Speaking for the san: Challenges for representative institutions

Abstract

This chapter examines the San or Bushmen of southern Africa, with a focus on how their communities have evolved in order to represent themselves in the modern world. The various principles and customs that guided their lives prior to modernity as semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers are described, emphasizing close-knit egalitarian societies devoted to daily survival in often harsh environments. The acknowledged status of the San as being the most poor and dispossessed peoples in southern Africa raises the question: why have they collectively been unable to compete and succeed in the modern world? Three suggested factors in the San's current marginalization are examined in turn, namely the legacy of a hunter-gatherer world view, pervasive poverty and landlessness, and collective trauma as a source of societal problems. The history of attempts to assist and guide the San peoples in Namibia, Botswana and South Africa over the decades is briefly described, followed by a focus on the two forms of San institutions that have finally emerged. The first form, described as 'service organizations', includes the earliest attempts to assist the Ju/'hoansi of Nyae Nyae in 1981 and the Kuru Development Trust formed in Botswana in 1986. Each of these organizations has grown and evolved over the years, experiencing internal challenges relating to the particular context of the San, and devising better ways to resonate with and assist their San beneficiaries. The second form is San representative organizations, chiefly the formation of the regional San network named the Working Group of Indigenous Minorities in Southern Africa (WIMSA). WIMSA coordinates a democratically elected San council in each of the three countries, and has represented the San in the Hoodia case. The chapter concludes with an analysis of the challenges that currently face WIMSA involving concerns about leadership and the continued creation of structures appropriate for the representation of San interests. © 2009 Springer Netherlands.