Margaret Nasha Warns Duma Boko of the Cost of Returning Basarwa to the CKGR

Former minister Margaret Nasha has cautioned that President Duma Boko’s plan to facilitate the return of Basarwa communities to the Central Kalahari Game Reserve could bring back difficult questions about public spending and service delivery. Nasha says the challenges that shaped the relocations more than two decades ago have not gone away. Nasha oversaw the relocation exercise while serving as Local Government Minister. She argues that the decision was based on the practical difficulty of providing essential services across the remote reserve, rather than hostility toward the Basarwa community. Vast distances, scattered settlements and challenging terrain, she said, made infrastructure costly to extend. Her comments follow Boko’s announcement that his government intends to help Basarwa return to the CKGR, as part of efforts to address historical injustices and restore ancestral land rights. Nasha said the administration would need to reckon with the expense of providing schools, healthcare, roads and other services if communities resettle within the reserve. She described access to education as one of the considerations at the time, saying children in isolated settlements lacked opportunities available elsewhere. Nasha said she felt satisfaction when she later saw some of those children graduate from university, while maintaining that the service-delivery problems had been real. Nasha also urged the government not to lose sight of the reserve’s conservation purpose. In her view, plans for resettlement must take into account that the CKGR was established as a wildlife sanctuary, alongside the costs of delivering services. The article also reports a sharply different response from Basarwa activist Roy Sesana, who rejected Nasha’s reasoning. Sesana argued that financial concerns should not take priority over citizens’ rights to live on their ancestral land. The competing views put the practical costs of Boko’s proposed return plan alongside the rights claims it is intended to address.