Land and
Natural Resources

Confidence in the fact that the San communities of Tsumkwe District West in Namibia will realise their aspiration of enhancing their livelihood through the long-planned N‡a Jaqna Conservancy is fading by the year. The communities submitted their application for a conservancy in 1998 and to date the Ministry of Environment and Tourism (MET) has not informed the N‡a Jaqna Conservancy Committee whether or not the conservancy will be granted. In addition to this profound disappointment, the communities are falling prey to an influx of cattle belonging to other ethnic groups in the area and illegal occupations of land in the area by other groups which poses a serious threat to the conservancy development plans. WIMSA’s Victoria Geingos presented a paper focusing on this threat and other issues relating to San land rights, titled “San, Land Rights and Development: Can San survive without land?”, at the “Indigenous Rights in Commonwealth Africa Meeting” in Cape Town, South Africa, in October 2002, to make this very important forum aware of the multifarious land-related threats that most San communities in the region face today.

Land Degradation in Tsumkwe West

The development plans of the San of Tsumkwe District West are based on land and natural resources.

These plans are being undermined by members of other ethnic groups bringing large cattle herds into the area, which has resulted in serious land degradation, damage to bush-food resources, damage to fields, damage to gardens and conflicts around water.

In April 2002 senior councillors of the !Kung Traditional Authority (TA) asked WIMSA to assist them with an investigation into controversial land allocations in their area and associated problems. WIMSA appointed Namibian consultant Richard Pakleppa, who had built sound relationships with the San communities during previous human rights education consultancies, to assist the TA. During a number of meetings and investigatory visits to 11 villages in the area, the investigation team, consisting of TA members and the consultant, established that 24 non-San individuals and/or families had settled in 10 villages with cattle herds ranging in size from 30 to 200 head. In addition, each new settler party brought between 20 and 150 goats and a considerable number of sheep and donkeys into the villages. Since their arrival the cattle and smallstock have grazed up the pasture around the San villages and damaged their gardens, bush-food resources and homes constructed from grass. They have even drunk from San community boreholes.

It soon became apparent that people had settled in Tsumkwe West without the permission of the full !Kung TA, and this had led to conflict between councillors. During a reporting-back meeting of the investigation team and the other members of the TA it was decided that the TA should solicit a lawyer from the LAC and institute legal action against settlers perceived to be occupying land unlawfully.

Swift action by the LAC made it possible for its assigned lawyer, Gerson Narib, to meet with the !Kung TA in the village of Omatako within a few days. During the meeting all known cases (older and more recent) of controversial land occupation and associated problems were discussed. On the basis of this discussion the full TA issued instructions on action their legal representative should take to deal with a diverse range of cases and problems. The discussion covered the above-mentioned findings of the investigation team and new cases reported by other TA members.

Having listened to the range of complaints, the lawyer summed up the situation by stating that the San communities do not benefit in any way from the cattle that graze on their land, and to the contrary, these animals jeopardise the San’s way of life and their most crucial means of survival. He thought these facts would form the basis of the TA’s legal argument.

However, Gerson also reminded the TA that the government pays all TA members a salary to meet regularly so that they are able to protect the land and solve land-related problems. Legal action, he said, should be considered only if the TA’s attempts to solve its internal problems and its requests for assistance from the relevant line ministries prove fruitless.

The !Kung TA instructing LAC lawyer Gerson Narib at the Omatako Valley Rest Camp on 24 June 2002.

Land in Tsumkwe West that had not been overgrazed at the time of taking the photo in June 2002.

By the end of the meeting all agreed that the TA has to meet regularly as a united group in order to conduct its work efficiently. In a subsequent meeting of the !Kung TA with the LAC lawyer, the WIMSA consultant and several community members as witnesses, the TA resolved, as the Traditional Authorities Act of 2000 in fact provides, that “all decisions regarding the allocation of land can only be taken by the entire Traditional Authority”,29 i.e. not by the Chief or any other TA member alone.

A second consultancy was commissioned after three months with the aim of assessing land-use conditions in Tsumkwe West and pursuing the legal actions decided on in the first consultancy. The !Kung TA was very disappointed to hear from the consultant that a court interdict against the illegal settlers had not yet been lodged.

In this second consultancy Richard Pakleppa visited various villages where he found that settlers had further consolidated their land claims and increased their cattle numbers. Land degradation and desertification due to overgrazing had commenced, especially in the Omatako Valley. During the three-month interval between the consultancies a deterioration of the area’s pastures and soil had become clearly visible. Moreover, a government decision to stop supplying diesel to run the water pumps in some villages had exacerbated the conflicts already raging between illegal settlers and local inhabitants over water.

June 2002 photo showing the destruction of bush food by cattle in Omatako Valley.

!Kung TA Councillors in a meeting with Kanovlei villagers.

The TA decided that in tandem with the court case it intends bringing against illegal settlers, it will seek to negotiate with settlers a limitation on and reduction of cattle numbers on the basis of a land-use plan that the TA would draw up with the necessary assistance. This plan would serve not only as a basis for negotiation with settlers, but also as a much-needed component of the N‡a Jaqna Conservancy activity plans. WIMSA has agreed to help the TA to appoint a suitable land-use planner, and if requested, to support the TA in negotiating with the government and other stakeholders to solve the problems facing the !Kung.

N‡a Jaqna Conservancy

The deterioration of the ecology in Tsumkwe District West has raised serious concerns among the !Kung communities and the N‡a Jaqna Conservancy Committee. If the illegal land occupations and influx of cattle and smallstock are not stopped and reversed, the natural resources of the area will soon be depleted. If that happens, the communities’ hopes for a conservancy and the realisation of their development plans for Tsumkwe West will be dashed.

The !Kung TA instructing LAC lawyer Gerson Narib at the Omatako Valley Rest Camp in June 2002.

Today women and children in Tsumkwe West walk very long distances in search of bush food.

“Indigenous Rights in Commonwealth Africa” Regional Expert Meeting

The Africa Regional Expert Meeting organised and facilitated by the Commonwealth body named Indigenous Rights in the Commonwealth in co-operation with the Indigenous Peoples of Africa Co-ordinating Committee (IPACC) in Cape Town in October 2002 was the third of four consultative meetings convened for Commonwealth African countries during a three-year project titled “Indigenous Rights in Commonwealth Africa”. Indigenous and non-indigenous activists, representatives of human rights organisations and academics from South Africa, Namibia, Kenya, Uganda, Cameroon and Nigeria participated.

One main aim in holding this meeting was to gather information on key issues affecting indigenous peoples in Commonwealth African states. The participants were therefore requested to present papers on an issue of concern to an indigenous people in their region. WIMSA representative Victoria Geingos chose to shed light on the importance of land to the San people. In her paper, titled “San, Land Rights and Development: Can San survive without land?”, she makes some strong points in explaining what a land base means to every San community.

“… land means survival, development and economic gain. Wherever possible, to this day, San gather bush foods to ensure a balanced diet. They would like to retain game as a complementary food source, but today only one San community in the entire region is officially permitted to hunt traditionally, namely the members of the Nyae Nyae Conservancy in north-eastern Namibia. ...

“A land base is also crucial for the San to be included as recipients of basic government services. In this regard San find disturbing and even harmful the perception of their communities as people still roaming around with no fixed location and owning no land. ...

“San also need land to be able to promote their culture and traditions ... .

“The answer to the question of whether or not San can survive without land is clearly no, they cannot. Through land possession San have lost their food security; they have become economically dependent on other ethnic groups and government food aid; they have experienced a loss of dignity, disruption of their social fabric and degradation of their environment by intruders with large cattle herds; and in sum, they remain a marginalised population in Namibia and every other southern African country in which they live.”

– Extracts from the paper titled “San, Land Rights and Development:
Can San survive without land?”, written and presented at the meeting by WIMSA Representative Victoria Geingos.

FOOTNOTES:
29 R. Pakleppa, “Report on investigations of controversial land allocations in Tsumkwe District West, Namibia, between 16 June and 4 July 2002”, WIMSA, Windhoek.

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