WIMSA General Assembly

The WIMSA General Assembly (GA) convened at the Harmony Conference Centre on the outskirts of Windhoek in November 2002 for its annual meeting. The participants were representatives of WIMSA member and support organisations and the South African San Council. A total of 81 San delegates (one third of them women) and 14 support staff participated. The 2002 GA was facilitated by a South African conflict-transformation practitioner familiar with South African San communities.

In her address to the GA Namibia’s Minister of Women Affairs and Child Welfare, Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, expressed her opinion that the high mobility of some members of San communities makes it difficult to build infrastructure (schools, clinics, etc.) for the communities and to distribute the state old-age pension grants to them. Further she stated the following:

“I do not say programmes have not addressed the specific needs of the San people or that the situation is hopeless – it is far from that. The point I want to make is that there is a need for co-ordinated activities by all those involved: the government and the private sector as well as the larger civil society.”

Activity co-ordination is among the important goals of the GA delegates each year, other goals being to exchange information and views on significant issues and to reach consensus on WIMSA’s activities in future. In the 2002 GA the South African San Council, OCADEC, WIMSA Botswana and the regional WIMSA presented activity reports to familiarise the delegates with achievements and setbacks experienced by San bodies during that year.

“WIMSA means solidarity, justice and peace.”

“WIMSA is like a shield that protects the San from difficulties, cultural exploitation and human rights violations.”

“WIMSA is like glue that holds everything together.”

“WIMSA is like a grader which opens new roads for opportunities.”

“WIMSA is like a fox that moves across borders in search for food, willing to take risks, nurturing its young ones, making careful inspections of the den for safety and always bringing warnings of danger.”

– A few of the numerous analogies drawn by General Assembly SAN delegates in response to the facilitator’s question
as to how they view their organisation.

Some of the San delegates, guided by another who had only recently been employed by a WIMSA support organisation and had never attended a WIMSA GA, did not share the positive views most San delegates expressed about WIMSA as exemplified by the quotes above. At times, particularly when the !Khwa ttu ownership issue and San leadership were discussed, this ‘guidance’ from the new delegate triggered temporary division among other San delegates. Joram |Useb of the regional WIMSA and Mathambo Ngakaeaja of WIMSA Botswana set the record straight on the responsibilities of the WIMSA Board of Trustees and GA. WIMSA legal advisor Roger Chennells and Co-ordinator Axel Thoma accordingly informed the few San delegates who had not yet been involved in the process of developing plans for !Khwa ttu, and reminded others of their ongoing role in this process.

Working groups – some working in Afrikaans, others in Setswana or Portuguese – discussed topics including, among others:

• San leadership capacity;
• heritage, culture and intellectual property; and
• education and oral history.

San delegates from South Africa and Botswana at the General Assembly.

San delegates from Angola at the General Assembly.

On the first topic, i.e. leadership capacity, concerns voiced were that some San communities have a collective low self-esteem that creates and perpetuates their dependency and leads them to fail in their projects, and that operational structures in some San organisations are ineffective and the concurrent lack of responsibility on the part of some San leaders will weaken projects. Regarding the boards of San organisations, which, in a San delegate’s words, “as the head, have to be strong”, it was recommended that board members should be trained on their roles and responsibilities, rights and functions, and the constitution and activities of the organisation they head. A further recommendation was that human resource assessments be conducted to ensure “that the right people are in the right positions”. It was agreed that WIMSA should assist the San communities in Namibia and Botswana in appointing national San councils as soon as possible.

In the deliberations on the second topic, i.e. heritage, culture and intellectual property, the GA was informed of the latest developments with the Hoodia negotiations, the Didima Rock Art Centre, !Khwa ttu San Education and Culture Centre and the “Media and Research Contract of the San of Southern Africa”, and took decisions on these and other matters.

General Assembly working groups in session.

The San delegates agreed that the WIMSA board should decide on a process, guidelines and criteria to enable decision-making on the division of benefits accruing from the Hoodia. Appropriate structures in each country should be in place by 2004 to facilitate a fair and sustainable utilisation of the benefits. The GA reconfirmed the South African San Council’s mandate to act on behalf of WIMSA in the Hoodia negotiations. The GA also formally accepted the KwaZulu/Natal provincial government’s apology for its failure to consult with the San when it started planning for the Didima Rock Art Centre. The GA committed WIMSA to co-operating with the KZN provincial government to help ensure the project’s success, to promote training and education on rock art for the San, and to protect rock art wherever it exists in southern Africa. The GA decided that recent developments at !Khwa ttu should be discussed with the WIMSA board and Irene Staehelin who funded the purchase of the farm on which !Khwa ttu is being built, and who assists projects there with expertise and financially. The GA referred to the WIMSA board for a decision the issue of the initial refusal of the contributors to the book titled The San and the State to sign the Media and Research Contract.

WIMSA Botswana Co-ordinator Mathambo Ngakaeaja summarising the outcomes of the GA working group discussions.

The WIMSA Co-ordinators in relaxed consultation at the GA.

The discussion on the third topic, i.e. education and oral history, began with a report on the WIMSA Regional San Education Programme and Regional Oral Testimony Collection Project. The highlight of Willemien le Roux’s presentation was Jesi Segole’s introduction of the first product of the latter project to the GA. This product, a book titled The Khwe of the Okavango Pandandle: The Past Life, or in Khwedam, ||Xom Kyakyare Khwe: ‡Am Kuri Kx’ûîâ, met with enormous interest from all the delegates.15 A suggestion in the GA to combine the Regional San Education and Language Committee and the Regional San Heritage and Culture Committee was endorsed, and a new Regional San Education and Culture Committee was appointed.

The GA spent considerable time discussing the situation of the San in Angola. It was agreed that exceptional circumstances call for exceptional solutions, and thus that OCADEC, the Angolan San support organisation, should have the status of a WIMSA member organisation until such time as San organisations are established in Angola. It was also decided that Angolan representatives should be elected onto the WIMSA board. The GA supported the following suggestions:

Namibian Ombudswoman Bience Gawanas-Minney assuring the San of her office’s support.

Roy Sesana from Botswana and Andries Steenkamp from South Africa enjoy dancing during the social evening.

• WIMSA should facilitate a general needs assessment and identification of land for Angolan San in Angola.
• Later on, WIMSA should facilitate a general meeting of Angolan San leaders to enable them to determine solutions to their problems.
• WIMSA should facilitate capacity-building and empowerment of Angolan San leaders so that they can protect and defend the common well-being of the San of Angola and enable them to manage their own resources.
• WIMSA should support and advise on efforts to improve conditions generally for San leaders in order to help prevent political exploitation and corruption, e.g. where San land is allocated to other groups for personal gain.
• In the long run, WIMSA should facilitate assistance to establish San-owned community-based organisations and eventually a national San council in Angola.

Jan |Ace and David John from Namibia in discussion at lunch during the GA.

Daniel Gaspar from Angola (left) thanking the WIMSA team for convening the GA, with Joram |Useb accepting the vote of thanks on the team’s behalf.

Meryl-Joy Wildschut of SASI taking the minutes at the GA.

With regard to the structure of future WIMSA GAs, it was decided that each country, i.e. Angola, Botswana, Namibia and South Africa, will convene their own annual GAs and appoint 10 delegates to represent them at the regional WIMSA GA. The rationale for this decision is two-fold: national GAs will increase the participation of local WIMSA member organisations and also reduce the cost of the regional GA, which could be shorter than the hitherto week-long GAs if preceded by national GAs.

In the open session of the 2002 GA the Namibian Ombudswoman, Bience Gawanas-Minney, and representatives of UNICEF, TUCSIN, the Rössing Foundation, the LAC and Norwegian Church Aid (NCA) addressed the delegates. The Ombudswoman stressed her commitment to addressing the plight of the San and ended her speech with this request to their representatives: “Nobody can do it for you; you, the San, must do it for yourselves. Take the power!”

The delegates divided into country groups to elect the new WIMSA Board of Trustees. A board composed of three full and three alternate members from each of the four countries was elected (see Tables 6 and 7 on the next page).

The participants in the 2002 General Assembly
convened at the Harmony Centre near Windhoek.

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