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Vulnerability and Indigenous Communities: Are the San of South Africa a Vulnerable People?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2009

ROGER CHENNELLS
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Extract

In recent years, healthcare ethics, international law, and political philosophy have been moving closer together. The previously missing links are considerations of justice and their recognition through legal instruments. The most obvious example to date is the topic of benefit sharing.

Type
Special Section: Vulnerability Revisited
Information
Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics , Volume 18 , Issue 2 , April 2009 , pp. 147 - 154
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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References

1. Convention on Biological Diversity. 1992. Article 1. Objectives, available at http://www.cbd.int/convention/convention.shtml (last accessed 14 April 2008).

2. See note 1, Convention on Biological Diversity 1992, Preamble.

3. The words “San,” “Bushmen,” and “Mosarwa” (Botswana) are outsiders’ words for peoples who know themselves by different names. Although “San” seems to be gaining popularity among nonspecialists, as well as San leaders, many ethnographers have reverted to the word “Bushman”; see Barnard A. Hunters and Herders of Southern Africa. A Comparative Ethnography of the Khoisan Peoples. New York: Cambridge University Press; 1992:8.

4. Schroeder D, Gefenas E. Vulnerability: Too vague and too broad? Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, this issue, 113–121.

5. Lee RB. Introduction. In: Lee RB, DeVore I, eds. Kalahari Hunter Gatherers: Studies of the !Kung San and Their Neighbours. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; 1976:3–20 at p. 5.

6. Terra Nullius is a Roman Dutch Law phrase meaning land which belongs to nobody. In practice the doctrine justified the colonial annexation of new countries, implying that tribes inhabiting the land did not display a civilized form of ownership.

7. Terry E. A Voyage to East India Wherein Some Things Are Taken Notice of, in Our Passage Thither, But Many More in Our Abode There. London: J Wilkie; 1777:16.

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9. See note 8, Skotnes 1996:39.

10. See note 3, Barnard 1992:28.

11. Although Suzman (2001) estimated 80,000 in 2001, a more recent estimate by WIMSA (personal correspondence, September 2006, former WIMSA coordinator Axel Thoma) places the San population at 100,000 (Angola 3,400, Botswana 49,000, Namibia 38,000, South Africa 7,500, Zambia 1,300, Zimbabwe “a few hundred”); Suzman J. ed. An Introduction to the Regional Assessment of the Status of the San in Southern Africa. Windhoek: Legal Assistance Centre; 2001.

12. See note 11, Suzman 2001.

13. Sylvain R. Drinking, fighting and healing. San struggles for survival and solidarity in the Omaheke Region, Namibia. In: Hitchcock RK, Ikeya K, Biesele M, Lee RB, eds. Updating the San: Image and Reality of an African People in the 21st Century, Senri Ethnological Studies 2006;70:131–50. Dieckermann U. Hai//om in the Etosha Region. A History of Colonial Settlement, Ethnicity and Nature Conservation. Windhoek: John Meinert Printing; 2007. Guenther M. From “Lords of the Desert” to “Rubbish People.” The colonial and contemporary state of the Nharo of Botswana. In: Skotnes P, ed. Miscast. Negotiating the Presence of the Bushmen. Cape Town: University of Cape Town Press; 2006:225–38.

14. Working Group for Indigenous Peoples of Southern Africa. This regional council, based in Windhoek, is comprised of elected San Councils from Botswana, Namibia, and South Africa and aims to articulate the regional political and human rights voice of the San; see http://www.san.org.za/wimsa/ (last accessed 15 Dec 2008).

15. The Kuru Family of Organisations, eight allied NGOs, has 21 years of experience in providing development assistance to the San; see http://www.kuru.co.bw/ (last accessed 15 Dec 2008).

16. Wynberg R, Schroeder D, Chennells R, eds. Indigenous Peoples, Consent and Benefit Sharing – Learning Lessons from the San Case. Berlin: Springer; forthcoming in 2009.

17. Diamond JM. Guns, Germs and Steel. The Fates of Human Societies. New York: W.W. Norton and Company; 1999.

18. Brody H. The Other Side of Eden. Hunters, Farmers, and the Shaping of the World. New York: North Point Press; 2001.

19. Abadian S. From Wasteland to Homeland: Trauma and the Renewal of Indigenous Peoples and Their Communities. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press: 1999:186.

20. Staehelin I. Lost, Contested and Found. The Recovery of Bushman Identities through Access to History and Cultural Heritage. Masters thesis. Boston University; 2001:4.

21. Felton S, Becker HA. Gender perspective of the status of the San in Southern Africa. In: Suzman J, ed. An Introduction to the Regional Assessment of the Status of the San in Southern Africa. Windhoek: Legal Assistance Centre; 2001.

22. Summary extract of workshop for 40 San leaders held by funders EED and NCA, from private notes of the workshop facilitators.

23. Barsh R. Is the expropriation of indigenous peoples’ land GATT-able? Review of European Community and International Environmental Law 1999;10:13–26.

24. Wilmsen EN. Can Namibian San stop dispossession of their land? In: Wilmsen EN, ed. We Are Here: Politics of Aboriginal Land Tenure. Berkeley: University of California Press; 1989.

25. Roy Sesana and others v. the Attorney General; High Court of Botswana, Misc 52 of 2002. Despite winning the case, the San remain largely settled in the resettlement village, without the means to return to their lands.

26. Alvarez-Castillo F, Lucas Cook J, Cordillera R. Gender and vulnerable populations in benefit sharing: An exploration of conceptual and contextual points. Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, this issue, 130–137.