Indigenous Heritage

The San, traditionally hunter-gatherers, were once the sole human inhabitants of much of the African continent. They are the oldest genetic stock of contemporary humanity. Their remarkable and prolific rock art is to be found in thousands of sites in a dozen countries. Their world changed dramatically over the centuries, with the advance of Bantu invaders from the north, white settlers from the south, brutal campaigns of extermination, and for the few survivors in remote inhospitable areas, ongoing devastation brought about by cattle-herding, land loss, mining, well-drilling, the establishment of game reserves from which they have been evicted, and heavy losses to indigenous game caused by cattle fences.

Few modern Bushmen are able to continue as hunter-gatherers, and most live at the very bottom of the social scale, in unacceptable conditions of poverty and serfdom, leading to alcoholism, violence, prostitution, disease and despair. The last of the hunter-gatherers were forcibly evicted from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve as recently as April, 2002, by the Botswana government. The official reason was to provide them with modern services such as schools and medical services, and to bring them into modern society. In fact, few of these services have materialized, and the people are in desperate straits, confined to bleak encampments in a hostile environment. Discovery of diamonds in the park by the de Beers company may have much to do with the evictions.

Despised by blacks and whites alike, the Bushmen are in fact a race of egalitarian, friendly, creative, peaceful people, who never developed any weapons of war, and who lived in harmony with their natural environment for at least 70,000 years. Referred to recently by the Botswana government as "a Stone Age embarrassment", it is our position that, on the contrary, the San should be regarded as a World Heritage treasure. Properly restored to their ancestral lands, and reintegrated into the game reserves of southern Africa, San communities would become self-sustaining. They could rediscover their ancient culture and share their vast ecological and spiritual wisdom with the world.