Country: Botswana

Group: Ikalanga

Date Finalized: 4/26/20

Team: Arisha Khan (lead), Kimberly Prete, Alicia Hernandez

The Ikalanga are an indigenous group in Botswana who are not recognized under the national law as an indigenous group. Laws put in the place since independence in 1969 had been geared at assimilating minority ethnic groups, like the Ikalanga, to the majority Tswana language and culture.   This is especially pronounced in language policy, whereby English is the official language and Setswana is understood to be a national language.  Other minority languages were not permitted in schools, in the media, or at traditional courts. Minority groups are usually classified as part of the dominant Tswana tribe in the region, their land rights are recorded in terms of theTswana tribal territory in which they live, and they have had limited representation on Land Boards and in the House of Chiefs. (Nyati-Ramahobo & Minority Rights Group, 2008). However, the Ikalanga have been more resistant to assimilation than other indigenous groups in Botswana. Since the 1990’s, they have been particularly active in attempting to secure formal recognition as an indigenous group (Nyati-Ramahobo & Minority Rights Group, 2008). The Kalanga tribe was the first to form the Society for the Promotion of Ikalanga Languages (SPILL) in 1991 which developed writing systems to ensure that their culture and language still lived on. They also promoted multilingualism and called for a shift towards “unity in diversity” (Nyati-Ramahobo & Minority Rights Group International, 2008). I would give this a data score of 2 because there was a lot of information about the human rights abuse that happened in Botswana, however, it was more superficial where a lot of it discussed the overall indigenous groups rather than specific ones.

Sources

  1. Nyati-Ramahobo, Lydia., & Minority Rights Group International. (2008). Minority tribes in Botswana: The politics of recognition. Minority Rights Group International. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/008866589
  2. Solway, J. (2011). “Culture Fatigue”: The State and Minority Rights in Botswana. Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies, 18(1), 211–240. JSTOR. https://doi.org/10.2979/indjglolegstu.18.1.211