Before Africa's colonisation, the Bushmen population in the south of the continent numbered in the millions. Today the figure is 80,000.
Two-thirds of the Bushmen who remain are based in Botswana where a majority now work as ranch hands, having moved or been forced off their ancestral lands in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR), where they had lived for millenia.
A tiny number of Bushmen now remain in the CKGR, but the government of Botswana continues its policy of relocating tribespeople to 65 new settlements (dismissed as slums by campaigners) on the fringes of the reserve. Between 1997 and 2002, 1,550 Bushmen were resettled and by mid-2005 only a reported 66 remained in the CKGR, two thirds of whom were removed later that year.
In the words of Botswana's president, the rationale of the resettlement programme has been "to ensure that all citizens of Botswana have opportunities to share in the wealth of the nation."