Bushman community of Ranyane. It was the third time Mr Bennett had won a victory for Bushmen clients: in the first, in 2006, the Bushmen won the right to return to their ancestral land; in the second, in 2011, they won the right to drill their own water boreholes after the government attempted to stop them doing so.