With their struggle for water rights turning the decade, the Bushmen of Botswana’s situation has become as stagnant as the water they drink. After 10 years of legal battles, their mouths are parched, their spirits low, and their hope has all but sweltered away in the unforgiving desert heat.

Today, the Kalihari Bushmen of Botswana are facing a new chapter of hardship in their battle for water, in what has been an ongoing legal conflict spanning nearly a decade.

The struggle began in 2002, when the Botswanan government evicted the Bushmen from their ancestral lands and capped one of their major water holes, according to the Guardian.

The Bushmen’s ancestral land and primary water source lies inside the Central Kalihari Game Reserve, a national park in Botswana. In 2002, the Botswana Government evicted the Bushmen from their land, and destroyed their traditional way of life for disputed reasons.

Since the preserve’s establishment, the Bushmen have been portrayed by the government as poachers and unwanted settlers, and have been ultimately cut off from their source of food and water, according to The New York Times.

“The government says we are bad for the animals, but I was born here and the animals were born here,” said tribal leader Gana Taoxaga to The New York Times. “And we have lived together very well.”

According to Survival International, the Botswanan government has used water as a political tool to aid in their removal of the Bushmen.

“In the last 10 years, Botswana has become one of the harshest places in the world for indigenous peoples,” said Stephen Corry, director of Survival International.

When the government capped the Bushmen’s watering hole in 2002, the government also prevented them from drilling another, while concurrently building a first class tourist center on the land.

Despite huge losses and economic turmoil, the Bushmen proceeded to launch one of the most expensive court cases in the country’s history, aimed at overturning the government’s eviction. After a long and difficult battle, both in the courtroom and on their land, the Bushmen succeeded.

The eviction was declared “unlawful and unconstitutional” by a Botswanan court in December, 2006, according to The Guardian. The ruling stated that the Bushmen had a constitutional right to live and hunt on their ancestral grounds.

This did not, however, bring an end to the conflict.

Today, the Botswanan government has changed the face of oppression of tribal groups. The current situation is one of complete stagnation: a clash of the Bushmen’s traditional values against the modernizing imperialist attitude of the Botswana government.

According to allAfrica.com, the former Foreign Minister, Lieutenant General Mompati Sebogodi Merafhe, expressed this attitude clearly, when he publicly stated that he wondered why the Bushmen must “continue to commune with the flora and fauna when they could enjoy the better things in life, like driving Cadillacs.”

Today, the government’s attitude shows little change in understanding. In an interview with the BBC, Kitso Mokaila, the Botswanan minister of the environment, wildlife, and tourism, claimed that it was a matter of modernization and education, rather than monetary gain.

“I don’t believe you would want to see your own kind living in the dark ages in the middle of nowhere as a choice, when you know that the world has moved forward and has become so technological,” Mokaila said.

According to Corry, however, this problem stems from a deep racial inequality perpetuated by the government.

“Mokaila’s remarks smack of the colonial past and show that the government still holds the same racist attitudes it held back in 2002 when it forced the Basarwa off their lands,” said Corry in an interview with the BBC. “The Basarwa deserve respect for their way of life, the same as everyone else. If anyone is ‘living in the dark ages,’ it’s the Botswanan government.”

Potential reasons for the mistreatment of the Bushmen are numerous and hotly disputed.

According to Survival International, the conflicts have been due partly, if not wholly, to the discovery of diamonds on the ancestral land. Despite capping the water hole, the government has offered a mining company access to their resources and infinite access to water, on the condition that it is not shared with the Bushmen, Survival International reported.

“If Bushmen are to be denied water on their lands when it is freely provided for tourists, animals, and diamond mines, then foreigners should be asked if they really want to support this regime with their visits and jewelry shopping,” said Corry to Survival International.

According to the Associated Press, many celebrities are now participating in a boycott of Botswana diamonds to protest the government’s mistreatment of the Bushmen.

Despite continued international attention, however, the plight of the Bushmen have remained largely the same. Scholars such as Noam Schimmel, a Ph.D. student at the London School of Economics, have called for drastic change in government policy and attitude toward the Bushmen.

“Research in Botswana reveals a government fundamentally antagonistic to the human rights and welfare of the Bushmen minority, profoundly condescending and contemptuous of it, and acting with the intent to forcibly assimilate the Bushmen, undermine their cultural and social integrity, and render them dependent upon the government and its narrow economic and political interests,” said Schimmel to The New York Times.

“It pursues these interests in violation of the principles of liberty and equality of Botswana’s Constitution and in violation of the human rights treaties to which Botswana is legally required to respect.”