Bushmen of the Kalahari and Destructive Anthropology
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October 13, 2003
A small and quiet academic debate threatens tribal peoples around the world. It is largely sparked by the plight of the Gana and Gwi “Bushmen” in Botswana who are being forcibly removed from their lands, many think to clear the area for eventual diamond mining.
A handful of anthropologists now oppose indigenous peoples' struggle for their land rights, especially in Africa but also more generally. This poses little threat when confined to university seminars. But predictably the thesis has been seized on by companies, like the diamond giant De Beers, and governments, like Botswana's, eager to excuse their exploitation of indigenous peoples' lands. Such ideas threaten decades of progress for human rights and must be rebuffed.
Equating indigenous rights with apartheid Tribal peoples' ownership of their territories was enshrined in international law as long ago as 1957, and in many places their situation has improved dramatically as a result. From Australia to the Americas, indigenous peoples have rejected government policies of assimilation and integration, which they rightly see as euphemisms for invasion and conquest. They are supported by an increasingly sympathetic public opinion which has crystallised in organisations like Survival International. Indigenous peoples and their supporters have gone a long way in rejecting the outmoded colonial mentality which held that anyone who was not “Europeanised” was backward and doomed to fade away. But now a handful of US and British anthropologists are proposing that indigenous peoples should not have any special rights or recognition at all, particularly in Africa. With an academic conjuring trick worthy of Houdini, they argue that indigenous rights leads to apartheid - so equating the affirmation of the rights of a weak tribal minority (indigenous rights) with the denial of the rights of the black majority (apartheid). In reality of course, they are opposites. An important part of the anthropologists' argument is that it is impossible to say who is “indigenous” in Africa, and that this is reason enough to oppose indigenous rights. But this is not true: there are many cases where it is clear who constitutes an indigenous minority threatened by a powerful national majority. One example is the Gana and Gwi Bushmen, hunter-gatherers who had well-defined territories in the central Kalahari for millennia. Colonisation and eviction The colonisation of Bushman lands began a few generations ago, with white settlers invading from the south and large cattle-herding tribes coming from the north. Both treated the numerous Bushman peoples - then the only inhabitants of southern Africa - with disdain, killing many, and treating others as virtual slaves. Neither white nor black considered the Bushmen fully human; they were thought primitive and untrustworthy. Nevertheless, some remote Bushman tribes - like the Gana and Gwi - escaped destruction and, by keeping their land, retained their identity. But six years ago the government started pushing them out and dumping them in bleak resettlement camps where they are being reduced from self-sufficient hunter-gatherers to a state of abject boredom, alcoholism and dependence on handouts.
Understandably, many want their land back, even though it's now carved up into diamond exploration concessions. The government and De Beers, who are joined like Siamese twins because Botswana depends completely on diamond money, claim there is no connection between the concessions and the evictions. Such a powerful axis may have little need of academics to support its opposition to Bushman rights, but the anthropologists (one was employed by De Beers) have nevertheless obliged with their sophism which serves them so nicely. A key component in their reactionary theory is that Africa is a special case and should not be judged with the same human rights yardstick as the rest of the world. Although this might sound attractive to some African elites (particularly perpetrators of human rights abuses!), it is in fact profoundly discriminatory, and is ultimately the same dehumanising principle which enabled apartheid to take root. Recognition, respect and rights In reality, of course, crimes against humanity in Africa, as everywhere else, must be vigorously opposed by international - including African - public opinion if the continent is to have any hope of eradicating them. Many Africans rightly criticise European colonialists both for the destruction they wreaked in Africa and for the genocide perpetrated in the Americas and elsewhere. But a similar history was played out in southern Africa with the Bushman peoples who were largely destroyed by both whites and blacks. Here and there they survived on their own land. It is time their history was acknowledged and their land guaranteed them. Ongoing attempts to kick them out are an affront to humanity, and anthropologists who give business and government a pseudo-scientific defence are a disgrace. Real justice in southern Africa will not be achieved unless the Bushmen are properly recognised and respected. They are the region's “first peoples”. It is time to give them their rights. That minority of Africans who support them needs international public opinion behind them if their voice is to prevail. Stephen Corry is Director of Survival, which is running a campaign for Bushman rights. --- OneWorld Guest Editorials represent the viewpoint of the authors and not necessarily that of the OneWorld Network. Read and comment on previous Guest Editorials. If you would like to contribute or suggest a future OneWorld Guest Editorial, please contact Miles Litvinoff. |
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