History and social complexities for San at Tsintsabis resettlement farm, Namibia (original) (raw)
The theme of the 1950s eviction of Haiǁom Indigenous people from the protected area that became Etosha National Park is continued in this chapter. After this event, many Haiǁom San became farm workers. Having lost their lands under colonialism and apartheid to nature conservation and large-scale livestock ranching, most remained living in the margins of society at the service of white farmers, conservationists or the South African Defence Force (SADF). After Independence in 1990, group resettlement farms became crucial to address historically built-up inequalities by providing marginalised groups with opportunities to start self-sufficient small-scale agriculture. This chapter critically addresses the history of the Tsintsabis resettlement farm, just over a 100 kms east of ENP, where at first predominantly Haiǁom (and to a lesser degree !Xun) were “resettled” on their own ancestral land, some as former evictees from ENP. The history of Tsintsabis is analysed in relation to two pressing, and related, social complexities at this resettlement farm, namely: 1) ethnic tension and in-migration; and 2) leadership. The chapter argues that the case of Tsintsabis shows the importance of acknowledging historically built-up injustices when addressing current social complexities. The importance of doing long-term ethno-historical research about resettlement is thereby emphasised in order to be able to better understand the contextual processes within which resettlement is embedded.
Related papers
This study examines land use, natural resource, and development conflicts, and the effects of government policies in a remote area in northeastern Namibia, known formerly as West Bushmanland, now Tsumkwe West. !Xun and Khwe San who had been soldiers of the South African Defense Force in the Angolan and Namibian wars of independence in the 1970s and 1980s were resettled in this area along with their families. Namibian government resettlement and development projects were planned and implemented in the Tsumkwe West in the early 1990s. In part because of the ways in which !Xun and Khwe San identities were constructed over time by settlers, academics, policy-makers, the South African Defense Force, the colonial and post-colonial state, and San themselves, the people of Tsumkwe West, later, the N≠a Jaqna Conservancy, have had to struggle against other groups and the state for the stake in their land and resources. Drawing on anthropological research, work of non-government organizations, and interviews of people in the area over a period of two and a half decades, this study assesses some of the ways in which resettlement and land and resource policies have mutually affected the Namibian government, the military, private companies, donor agencies, non-government and community-based organizations, and a diverse set of peoples in northeastern Namibia.
Nomadic Peoples, 2019
As former mobile foraging peoples, the indigenous Hai//om San of Namibia lost most of their land-including Etosha National Park and Mangetti West-to other groups and the state in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. After independence (1990), the government redistributed some of this land to various expropriated groups. In the following overview , we delve into this complex history to argue that the recent decision by the Hai//om (2015) to file a collective action lawsuit against the government of Namibia over Etosha and Mangetti West must be seen in a context of ongoing, often subtle, processes of land dispossession simultaneously taking place as a result of marginalisation and structural disempowerment.
Journal of Namibian Studies, 10, (2011), 7-29, 2011
!Xoon are a group of former hunter-gatherers who live in the dry southern Kalahari in eastern Namibia. They have been largely overlooked in both the extensive body of anthropological publications on the San and in Namibian historiography. The documentation of former !Xoon land use patterns presented here was undertaken with the aim of countering the invisibility of the !Xoon and is based on biographical and historical narratives describing how the !Xoon adapted their territories, settlement patterns, subsistence activities and identity strategies during the period under scrutiny. By placing these strategies in academic discussions about San territoriality it will be shown how territorial behaviour was entangled in the historical process. I will then go on to argue that through both geographical and social mobility the !Xoon not only reacted to but also consolidated the expropriation of their lands, reinforced precast ethnic categories and thus contributed to the fashioning of their own invisibility. Current pressures on San in Namibia to conform to stereotypes of 'Bushmanness' in order to be visible and eligible for state benefits are an ironic reflection of former pressures on San not to be identifiable as stereotypical Bushmen in order to escape state repression.
Since independence in 1990 the SWAPO-led Government has implemented a land reform policy in Namibia aimed at addressing the imbalances in land ownership by redistributing white commercial farmlands among black farmers. As part of this policy, communities have been settled on group resettlement farms. Although these settlements are only a minor part of the land reform process, they involve more than half of the total beneficiaries. This article attempts to provide an overview of these group resettlements and to find out if they are achieving the objectives – in terms of production and social welfare – set out by the government. I seek to contribute to the ongoing debate over land reform in Namibia and to highlight some of the shortcomings in its implementation. I also consider the possibility of combining and/or prioritizing the raising of production levels with/and the improvement of the social welfare of communities through land reforms.
Fighting Fences and Land Grabbers in the Struggle for the Commons in N#a Jaqna, Namibia
African Affairs, 2021
Livestock owners, elites and non-elites alike, from different parts of Namibia fence in land that belongs to the indigenous San people who collectively manage their land as a conservancy. Fencing violates the Communal Land Reform Act of 2002. The conservancy started a lawsuit in August 2013 with reference to this Act to remove the fences and end the illegal occupation of land. The High Court ruled in 2016 in favour of the conservancy, but the fences have not been removed and more illegal settlers have settled in the conservancy. We conceptualize and analyse the act of fencing as land grabbing but argue simultaneously that the legal battle of the conservancy is more than a struggle for justice. The case unfolds as an ontological struggle between actors, their institutions and respective policies and discourses, pivoting on conflicting visions of modernities of (rural) development in Tsumkwe West. The wider significance beyond N̸=a Jaqna is that the core of struggles about land and rights in situations of land grabbing is whose modernity counts. The court case has also paved the way for conservancies and other resource communities to become involved in dealing with land issues and contesting the multiple meanings of land.
2004
This article concentrates on the ambiguities and contradictions in the colonial archive on North West Namibia (a region also known as Kaokoland), and on the way these were exploited by the “stubborn traditionalists” inhabiting it. Its aim is to place the emergence of postcolonial identities and subjectivities in the region in an historical perspective. To do so, it takes a look at the depoliticized discourse on livestock and development in which South West African rule framed its politics of identity. This case study investigates how precisely this discourse fuelled political resistance in the region. However, the efforts by elders and so‐called commoners to counter indirect rule and apartheid hardly ever took the form of overt rebellion or explicit political protest. It concerned instead a more subtle and defiant form of counterworks, a very specific local modernity rooted in local subjectivity and experience that happened to be quite efficient.
Loading Preview
Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.