San face lifestyle threat
2007-10-23 15:20
Tsumkwe - They roamed the savannahs and open plains for thousands of years, but the hunter-gatherer lifestyle of southern Africa's San tribes is slowly being squeezed towards extinction.
After clashing at the start of the last century with German settlers in modern-day Namibia and then being exploited by South Africa's apartheid regime in the 1980s, the San, also known as Bushmen, were now threatened by the 21st century curses of unemployment, poverty, alcohol abuse and HIV/Aids.
While the plight of the San in Botswana made headlines in recent months after authorities illegally evicted tribes from the Kalahari, their kinsmen in Namibia and SA had fared little better in protecting their traditional habitat.
A glimmer of hope lied in tourism as operators discovered this remote part of Namibia, where the likes of Gcao Nari, a grandmother of the Juhoansi San tribe, showcased the ancient art of threading ostrich shell beads.
30 000 San remain in Namibia
But in a sign of the times, the beads that Nari painstakingly needles under the fierce sun were imported from neighbouring SA since there were no ostriches left in the area of the remote northeastern Otjozondjupa region.
Nari spoke softly to her granddaughter in the ancient San tongue, with complicated clicks rolling from her lips as she enthuses about tentative plans to re-introduce game to the area as a source of food and income for a people with unparalleled hunting abilities.
She said: "Then my grandchildren can be taught to hunt again." About 30 000 San remained in Namibia, with the Haikom and Juhoansi the largest groups.
Their numbers dived from the start of the last century after then colonial rulers, Germany, allowed growing numbers of white settlers to shoot Bushmen and encroached on their traditional hunting grounds.
SA took over the territory's administration during the World War 1 until Namibia's independence in 1990, which followed a protracted liberation war.
'They used my husband'
Nari remembered the 1970s when the SA military came to enlist the help of the San in return for certain favours.
"They used my husband and other men of our village as trackers along the border with Angola to fight freedom fighters," she said through an interpreter.
"The military drilled boreholes for us and taught our children, their doctors in uniform gave us medical treatment and my husband earned a salary."
Other San like the Khwe and Vasekele originated in Angola, were employed by Portuguese colonial military forces during that country's liberation struggle, but fled to Namibia after Angolan independence in 1975.
They were wedged between two warring factions.
The SA military gave them shelter in then South West Africa; the men became trackers and soldiers in a special 'Bushman Battalion' against the Peoples' Liberation Army of Namibia (PLAN).
In 1990, at least 17nbsp;000 San soldiers and their families took up an offer from the Pretoria government to settle at Schmidtsdrift, near Kimberley in SA's arid Northern Cape province, fearing reprisals from the new Namibian government if they stayed.