From a Phone Call to the High Court: Wayeyi Visibility and the Kamanakao Association's Campaign for Linguistic and Cultural Rights in Botswana

This article, by the Coordinator of the Kamanakao Association, reflects upon the Association's campaign against tribally discriminatory laws and the social stigma of past serfdom, and for human rights and democracy in Botswana. The campaign made Wayeyi from the North West District highly visible on the national scene. Through litigation up to the High Court, the Kamanakao Association broke new ground for judicial review in the broad public interest. The advance was for the cultural rights of 'minorities' in general, not only in the interests of Wayeyi. The most favourable High Court ruling recognised Yeyi cultural distinctness, allowed them to secede from the tribe of their past overlords, the Tawana, and concluded a landmark case in the wider fight against state-backed tribal discrimination and denial of language rights. As an insider's account mainly about recent events, but seen in a perspective extending to precolonial times, it focuses on strategies for and against change. Such strategies affect power relations between, in turn, Yeyi and Tawana, former serfs and overlords; Yeyi and government; and government and the Tswana-speaking tribes unfairly privileged by tribally discriminatory laws.