Indigenous rights in Southern Africa: International mechanisms and local contexts

Abstract

The San are the indigenous peoples of southern Africa, numbering approximately 100,0001 and representing three linguistic families. 2 Once living throughout the southern part of the continent, today the San live primarily in Botswana and Namibia, to a lesser extent in Angola and South Africa, with very small numbers also residing in Zambia and Zimbabwe. Like indigenous peoples worldwide, San communities are currently facing drastic social change, extreme marginalisation and poverty. 3 Hitchcock and Garcia-Alex emphasise the starkness of indigenous peoples' deprivation, noting that 'they tend to have the lowest health and nutritional standards, the highest rates of unemployment, illiteracy, and mortality, the shortest life spans, the lowest incomes, and the lowest degrees of political participation of the various categories of people in the countries in which they reside'. 4 This description fits for the San of southern Africa, who have played an important role in the collective global imagination about human ancestry, and have been a prime focus of much anthropological research. Despite all this attention, the standards of living have continued to deteriorate. Can a rights-based approach help? Will the signing of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples have any impact? How do local, national and regional contexts come into play? What do anthropologists have to contribute to a discussion of indigenous rights in southern Africa? © 2011 Taylor & Francis.