The San and the N‡a Jaqna Conservancy, Tsumkwe District West, Namibia

Cameron Welch

Description

This book examines the current position of the San as marginalized indigenous peoples in Namibia. In doing so, it explores how CBNRM has become a nexus through which questions of indigeneity, conservation and development have come to bear on San communities. Focusing on the experiences of a group of predominantly San communities in the North-East of Namibia, the historical and contemporary situations of the San of the N�a Jaqna Conservancy and their engagement with CBNRM are examined. In looking to the future, this work seeks to understand what mechanisms and institutions give indigenous groups, such as the San, a foothold in the State and an avenue though which to navigate and shape their own modernity(ies). This work explores the modalities through which conservation comes together with interests of indigenous groups and how these groups deploy leverage gained through invoking conservation as discourse and practice. In examining San engagements with the Conservancy structures in N�a Jaqna, this study seeks answers not only to the question of what San engagements with CBNRM can tell us about the potential of the CBNRM framework itself for facilitating rural development and conservation, but also the question of what engagement with CBNRM can tell us about how the San of Namibia actively engage in rural development. The following work focuses not solely on how policies and governmental or non-governmental interventions have impacted San realities and life ways, but also the ways in which the San of N�a Jaqna have negotiated, impacted, and shaped these processes.

Sujets

• Campagne
• Social sciences
• Indigenous peoples
• Rural area
• Sociology
• Rural

Informations

• Publié par: Basler Afrika Bibliographien
• Date de parution: 24 juillet 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9783906927039
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 6 Mo

Extrait

“Land is Life, Conservancy is Life.”

C ameron W elCh

“Land is Life, Conservancy is Life.” The San and the N‡a Jaqna Conservancy, Tsumkwe District West, Namibia

Basel Namibia Studies Series 20

Basler Afrika Bibliographien 2018

©2018 The author ©2018 The photographers ©2018 Basler Afrika Bibliographien

Basler Afrika Bibliographien Namibia Resource Centre & Southern Africa Library Klosterberg 23 PO Box 4001 Basel Switzerland www.baslerafrika.ch

All rights reserved.

Efforts were made to trace the copyright holders of illustrations and maps used in this publication. We apologise for any incomplete or incorrect acknowledgements.

Cover image: San woman processing mangetti nuts, Mangetti Dune, 2008. Photographer: Cameron Welch

ISBN 978-3-906927-02-2

ISSN 2234-9561

Contents

Preface by John G. Galaty

1 Introduction The San in Namibia The San and CBNRM The San and Development The San and Land Reform The San and Indigenous Rights The San and Anthropology Positionality Methodology

2 The San and Tsumkwe West The Land Before South African Presence The Arrival of the Commissioner Con ict and the Peopling of Tsumkwe West Peace Comes and Some People Go The SADF Legacy in a Newly Independent Namibia The ELCN Project WIMSA Establishment of the N‡a Jaqna Conservancy

3 Namibian San and Indigenous Rights Indigenous Peoples and their Rights The San as Indigenous Peoples in Namibia The Indigenous Rights Perspective Indigenous Rights in Africa Indigenous Rights for the San in Namibia The Flow of Indigenous Rights through the Conservancy Conclusion

4 CBNRM in Namibia Critiques of Development Community-Based Natural Resource Management

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1 5 9 10 11 13 14 17 19

24 24 26 29 34 36 37 42 43

46 48 56 61 64 67 76 85

86 86 92

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6

7

8

CBNRM in Question CBNRM in Namibia Legal Framework of Conservancies in Namibia Conclusion

CBNRM in N‡a Jaqna The N‡a Jaqna Conservancy and the “C” in CBNRM Boundaries and their Making in the N‡a Jaqna Conservancy Participation, CBNRM, and Empowerment in N‡a Jaqna Conclusion

Land Reform and the San of N‡a Jaqna Southern African Land Reform in the International Context Land Reform in Namibia The San and Land Reform in Namibia Conclusion

San Lands Contested Consultations and the Terms of Development in N‡a Jaqna Why Small-Scale Commercial Farms in the Conservancy Area Viability of Small-Scale Commercial Farming Units Questioned San Livelihoods and the Farming Units Cultural Change and Ethnic Con ict Attempted Land Grabs by Non-State Actors Views in Support of the Government’s Plan The Divisive and Unifying E⁝ects of the Government’s Proposed Farms Conclusion

Conclusion

Acronyms

Bibliography

Timeline of Developments in Tsumkwe West and Surrounding Area

Click Symbols in the !Kung Language

Meetings Related to Small-Scale Farms

Index

99 102 104 108

109 109 117 128 149

150 151 154 177 186

187 188 205 207 215 221 222 227 229 230

232

239

240

258

261

262

268

Basel Namibia Studies Series

In 1997,P. Schlettwein Publishing(PSP) launched theBasel Namibia Studies Series. Its pri- mary aim was to lend support to a new generation of research, scholars and readers emerg- ing with the independence of Namibia in 1990. Initially, the book series published crucially important doctoral theses on Namibian his- tory. It soon expanded to include more recent political, anthropological, media and cultural history studies by Namibian scholars. P. Schlettwein Publishing,as an independent publishing house, maintained the series in collaboration with theBasler Afrika Bibliographien (BAB), Namibia Resource Centre and Southern Africa Library in Switzerland. All share a commitment to encourage research on Africa in general and southern Africa in particular. Through the incorporation of PSP into theCarl Schlettwein Stiftung,the series, by then a consolidated platform for Namibian Stud- ies and beyond, was integrated into the publishing activities of the BAB. Academic publishing, whether from or about Namibia, remains limited. TheBasel Na- mibia Studies Seriescontinues to provide a forum for exciting scholarly work in the human and social sciences. The editors welcome contributions. For further information, or submission of manu- scripts, please contact theBasler Afrika Bibliographienat www.baslerafrika.ch.

Acknowledgments

This thesis would not have been possible without the assistance of many people and organi- zations. My greatest thanks go to the people of the N‡a Jaqna Conservancy who shared their lives, their homes and thoughts with me over the last ten years. I would also like to thank the sta⁝ and students at McGill University’s Department of Anthropology. Special thanks to members of my thesis committee, Dr. John Galaty, Dr. Ronald Niezen, Dr. Ismael Vaccaro for all of their insightful contributions to the development of this work. I would like to thank the following people for their input into this study: Moses ‡Oma, Gabes |Khoeseb, Joram |Useb, Edward “Bo” ||Xaire, Eckhard Auch, Tresia Aukhumes, John Arnold, Paulus Arnold, Ben Begbie-Clinch, Michael Bollig, Magdalena Broermann, Roger Chennels, Sean Desjardins, Ute Dieckmann, Emilio Dirlikov, Silke Felton, Kleofas Geingob, Jennifer Glassco, Jenny “Bob” Gleeson, Julie Guinard, Robert Hitchcock, Gerson Kamatuka, Bronwyn Jones, Joseph Kiambi, Jakes Kolbooi, Mathias Kom, Scott Matter, Likoro Masheshe, Stephen Moiko, Doyo Moyo, Dominic Muema, Atanasius Mukonda, the Naris family and neighbors at Namtakwara, Marius “Striker” Narenge, Herman Oosthuizen, Ian Osborn, Yionne Pickering, Adam Reeves, Marta Rohatynskyj, Alla Sauseb, Vorster Sauseb, Günther Schlee, Brighten Simasiku, Jacqueline Solway, Sara Sungu, Costa Swau, Renee Sylvain, Axel Thoma, Nico Tjimungua, Petur Waldor⁝, the WIMSA team, and Willem Woughs. Great thanks also to Frans Gomeb and Estella Levis for their excellent translation and other forms of assistance in the ⁞eld. Thank you to Samuel Grosenick for producing the maps contained in this work. This work would not have been possible without the support of my parents Greg and Betty Welch. My deepest gratitude goes to my wife Sarah Hazell. This work was carried out with the aid of a grant from the International Development Research Centre, Ottawa, Canada. Information on the Centre is available on the web at www.idrc.ca. I would like to acknowledge funding for this project provided by the following institu- tions: the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the McGill Univer- sity Faculty of Arts, and the McGill University Department of Anthropology.

Preface

Namibia is the driest country in southern Africa, a wide expanse that stretches from the Kalahari Desert to the Namib Desert along the Atlantic Coast. But as the peoples of the Sahel and Sahara, the Horn of Africa and Eastern Africa are aware, aridity has its virtues. Dryland, semi-desert and savannah are regions of grassland where few enterprises occur apart from those that depend on wildlife and domestic grazing animals. The digestion process of cel- lulose in grasses creates nutrients on which hunter-foragers and human pastoralists can survive and even thrive. Even in the virtual absence of crop cultivation, the competition that does exist is between uses of rangeland for hunting wildlife and herding livestock and pursuing gathering of the produce of wild arid land vegetation. The history of the San-speaking peoples is a testimony to resilience and struggle. Khoi- san speakers of click-languages once inhabited and proliferated throughout the eastern and southern half of Africa, from long before the time of the southern spread of communities from the other three major African language families that progressively absorbed and re- placed them. This history of the linguistic longue durée is attested by the presence of several remaining click-speaking communities in East Africa, the Hadzapi, Kindiga, and Sandawe, who bear testimony to the original widespread habitation of most of Eastern Africa by click-speakers, until approximately 8,000 years ago. Today, members of the Khoisan click language family mainly reside in dry regions of Botswana, Namibia and South Africa, where they have been pushed over time by Bantu speaking groups. Cameron Welch’s long and dedicated work in Namibia has taken place among the San of N‡a Jaqna in Tsumkwe District West in the North Eastern region of Namibia, many of whom are speakers of various San languages. Many San were gathered in the region after return- ing from southern Angola where they had sought refuge after the long and bitter war for Na- mibian independence that pitted the South-West African People’s Organization (SWAPO) against the South African Defense Force, which lasted from 1962 to 1990. Unfortunately for many San, they had been recruited as trackers by the South African forces and found themselves on the wrong side of history when SWAPO became a political party and, with its president, Sam Nujoma, as chief of state, was elected to lead the new state of Namibia. Nonetheless, the settlement of the San in N‡a Jaqna, where they joined other Khoisan com- munity members, took place with an understanding that their voices would predominate in a region given over to conservation and continuing access to wildlife and foraging resources on which they largely depended.

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