Wimsa Report on Activities 2002/03

San Rights vis-à-vis the Hoodia Succulent

The South African San Council supported by their legal advisor, Roger Chennells, held several rounds of negotiations with South Africa’s Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) after having been informed in 2001 that the CSIR had patented the active ingredient of the Hoodia gordonii succulent as an appetite suppressant and passed the findings of its tests on to the companies Phytopharm in the UK and Pfizer in the USA. The first round of negotiations resulted in the signing of a memorandum of understanding between the CSIR and the South African San Council (acting on behalf of WIMSA) in March 2002. In this memorandum the CSIR acknowledges the San’s prior intellectual property rights to the Hoodia as an appetite suppressant. The second round of negotiations commenced with a workshop on benefit-sharing options and strategies, attended by the South African San Council, representatives of WIMSA, SASI, the Department of Science and Technology and the CSIR, and a few specialists in the field of indigenous traditional knowledge.

Facilitator Chris Spies listening to input from
Joram |Useb of WIMSA in the Hoodia benefit-sharing
workshop in June 2002.

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The workshop was followed by a series of meetings between representatives of the San Council and the CSIR which led to draft agreements and eventually to the final version of a benefit-sharing agreement.

“Bushmen squeeze money from a humble cactus”(10) was one of the numerous headlines of media reports that flooded the world after the celebration of the signing of the benefit-sharing agreement between the San and the CSIR at Molopo Lodge in the southern Kalahari, South Africa. The agreement was signed by CSIR President Sibusiso Sibisi and Chairperson of the South African San Council Petrus Vaalbooi. South African Minister of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology Ben Ngubane and WIMSA Chairperson Kxao Moses ‡Oma signed the agreement as witnesses.

The press release issued jointly by the San Council (WIMSA’s South African chapter) and the CSIR explained the terms of the agreement as follows:

”… the CSIR will pay the San eight percent of all milestone payments it receives from its licensee, UK-based Phytopharm plc, as well as six percent of all royalties that the CSIR receives once the drug is commercially available. Milestone payments are subject to agreed technical performance targets of P57 during its clinical development over the next three to four years, and royalties are based on sales which are not set to commence before 2008. This benefit-sharing model ensures that the San will receive equitable benefits if the drug is successfully commercialised, and is based on established international benefit-sharing models for the pharmaceutical industry. Factors such as the size of the global anti-obesity market and the percentage of total market that the potential new drug could capture, are typically factors which determine the translation of the royalty percentage into monetary value.”

The agreement states that the income received will be paid to the San Hoodia Benefit Sharing Trust to be formed by the South African Council, which as WIMSA’s affiliate represents not only the South African San communities but all San communities in the region. It was agreed that the trust should consist of three South African San Council representatives appointed by the council, three representatives of other San stakeholders in the region appointed by WIMSA, a South African professional appointed by the San Council and approved by WIMSA, a representative of WIMSA, a CSIR representative appointed by the CSIR or its nominee, and a non-voting observer appointed by the Department of Science and Technology or its nominee.
 

“... to use income received from the CSIR for the general upliftment, material advancement, development, education and training of the San community; … to support projects and institutions dedicated to advancing research into, and protection of, the traditional knowledge and heritage of the San peoples; ... and to ensure that the benefits paid to the San in accordance with this Trust Deed are shared in accordance with the highest degree of diligence, transparency and equity.”

Ben Ngubane, South Africa’s Minister of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology, eating a piece of Hoodia stem during the benefit-sharing agreement celebrations.

Petrus Vaalbooi, Chairperson of the South African San Council, addressing the guests at the benefit-sharing celebrations.

Kxao Moses ‡Oma speaPills at the celebrations.
 

– Kxao Moses ‡Oma, Chairperson of the WIMSA board, in closing his speech titled
“Celebrating the fruits of San traditional knowledge: The Hoodia plant”.

FOOTNOTES:
10 G. Thompson, “Bushmen squeeze money from a humble cactus”, in The New York Times, 1 April 2003.
11 With the agreement of WIMSA and the South African San Council, First Peoples Worldwide commissioned David J. Stephenson Jr to undertake a case study that “seeks to shed light on how the private sector and investment communities can impact indigenous peoples – both negatively and positively”. The case study titled “The Patenting of P57 and the Intellectual Property Rights of the San Peoples of Southern Africa “… was undertaken in order to analyze and enrich the understanding of the dynamics behind the research, development, and licensing of an appetite suppressant made from a patented bioactive compound derived from the Hoodia plant …”.
12 Rachel Wynberg, “Comment: Sharing the crumbs with the San”, in The Mail & Guardian – Monitor, 4-10 April 2003, p. 38.

 

Media and Reasearch Contract

WIMSA developed a “Media and Research Contract (General Purpose) of the San of Southern Africa” to help ensure that the San also benefit from media products especially in the sense that articles, books, photographs, films and TV programmes accurately reflect their reality and they have a say on research projects targeting their communities. This is a standard contract, but one allowing for additions and adjustments agreed on by all parties involved.

Two outstanding examples of fair treatment of San interests are the agreement between WIMSA and the co-producers of the film The Great Dance, and the agreement between WIMSA, the OST, and the San musicians and MELT2000/Peermusic who collaborated to produce Sanscapes, a CD featuring live performances by San musicians. In both cases the producers’ representatives have taken great care to ensure that the agreed share of the income deriving from the product is channelled to WIMSA, the OST and the San musicians immediately. In accordance with the WIMSA General Assembly’s decision in 2001, the income thus far received has been deposited in a media investment account to serve San media interests in future.

All researchers affiliated to San communities in the region have signed the Media and Research Contract apart from two well-known academics, an anthropologist and a linguist lecturing at European universities whose research mainly among Namibian San communities is ongoing. One research undertaPills consumed a great deal of the San’s time and energy before the group of academics contributing to a book titled The San and the State saw reason to sign the contract. Originally they informed WIMSA in a letter that they had “decided not to sign the document”, stating as one of their “principal points” the fact that “all of us have already conducted research at a time when the contract has not existed yet”. It was also “unclear” to them “in which way the San at our respective research sites are represented by WIMSA”. The doubts they expressed about WIMSA being a San-owned organisation and about the San wishing, as stated in the contract, “to ensure [by means of this contract] that all San intellectual property … is controlled and protected”, sparked a massive protest from the San bodies. San in key positions in San bodies including the !Xun and Khwe CPA in South Africa, the Teemacane Trust in Botswana, the Khwedam Language Committees and WIMSA, did not hesitate to put their views on the academics’ letter in an exchange of e-mails to one another and in letters they wrote to the group in response.

”I have similar strong feelings towards this letter especially concerning the researchers who have been with the San for quite a long time. Are the researchers, after receiving all the information, assistance and help from the San in the region and their own organisations, trying to betray the San?”

“ … [the contributors to this book] might think that WIMSA is the organisation of the white people but it is the organisation of the San to have a say and to meet those from other groups.”

“Refusal to sign the contract is a disrespect and violation of the San people’s rights.”

“It is true that WIMSA has been discussing media and research contracts in all of its annual general meetings since its inception. The current contract may have been re-designed in 2001 but the idea of such contracts has existed even before WIMSA. ... It is disturbing to note that you refuse to sign the contract because you claim that the San in your research site do not have any affiliation to WIMSA. Unfortunately that is not an acceptable reason to stop justice from taPills its course. WIMSA is obliged to represent the interest of the San … .”

“It is not WIMSA’s intention (as you mention ...) but WIMSA’s mandate to protect the San from any kind of exploitation.”

– San organisations in their e-mail exchange regarding and in letters responding to a refusal to sign the contract.

Though painful for all parties involved, this experience with the contributors to The San and the State had the effect of uniting the San across the region, who generally responded by expressing profoundly positive feelings about their own organisation, WIMSA, and their determination to assert their rights to their own intellectual property. In December 2002 the applicable group of academics signed the Media and Research Contract after adding a few comments to it which the WIMSA board accepted.
In response to a request from the WIMSA board and some employees of San organisations, WIMSA legal advisor Roger Chennells drafted an “Employee Research Contract Relating to the San of Southern Africa”, the primary purpose of which is to secure the commitment of all employees of San support organisations “not to utilise any information obtained during the course of his or her employment contract ... for private gain”. Comments on the draft are awaited.

Handbook on Heritage and Intellectual Property Rights

A draft practical handbook intended to serve as a tool for training on intellectual property rights for San community members across the region has been compiled by WIMSA legal advisor Roger Chennells. At their last meeting, the members of the Regional San Culture and Education Committee and the WIMSA board discussed the draft handbook and concluded that it covered all the important San heritage rights. It was suggested that lessons learnt from the negotiations on the Hoodia benefit-sharing agreement be included in the final version of the handbook, scheduled for publication by August 2003.

Regional Craft Workshops

An informal grouping of NGOs involved in or supporting San craft production throughout southern Africa has gradually evolved into a co-operating network. On behalf of the group, WIMSA applied to the Irish Agency for Personnel Service Overseas (APSO) for the assignment of a short-term specialist to provide support in building the capacity of the group during 2002. Barry O’Loughlin was assigned on a consultancy basis in April 2002 to, as stated in the contract, “support the stakeholder NGOs in becoming a co-operating network with a viable marketing strategy for crafts produced in Southern African San communities”.

An opening workshop was held at Platfontein near Kimberley, Northern Cape, South Africa, in early April 2002. The participants agreed on the following mission statement to guide their endeavours: “To improve the socio-economic status of San people in their communities in Southern Africa through supporting the production and marketing of their art and crafts.” The workshop was process-oriented, and the 16 participants defined common and individual issues on which they felt input was required and exchanged experiences. The stakeholders clearly expressed their desire to work together in areas of common interest, three highlighted areas being fair trade, San branding and quality, and training.

The consultant produced a consultation document titled, “Towards becoming a co-operating network with a viable marketing strategy for crafts produced in Southern African San communities”, for discussion at an implementation workshop in Windhoek at the end of April 2002. The overall conclusion of this document is that the network members should concentrate on building their individual capacities and in parallel the capacity of the group as an entity before undertaPills any exportation of products. Another conclusion is that constraints on the availability of essential natural raw materials and difficulties in generating the necessary volumes of quality products have to be overcome to make it possible to serve export markets on an economically viable basis. A framework within which these developments could take place is proposed in the document.
This development framework provides for adopting fair trade practices, establishing a San brand to denote the authenticity of San products, and cultivating synergies between the San development advocacy and support groups on the one hand, and the production, training and marketing entities on the other, specifically in relation to the development and promotion of a San identity in their respective spheres of activity.

The overall conclusions of the document are supported by a joint marketing strategy proposed in the document for adoption as an action plan. This strategy is underpinned by recommended sets of individual and joint actions designed to help the network as a whole and each of its members to realise the concrete recommendations of the document, beginning at the implementation workshop in Windhoek.

A follow-up regional craft workshop was organised jointly by Gantsi Craft and WIMSA at Dqãe Qare, the Kuru game farm in Botswana, in March 2003. The 10 participating new and old members of the NGO network formulated an agenda that accords with the recommendations of Barry O’Loughlin’s consultation document. The following is a summary of the key points of discussion and decision:

• The principles of fair trade and the benefits of an International Federation of Alternative Trade (IFAT) membership were discussed at length. In view of fair trade becoming more important to European buyers of San products, the participants’ general belief appeared to be that fair trade is important for retail but not for wholesale. They resolved that a questionnaire on San branding should be attached to the minutes of the meeting and the responses collated by the representative of the Nyae Nyae Development Foundation of Namibia (NNDFN).
• The participants agreed that the San craft product ranges are currently producer-driven but should be market-driven to be successful. In this context it was pointed out that historical traditional San products need to be protected.
• The participants informed each other about upcoming market opportunities in southern Africa, and Michael Daiber of !Khwa ttu announced the introduction of a training opportunity for San, namely the Entrepreneurial Learnership Course in Arts and Crafts offered to San from Botswana, Namibia and South Africa who fulfil the requirements.
• The participants were informed about a workshop conducted at the same venue by jewellery designer Mickael Kra, assisted by Annette Braun of the Church Development Service (EED; an association of Protestant Churches in Germany) and San women from Botswana and Namibia in June 2002. In his report titled “The Pearls of the Kalahari”, Mickael states that one challenge of the workshop was “to obtain quality and modernity of their craftsmanship with a view to sell and to answer to the imperatives of the western world’s market”. Participants who had seen the innovative shapes of the jewellery produced in the workshop agreed that Mickael, Annette and the San women undoubtedly achieved this objective.
   

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Ostrich eggshell jewellery designed and produced in the workshop conducted by jewellery designer Mickael Kra with San women from Botswana and Namibia.
 

• Another important issue discussed was what links could be formed between craft production and tourism. It is an indisputable fact that tourists enjoy watching crafts being made. It was resolved that a consultant should conduct an assessment of San tourism and craft marketing if the necessary funds can be raised.
   

The San craft outlet under construction next to the OST office in Gobabis, the municipal centre of the Omaheke Region, Namibia. Karin le Roux of the Rössing Foundation will assist in fitting out the outlet’s interior. This outlet will stock crafts produced by San all over the Omaheke Region.

San crafts for sale in the craft shop at the !Kung community-run Omatako Valley Rest Camp in Tsumkwe District West, Otjozondjupa Region, Namibia. This shop stocks crafts produced by the Omatako Valley !Kung community and other San communities in Tsumkwe West.

San Tourism and Craft Marketing

Should the aforesaid assessment materialise, WIMSA would certainly advise the consultant to visit the OST Craft Development Programme and the craft shop at the community-based Omatako Valley Rest Camp in Tsumkwe West, and to consult the Rössing Foundation about its planned Craft Support Programme in Tsumkwe District.

After consulting a number of communities whose members traditionally produce crafts, the OST decided to establish a craft outlet on its premises in Gobabis, the Omaheke’s municipal centre. This outlet will serve as a central place to which San from all over the Omaheke can bring their crafts and tourists can purchase San crafts. It is planned to utilise the outlet as training facility as well.

Through the regional crafts network the OST established links with Namibia’s Rössing Foundation which resulted in fruitful mutual assistance with the physical structure of the craft outlet.

WIMSA and the Rössing Foundation are closely together in preparing to launch the Rössing Foundation Craft Support Programme in Tsumkwe West during 2003. This will be an integrated programme combining training and capacity-building of San local producers and community representatives with product development and production systems, display techniques and shop management. The programme is also meant to support the existing craft shop at the Omatako Valley Rest Camp.

The Omatako Valley Rest Camp has been run by the San campsite committee without any help from outside other than an occasional consultation with WIMSA team members about improvements or assistance with material items or spare parts for the solar water pump. WIMSA also advises tourists who contact the office for booPillss and information to visit the Omatako Valley Rest Camp.

In 2002 this community-run campsite hosted 350 tourists travelling either as individuals or as groups accompanied by tour guides. It derived a total annual income of N$36 102 from overnight stays, sales of firewood and guided bush walks.

“If we would not have this campsite we would starve!”

– OU JOHANNES N|UAB, one of the longer-standing Omatako Valley Campsite committee members, speaPills to Joram |Useb of WIMSA during the latter’s last visit to Tsumkwe West.

Institutional
Capacity-building

Besides capacity-building measures incorporated as a fundamental component of most WIMSA training activities, its Regional San Education Programme and its negotiations on intellectual property rights, the activities covered in this section of the report either paved the way for institutional capacity-building or enhanced existing capacities in San organisations and communities. In March 2003, for the first time since the organisation’s inception in 1996, WIMSA organised a trip for Khwe of South Africa and Namibia to visit their fellow Khwe in north-western Zambia, with the aim of conducting a preliminary assessment of the situation of the San in that area in terms of land, education, health and social issues. The historic first workshop involving San of Angola, South Africa and Namibia in 2001 was followed by intensive communication between WIMSA and the Lubango-based Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) which developed into a service organisation, Organização Cristã de Apoio ao Desenvolvimento Comunitário (OCADEC), catering specifically to San communities. Meetings of the South African San Council, the biannual gatherings of the WIMSA Board of Trustees and the annual WIMSA General Assembly meetings are essential capacity-building mechanisms for the San of southern Africa.
 

Zambian San Communities

Following a decision of the WIMSA board, four Khwe men from Schmidtsdrift in the Northern Cape, South Africa, and four Khwe men from West Caprivi in Namibia visited Khwe communities in Kashesha and Kadewanka in south-western Zambia in March 2003. The fact that there is a Khwe name for the Kashesha area, i.e. Kawonga, implies that the Khwe San have lived there for a long time. The territories traditionally occupied by the San in Kashesha were Mururu, Woca and Dishi.

Of the approximately 200 Khwedam-speaPills San in Kashesha and Kadewanka, 123 had recently returned to Angola. Of the remaining 77 community members, 70% are under 20 years of age. The elected community leader, Foroshe Shiwawa, had opted to remain in Zamibia rather than return with the majority of his community to Angola.

The visitors were informed that apart from the few community members employed by Lozi-speaPills people as servants, none of the Khwe draw any income. For food the Khwe depend on home-grown garden produce and bush foods – though gathering is prohibited, as is hunting.
Despite primary education being compulsory in Zambia and most of the remaining community members being under 20 years old, not one Khwe child or youth attends school because their parents cannot afford the school fees of N$200 per annum. They are also unable to pay for transport to and treatment at the nearest clinic 60 km from Kashesha.

Besides having no access to school and health services, a major concern for the community, they also lack identity documents.
The Khwe visitors observed that their relatives are totally dominated by Lozi-speaPills people who are wealthier, better educated, and who represent the Khwe at local government level. They had the impression, as stated in their report, that “no one listened to our brothers and sisters”.
The group that visited the Kashesha community on WIMSA’s behalf recommended human rights and capacity-building training as essential for empowering the community members to voice their concerns and ask for government support in the form of a school, clinic and borehole.

Members of the Khwedam-speaPills San community
living in Kashesha in south-western Zambia.
 

Kashesha Khwe community leader Foroshe Shiwawa (second from left, second row,
as indicated) and WIMSA board member Zekka Shiwarra (next to Foroshe) with
a group of community members.
 

Angolan San Communities

In early 2000 pioneering efforts on behalf of Angolan San were initiated by the YMCA Angola with assistance from Trócaire Angola. Following the initial efforts to establish contact with Angolan San, Trócaire introduced the YMCA and some Angolan San representatives to the regional San umbrella body, WIMSA. In January 2002 a WIMSA workshop in Windhoek brought together representatives of !Xun and Khwe San communities in Angola, Namibia and South Africa, this being the first contact between these broader San communities since they were torn apart as from the mid 1970s.

Angolan San leader Armondo Muleka addressing the guests
at OCADEC’s official inauguration in Lubango in January 2003.

Inspired by the information on WIMSA’s work, workshop participants Benedito Quessongo and Daniel Gaspar, the YMCA Huila Province chapter representatives, took the initiative of establishing a service organisation catering specifically to the San in Angola. The Organização Cristã de Apoio ao Desenvolvimento Comunitário13 (OCADEC) was founded in August 2002 and formally inaugurated in January 2003 in Lubango in Angola’s Huila Province. Its primary purpose is to locate and help San in Angola to secure their rights under Angolan law and develop themselves. OCADEC will work in partnership with national NGOs and UN agencies, Angolan churches, government organs, local and traditional authorities and private sector entities, and will continue in close co-operation with Trócaire Angola and WIMSA.

In November 2002 the first Angolan San along with OCADEC representatives and an official of the Comité Provincila dos Direitos Humanos de Huíla, a provincial human rights organisation, participated in the WIMSA General Assembly. They reiterated their previous reports on the desperate situation of the San communities in south-western Angola whom they were representing. The communities are said to be facing a humanitarian crisis as they are living in severe poverty and are starving; they have no access even to local health and educational facilities; and they face the problems of fierce land-grabbing and denial of their distinct identity and culture. A number of Angolan San communities live with other ethnic groups in master-servant relationships (the San are the ‘servants’), thus the levels of dependency and dominance are high. It is assumed that other San groups, like millions of other Angolan citizens, have been displaced by the 25-year civil war that ended in April 2002.
The WIMSA General Assembly decided that an assessment should be carried out to establish the needs of San communities in Angola with a view to facilitating their self-organisation for the purpose of engaging with Angolan government organs and local, national, regional and international NGOs in establishing Angolan San community development projects and building their capacity.

Following the aforesaid decision, OCADEC, Trócaire Angola, Trócaire Ireland and WIMSA jointly worked out the terms of reference for the envisaged assessment. A team consisting of Angolan San representatives, an Angolan anthropologist, OCADEC development workers and an experienced WIMSA consultant will conduct an assessment of the situation of the San communities in Namibe, Huíla and Cunene Provinces in south-western Angola in June and July 2003.
 

A San child of the Mupa community of Huíla in his hut.

A grandmother and grandchild of the San community of Sendi in Huíla Province.

A child of the San community of Sendi.

San Councils

One long-term WIMSA aim is to put in place national San councils and eventually a Regional San
Council to oversee San development. To date only the South African San Council has been established.

“... to advance the rights of South African San communities on local, national and regional levels … and to co-ordinate development plans, programmes and awareness campaigns with San communities, NGOs, researchers and government departments.”

– The main objectives of the South African San
Council as stated in its constitution.

The South African San Council acts as that country’s chapter of WIMSA. The councillors have set up committees on development, heritage, finance and media. In the period under review the South African San Council focused mainly on intellectual property rights. A number of meetings were held with representatives of the CSIR and other stakeholders in Hoodia-related issues. The council travelled twice acoss the country to the Didima Rock Art Centre in the Drakensberg Mountains in KwaZulu/Natal to negotiate on San involvement in that project.

Table 5: South African San Council Office-bearers

The council received training organised by the South African San Institute (SASI) in the areas of rights advocacy and constitutional rights. The training on the latter particularly enabled the council to negotiate language rights with relevant stakeholders, and to make the various “Khoisan”14 bodies aware that the San are able to speak for themselves but would like to co-operate with Khoi peoples in South Africa.

The majority of the South African San Council office-bearers participated in the WIMSA General Assembly in November 2002. Their report to the General Assembly highlighted the aforesaid activities and the council’s request for its own office.

“We believe once there are San Councils throughout the whole southern Africa, the San of southern Africa could then become one”.

– Concluding remark in the report of the South African San Council
to the WIMSA General Assembly in November 2002.

The WIMSA General Assembly in November 2002 agreed that WIMSA should assist the San communities in Namibia and Botswana in appointing their national San councils as soon as possible. Since then the WIMSA team has consulted stakeholders to draw up terms of reference for the councillors that will serve as a guideline for the San communities in appointing councillors later in 2003.
 

FOOTNOTES:
13 Meaning ‘Christian Organisation Supporting Community Development’.
14 The San have stressed time and again that they would like this term replaced with the disparate terms “Khoi” and “San” so as to distinguish between these two very distinct and different cultures.

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, maPills 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.

groups – some 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.

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 groups in session.

The San delegates agreed that the WIMSA board should decide on a process, guidelines and criteria to enable decision-maPills 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 group discussions.

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

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) thanPills 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 taPills 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.
 

FOOTNOTES:
15 WIMSA apologises to Jesi that we are unable to insert a photograph of the event as the film was under-exposed.
 

WIMSA Board Meetings

The first of the biannual meetings of the WIMSA Board of Trustees was held in D’Kar, Botswana, in June 2002. Board members of WIMSA Botswana and First People of the Kalahari (FPK) also participated as their combined board meeting was to follow this regional WIMSA board meeting. This meeting was also attended by San community leaders, thus a total of 28 San were present.

Incoming Chairperson of the board
Kxao Moses ‡Oma addressing the 2002
GA which elected him to the post.

Joram |Useb, Counterpart to the Regional WIMSA Co-ordinator, opened the meeting with a report on WIMSA activities, focusing on the intensive communication between Trócaire Angola, the YMCA Angola and the regional WIMSA office that flowed from the workshop WIMSA oganised for San from Angola, Namibia and South Africa in Windhoek in early 2002.

WIMSA Botswana Co-ordinator Mathambo Ngakaeaja reported on the latest developments in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR), and the members of all three boards reconfirmed the CKGR Negotiating Team’s mandate to continue negotiating.

Elfriede Gaeses, a Hai||om community worker in Namibia and an advisor to the African Indigenous Women’s Organisation (AIWO), provided background information on this organisation established in 1998 with the main aims of promoting women’s rights in Africa and empowering African women to represent themselves at all levels. AIWO members appointed Elfriede to the post of AIWO Advisor for Southern Africa in 2002. The organisation has since asked Elfriede to organise a conference for indigenous women from across southern Africa. As WIMSA is a San-owned organisation serving San only, to be able to fulfil this task Elfriede will require assistance from the Indigenous Peoples of Africa Co-ordinating Committee (IPACC). The board mandated Elfriede along with WIMSA board member Victoria Geingos and FPK board member Qose Xuikuri to organise a pre-plenary conference for San women specifically.

Table 6: Members of the 2002/03 WIMSA Board of Trustees

Table 7: Alternate Members of the 2002/03 WIMSA Board of Trustees

The first WIMSA board meeting in 2002 closed with a long discussion on San intellectual property rights linked to the the Hoodia gordonii and the Didima Rock Art Centre.
In its meeting convened during the November 2002 GA the newly elected board reached only one definite decision, i.e. to mandate the WIMSA team to continue the process of assisting the Angolan San.
As follow-up on matters was needed, another board meeting was called in December 2002. In view of the temporary discord that erupted during the GA, the members thought it appropriate to discuss the meaning of ‘empowerment’. They concurred that ‘empowerment’ goes hand in hand with ‘responsibility’ and ‘accountability’, and that people who do not follow rules and regulations as stipulated in the constitutions and policies governing them are not truly ‘empowered’. It was also emphasised in this meeting that San development workers should always put their skills to use in a positive way, and that one should take into account that a highly educated person may not necessarily use her/his knowledge wisely.
The draft WIMSA work plan for 2003 was discussed in this follow-up meeting and approved with the addition of a visit by Khwe-speaPills San to communities in Zambia in March.
In the same meeting intellectual property rights were discussed again at length. The board resolved that the San should accept the invitation to participate in the planning of the new rock art exhibition at the Iziko Museums in South Africa. With regard to the Hoodia, negotiation options for the utilisation of the milestone payments and royalties were discussed and suggestions were made on what organisations should be represented by the envisaged San Hoodia Trust. The board was aware of the importance of not underestimating the difficulties involved in deciding how the payments and royalties will be divided and ensuring that the money is spent as agreed. In order to explore what role WIMSA should play prior to the official opening of the Didima Rock Art Centre, it was resolved that a delegation composed of both board and WIMSA team members should join the South African San Council in the next workshop with the centre representatives.

 

From left: WIMSA trainee Tommy Busakhwe and board members Victoria Geingos and David Naude in the first board meeting in the reporting period, held at D’Kar, Botswana, in June 2002.

Board members (from left) Awelina Chifako, Xhwaa Qubi, a guest from South Africa and Zeka Shiwarra in the follow-up board meeting held in Windhoek in December 2002.

From left: WIMSA legal advisor Roger Chennells, WIMSA Botswana Co-ordinator Mathambo Ngakaeaja and other board members in the board’s follow-up meeting in Windhoek.

WIMSA board Vice-Chairperson Andries Steenkamp and Treasurer Victoria Geingos in the follow-up meeting.

“We have come a long way in five years – from no control to the situation today when most people are happy to sign the contract. But the contract by itself is not enough. San communities and leadership need training on heritage and culture.”

– WIMSA board member commenting on the board’s discussion on the
“Media and Research Contract of the San of Southern Africa”.

Following a recommendation that staff of San organisations and their support organisations should sign an employee research contract, the board requested the WIMSA team to see to the drafting of such. The team acted immediately and now awaits comment on the “Draft Employee Research Contract Relating to the San of Southern Africa” drawn up by WIMSA legal advisor Roger Chennells.

The paralegal programme that WIMSA is planning to set up in close co-operation with Namibia’s Legal Assistance Centre (LAC) was also discussed. The board views this programme as a significant step towards halting violations of San human rights and also as a promising mechanism for San to use to acquire identification documents and information about laws affecting their daily life. The board discussed the questions of what criteria should apply in selecting the San men and women to receive paralegal training, what funds will be needed and where paralegal offices should be set up.

The final discussion in this board meeting had to do with the need for a Regional Tourism Officer to take responsibility for advising and facilitating training for the participants in all San community-based tourism endeavours, as well as for marketing these endeavours. As requested the WIMSA team plans to draw up terms of reference for the post, in close co-operation with !Khwa ttu Co-ordinator Michael Daiber, and set about raising funds for it and identifying a suitable person to fill it.

The board members, the WIMSA team and WIMSA legal advisor Roger Chennels all expressed great satisfaction that this meeting had accomplished so much, and it was suggested that this was made possible by the committed and effective manner in which all the participants had conducted themselves.

Activities Addressing
HIV/AIDS

Botswana, Namibia, South Africa Lesotho and Zimbabwe have the highest HIV prevalence rates in southern Africa. In the first three countries the rate among women aged 15-24 is twice as high as the rate among men in the same age group. Statistics show that since 1995 the number of orphans in these countries has increased each year due to AIDS, and it is estimated that well over 75% of all orphans in Botswana, Namibia and South Africa will have been orphaned due to AIDS by the year 2010. Life expectancy has fallen considerably in these countries, e.g. in Namibia from 58,8 years in 1995 to 43,2 years in 2001.

For years already WIMSA has taken a holistic approach to tackling HIV/AIDS in that the issue is addressed in all WIMSA programmes and activities wherever possible. Aspects of the issue covered include breaPills the silence on HIV/AIDS and reducing stigmatisation, prevention measures, voluntary testing, medical treatment, caring for San infected with and affected by HIV/AIDS, and the social and economic impacts of the pandemic on WIMSA’s own capacity and that of its member organisations. In the period under review these and other HIV/AIDS-related issues were discussed on an individual level with WIMSA trainees and as part of their on-the-job training course at WIMSA’s office, as well as in the Friday afternoon sessions at the office with the San public relations students, the weekly WIMSA management meetings, the board meetings, the General Assembly, and other gatherings in which it was appropriate to take the issues up.

WIMSA team members participated in a number of workshops on HIV/AIDS during this reporting period. Among the most informative and efficient of these was the series of workshops organised by the LAC’s AIDS Law Unit, focusing on legal problems and solutions for people living with HIV/AIDS, the drafting of wills, access to medication, and legal issues associated with HIV testing and confidentiality. The participants were mainly NGO representatives, and all shared the concern that the majority of HIV-infected Namibians do not have access to anti-retroviral therapy which substantially prolongs life and improves the quality of life of people living with HIV – though the efforts of the Minister of Health and Social Services to provide for this access are recognised and appreciated in Namibia’s NGO sector. It was noted that anti-retroviral drugs such as Nevirapine which considerably reduce mother-to-child transmission of HIV were available at only two state hospitals in Namibia at the time. The participants were informed that AIDS activists in Namibia have formed the Treatment Access Forum (TAF) which aims to make access to affordable treatments a reality for the ±240 000 Namibians16 living with HIV/AIDS. It is also planned to establish a pan-African ‘access to treatment movement’.

The Bernard van Leer Foundation invited WIMSA’s Joram |Useb to attend an “International Partners Consultation on Children and HIV/AIDS” in Durban, South Africa, in October 2002, the aims of which were as follows:

“... to share information and lessons learned from community-based intervention programmes that address the situation of children affected by HIV/AIDS; to gather information on a number of pertinent topics related to the theme of Children and HIV/AIDS that will form the basis of a broad-based and multi-year Foundation Initiative …; to make recommendations towards policy changes at different levels that are required to address the situation of children affected by HIV/AIDS with a particular focus on the young child; and to share information on other HIV/AIDS initiatives and look at ways to build solidarity to promote children’s rights and to identify ways that Bernard van Leer Foundation can support this.”(17)

Joram reported to the participants on, among other things, community-based projects among San communities in the Omaheke Region.
In 2002 WIMSA submitted a project proposal to Norwegian Church Aid (NCA) for “A Community-based HIV/AIDS Awareness Campaign Targeting San in the Omaheke Region, Namibia”. The main activities under this campaign being implemented by the OST over a three-year period are described in the proposal as follows:

• Community awareness-raising through workshops and meetings
• Training for selected community facilitators
• A review of local traditional and modern health-care systems
• Discussions on the gender perspective with a range of stakeholders
• Production of information and educational materials
• Human rights awareness-raising through workshop and meetings
• Condom dispersal through various community outlets

Again the approach taken is holistic, as this extract from the OST project progress report to WIMSA and the donor implies:

“This project goes beyond simple awareness-raising and is an attempt to integrate a range of approaches to HIV/AIDS prevention, such as the development of local community-based ‘shops’ where San people can access healthy food as well as HIV/AIDS and healthy living advice and condoms.”(18)

Such a shop is currently under construction at the Sonneblom/Donkerbos San farm project in the Omaheke.
Since the launch of the HIV/AIDS campaign in September 2002 an OST HIV Co-ordinator has been appointed to co-ordinate it. Also, according to the OST report:

“... extensive net has been undertaken in order to raise awareness of the programme among local NGOs, government ministries, the Regional Council and community representatives ... [and a wide range of literature, mainly training manuals, has been reviewed].”(19)

A commercial farm, communal farming areas and a number of San communities in the Omaheke Region were visited to involve the community members in determining criteria for the selection of San HIV community facilitators and nominating them. The OST HIV Co-ordinator has since identified a number of organisations in the Omaheke and other parts of Namibia which could and should co-operate with the OST to meet the training needs of the community facilitators. Regarding this training, the OST informed WIMSA and NCA as follows:

“The Oral Testimony History [San] Interviewer has been conducting interviews about health care and HIV, as a component of the [WIMSA] Oral History Project. This will be incorporated into the training of facilitators and with medical staff in clinics in the Region. Some resistance is being encountered among those interviewed and employers, as there is a perception that the information given will cause the person to lose their job, or will be used to report other ethnic groups. However, with education about the purpose of this project, many others are willing to share their stories about health and care for the sick.”(20)

Future activities under this project will focus on: (1) raising awareness of the project among clinic nurses, school teachers and police officers in the Omaheke; (2) addressing the situation of Omaheke San farm labourers; (3) constructing more San community shops in the region; and (4) increasing the capacity of school and youth AIDS Awareness Clubs in the region.

San Human Rights

Peace in Angola has stabilised the situation of the Namibian San across the border in West Caprivi, and that of the San in Tsumkwe District West who seemingly no longer face the threat of thousands of refugees (mainly Angolan) being relocated to their area. But several other major San human rights issues have yet to be resolved. An ongoing obstacle to securing San human rights in Namibia is the government’s continued denial of offical recognition for the three (out of five) San traditional authorities still not recognised. The situation of the G|ui and G||ana who were relocated from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR) in Botswana has not improved, and San in Botswana’s Central District now face an imminent threat of losing rights to communal land which they have occupied for centuries. The little that is known about the situation of the San in Angola is extremely disturbing: the majority of them are said to have no work prospects and no access to education and basic services, and on the whole their communities are starving, and mortality among them is ever-increasing due to hunger and untreated illnesses such as TB, typhoid fever and malaria. WIMSA’s planned assessment of the situation of the Angolan San will reveal the extent of their reportedly desolate circumstances and hopefully point to practical solutions to ease their plight.

San Traditional Authorities

The Traditional Authority (TA) of the Khwe of West Caprivi, the Ju|’hoansi TA of Omaheke North and the !Xõó TA of Omaheke South have repeatedly expressed their grave concern that if government continues to deny them official recognition, they will remain excluded from the land boards in charge of allocating communal land to community members. The San hold the view that the denial of recognition is weakening their position and strengthening the ongoing domination of their people by other ethnic groups, which perpetuates San marginalisation in local political affairs.

In the reporting period the Windhoek-based Legal Assistance Centre (LAC) continued assisting the Khwe, Ju|’hoansi and !Xõó TAs in their efforts to secure government’s recognition of them and thus membership of the Council of Traditional Chiefs and the relevant land boards. In 2002 the LAC wrote to the Minister of Regional and Local Government and Housing on behalf of the three TAs to inform him, inter alia, that the TAs do not accept the reasons given in the Minister’s letter to them dated 18 July 2001 for refusing to recognise themeir recognition in letters sent to them by the Minister on 18 July 2001. regarding the Ju|’hoansi and !Xõó TAs, but on the recognition of the Khwe TA the Minister responded as follows in his letter to the LAC dated 14 January 2003:

“... the Council of Traditional Leaders during its 5th Annual Meeting held between 2-6 December 2002 has mandated its High Level Investigating Committee to re-investigate and finalise the recognition claim of the Khoe [sic] Community before end of April 2003.”

Lawyer Norman Tjombe of the LAC is planning, in consultation with Windhoek advocate Andrew Corbett, to make representations to the Council of Traditional Leaders on the Khwe TA recognition, and it is hoped that the same action can be taken on behalf of the Ju|’hoansi and !Xõó TAs.

“We have not asked for any specific piece of land, but we are Namibians and we want to be recognised. Why does the government want me to resort under the leadership of Bobo [Ju|’hoan Chief Tsamkxao ‡Oma of Nyae Nyae]? I need an explanation from these officials.”

– OMAHEKE JU|’HOAN CHIEF FREDERIK LANGMAN
as quoted by reporter Chrispin Inambao
in The Namibian on 20 September 2001, p. 3.

Repatriation of Khwe Refugees

Approximately 2 500 Khwe fled to Botswana in 1999 and 2000 after secessionist troubles in the Caprivi Region and their subsequent harassment by members of Namibia’s Special Field Force and Namibian Defence Force. In April 2002 the Governments of Botswana and Namibia and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) signed a tripartite agreement that paved the way for the repatriation of hundreds of Namibian refugees in Botswana, the majority being Khwe. The signing of the agreement was followed by a visit of Khwe representatives to the Caprivi to assess whether the security situation now permitted their people’s return to their home villages in West Caprivi. Under UNHCR supervision three groups of about 1 000 Khwe refugees in total were repatriated home from the Dukwe Refugee Camp near Francistown in Botswana during 2002. A considerable number of these returnees are currently trying to cope with a lack of water, food, shelter and access to health services.

Refugee Relocation to Tsumkwe West – Plan Abandoned?

In early 2002 Namibia’s Minister of Home Affairs was determined to relocate approximately 21 000 refugees (chiefly Angolan) from the Osire Refugee Camp (70km south of the town of Otjiwarongo in northern Namibia) to a site in the M’kata area of Tsumkwe District West inhabited by about 4 500 !Kung San. The Minister’s plan met with fierce opposition from donors, diplomats and especially the !Kung communities who feared being dominated by the newcomers who would vastly outnumber them and deplete their water resources, firewood and game, and whose presence in such vast numbers would severely hamper the land-use plans of their long-awaited N‡a Jaqna Conservancy.

These concerns were voiced during two rounds of extensive community consultation and human rights education facilitated by WIMSA consultant Richard Pakleppa. Joram |Useb of WIMSA conveyed these concerns to the 19th Session of the United Nations Group on Indigenous Populations in Geneva, Switzerland, in July 2001. In October 2001 the !Kung and Ju|’hoansi Traditional Authorities of Tsumkwe Districts West and East respectively aired their concerns in meetings with the Namibian Ombudswoman and Prime Minister. The then Prime Minister, Hage Geingob, told the San delegates that a final decision on the relocation had not yet been reached, and reassured them with the promise that in future he would visit their communities to consult with them personally.

It is assumed that the lobbying undertaken by the San and their supporting parties, and the rapid progress made towards lasting peace in Angola after the killing of UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi in early 2002, contributed to the Namibian Government either freezing or abandoning its plan to set up a refugee camp in M’kata. The government has yet to inform the San leaders of Tsumkwe West as to what has become of the plan.

The UNHCR Representative in Namibia convened a meeting with donors in Windhoek in March 2003 to discuss, among other things, the situation of the refugees residing in the above-mentioned Osire camp. The donors were informed that Angolan refugees at the camp consulted at the end of 2002 had expressed a strong desire to return to their home country: “A survey was taken amongst the refugees in February 2003, which showed that of the 15 667 refugees questioned at Osire camp, 96% wanted to return to their country, 80% at the earliest possible opportunity”.21 However, “[they] had access to food, clinics and schools [and] were unlikely to sacrifice this to return to their country if similar infrastructure was not available”.22 The repatriation will commence in June 2003.
To WIMSA’s knowledge there are no San at the Osire camp.

The San of the Central Kalahari
Game Reserve (CKGR)

Negotiating Team member Roy Sesana at the
site of what once was his homestead in the
Molapo area of the CKGR in 2002.

The CKGR Negotiating Team (NT), consisting of representatives of the CKGR residents, the First People of the Kalahari (FPK), WIMSA Botswana, Ditshwanelo (Botswana Centre for Human Rights) and the Botswana Council of Churches has continued its action against the relocation of CKGR San and Bakgalagadi communities to sites outside the CKGR, their ancestral land.

 

A lawyer addressing CKGR residents gathered at Kaudwane, a resettlement area outside the CKGR.

CKGR residents with their lawyer commissioning affidavits at New Xade, a resettlement area outside the CKGR.

“ When the Case resumed at 12.30pm, the two parties had agreed on the following, amongst other issues:

1. That the case will be referred to the High Court where verbal evidence will be given by witnesses both in Gaborone and Gantsi
2. That the High Court would make a decision on these substantial issues:

   a. whether it was unlawful for the Government of Botswana to terminate basic and essential services to the Residents of the CKGR in January 2002
   b. whether the Government has an obligation to restore the services to the Residents
   c. whether the Residents were in possession of their land and were deprived of such possession forcibly, wrongly and without their consent
   d. whether the Government’s refusal to issues Game Licenses to the Residents and to allow them to enter the CKGR is unlawful and unconstitutional.

• Government officials were accompanied virtually at all times by police armed with shotguns which they routinely pointed at villagers at the first hint of resistance;
• The District Council hired scabs from New Xade who forcibly entered the huts of the residents at Molapo, poured the water from their personal containers into the sand, removed their personal belongings from their huts, dismantled their huts and loaded the materials onto government trucks. The residents of Molapo were generally not permitted even to dismantle their own huts and secure their personal belongings;
• Government did not make the final delivery of water and other supplies to the residents during January 2002, despite having confirmed to Ditshwanelo that it had done so. The only water that was supplied to the water tanks in the village was sufficient water for the use of the government officials for the period that it took them to force the residents to move to the resettlements. This water was used by government officials and not by the residents.”

“I learned so much about the many human rights violations people in the region experience. I am really grateful that I had the opportunity to attend the workshop.”

– WIMSA representative Tommy Busakhwe reporting on his first international workshop.
 

FOOTNOTES:
16 The national populations of Namibia, Botswana and South Africa are 1,8 million, 1,5 million and 43,8 million respectively.
17 Extract from the Bernard van Leer Foundation’s letter of invitation dated 20 August 2002.
18 From “Report of the Omaheke San Trust to WIMSA and Norwegian Church Aid on the Community-based HIV/AIDS Awareness Campaign Targeting San in the Omaheke Region”, January 2003, p. 1.
19 Ibid.
20 Ibid., p. 2.
21 “What Next for Osire refugees”, in UN Newsletter in Namibia, No. 1, May 2003, p. 3.
22 Ibid.
23 “Press Release IV of the Negotiation Team, the mandated representatives of the Residents of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR)”, released by Ditshwanelo in Gaborone on behalf of the CKGR Negotiating Team on 26 June 2002, p. 1.
24 Ibid.
 

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 taPills 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.

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.

Smallstock consuming the last bits of greenery near
a San village in Tsumkwe West in June 2002.
 

“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.
 

International
Co-operation

In the period under review WIMSA received numerous invitations to participate in international conferences, consultative meetings, seminars and workshops. While the San are pleased that their expertise on San and other indigenous cultures, current affairs and development issues are in high demand internationally, they also find this demand a heavy burden as only a few San possess the organisational, administrative, linguistic and representational skills required for participation in such gatherings. To ease this burden WIMSA decided to identify suitable San resource persons across southern Africa by means of an inventory stipulating the skills required for participation and issues that tend to be focal on the agendas of international fora, but leaving blank spaces next to each skill and issue for suitable people’s names to be filled in. Individual San and representatives of a few San organisations added their names to the list, according to which a total of 32 San from Namibia, Botswana and South Africa would be able to participate actively in English in these fora and present papers on San issues to them. WIMSA has encouraged its member and support organisations to build capacity, develop writing skills and enhance English language skills among those San interested in representing the San of the whole region at international level.

Some regional and international gatherings on indigenous issues in which San participated in the reporting period have already been mentioned in this report, i.e. the workshop titled “Following Footsteps” (p. 32), the 12th International Oral History Conference (p. 35), the International Partners Consultation on Children and HIV/AIDS (p. 57) and the “Indigenous Rights in Commonwealth Africa” meeting (p. 67). This section covers only those gatherings not yet mentioned.

UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues

Ahighlight for WIMSA representative Joram |Useb was his participation in the inaugural session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues held at UN headquarters in New York in May 2002. The UN High Commission on Human Rights accepted and sponsored Joram’s application to attend the session as an observer.

The establishment of a permanent forum focused on indigenous issues – a concept first introduced at the Vienna World Conference on Human Rights in 1993 – became one of the chief objectives of indigenous people’s fora in marPills the International Decade of the World’s Indigenous People (1995-2004). On the recommendation of the Commission on Human Rights, the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) adopted a resolution establishing the Permanent Forum in July 2000. The mandate of this forum is to advise and make recommendations to ECOSOC relating to economic and social development, culture, human rights, the environment, education and health. In addition to advising ECOSOC, the forum has been asked to raise awareness, promote the integration and co-ordination of activities relating to indigenous issues within the UN system, and prepare and disseminate information on indigenous matters. Representatives of indigenous people’s organisations, other NGOs, UN bodies and governments were invited to participate as observers in this historic inaugural event. All participants had an opportunity to deliver a statement to the 16 forum members, all of whom are independent experts – eight nominated by their government and eight appointed by the ECOSOC President following formal consultation with governments on the basis of consultation with indigenous people’s organisations. All members serve for three years with the possibility of re-election for an additional year.

In his statement Joram conveyed the San’s serious concern about the impact of the Namibian Government’s (presumably erstwhile) plan to relocate approximately 21 000 refugees from a camp in northern Namibia to a part of the country occupied by 4 500 !Kung San. He also informed the participants about the involuntary relocation of the G|ui and G||ana from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve effected by the government of Botswana.

In his report on the first session of the Permanent Forum Joram states that the session had provided excellent opportunities for net , advocacy and disseminating information on San aspirations, achievements and problems, and for learning more about other indigenous peoples and the American way of life after 11 September 2001.

“ I certainly would like to attend the 2nd session of the Permanent Forum as in my personal opinion it seems more effective than the session of the Group on Indigenous Populations in Geneva.”

– WIMSA Representative Joram |Useb in his report to WIMSA on the
inaugural session of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.

Biopiracy Summit

Victoria Geingos and Mathambo Ngakaeaja represented WIMSA at the Second South-South Biopiracy Summit titled “Biopiracy – Ten Years Post-Rio” hosted by Biowatch South Africa in Johannesburg in August 2002. This two-day workshop was held a few days prior to the World Summit on Sustainable Development also held in Johannesburg. The Biopiracy Summit participants, hailing from Africa, South America, Asia and the USA, discussed intellectual property rights, indigenous knowledge, access and benefit-sharing issues. Victoria and Mathambo presented a short paper titled “Traditional Knowledge of the San of Southern Africa: Hoodia gordonii.

“Some participants were against the CSIR patent whereas others understood why the San had agreed on it and were interested in what procedures they had followed. Participants wanted to know how San communities are protecting their intellectual property, and Mathambo informed them about the “Media and Research Contract of the San of Southern Africa”.

– WIMSA representative Victoria Geingos in her report to WIMSA on the summit, summing up the participants’ response to the paper she wrote and presented there jointly with fellow representative Mathambo Ngakaeaja.

Victoria concludes in her report that the summit gave the participants an opportunity to learn about the San perspective on intellectual property rights, and herself and Mathambo an opportunity to learn a great deal about the patenting of life forms and trade-related intellectual property rights (TRIPS).

Genome Research Initiative

Joram |Useb represented WIMSA at the “Workshop on the Origins of Humanity and the Diffusion of Human Populations in Africa” hosted by the Africa Human Genome Initiative in Stellenbosch, South Africa, in September 2002 . The workshop provided a platform for dialogue between scientists and social scientists.

The following extract from SASI consultant Nigel Crawhall’s report on the workshop sums up the issue at hand as well as Joram’s own views on the issue:

“... genome research will become very important in health care and the promotion of good health in the coming years by tracPills down hereditary diseases, and genetically battling acquired conditions. … Prior informed consent is a difficult principal to manage, and as genes affect whole communities, and particularly the families of the individual tested, there is an argument for group authorisations above and beyond individual consent. A central principle is that the individual should not sign over the rights to the genetic information ... he/she should retain ownership and control when and where this material is going to be used. … The Khoe-San blood type is very special on the planet, as it is the original strain and quite different from Black and Caucasian blood types which are more like each other.”

Joram and other San participating in this workshop learnt that several San groups have already been tested and international experts plan to get hold of !Xun and Ju|’hoansi material. Joram gave his input during the thematic session on “Nomenclature of People”. When the issue of the distinction between ‘Khoe’ and ‘San’ was raised, Joram made it clear to the participants that the San do not consider themselves to be ‘Khoisan’, and where a collective term is required, such as for blood types, it should be ‘Khoe-San’ in recognition of the San people’s distinctiveness. His contribution was well received by the scientific community.

Indigenous People’s Film Festival

Moronga Tanago of TOCaDI in Botswana repre-sented WIMSA at the Indigenous People’s Film Festival organised by First People of Finland in Turka, Finland, in October 2002. Film-makers from Estonia, Russia and South Africa presented their films on the Saami and San peoples respectively to an audience composed of a small number of indigenous people from Europe, Latin America and Africa, and members of the local Turka community. The festival discussions focused on the ethics involved in producing documentaries on indigenous peoples.

From left: James Herslov, Olga Kornienko, Moronga Tanago, Liivo Niglas and Jovko Aaltonen at the film festival.

From left: Spanish interpreter Tiina Saaresranta, Juan Santos Rodriguez-Peru, Martin Scheinin, Juha Hiltunen, Moronga Tanago and Liivo Niglas.

“The festival was very interesting because I learnt there that a person is able to make simple films, e.g. on HIV/AIDS. With simple films we could raise awareness amongst San people.”

– WIMSA representative Moronga Tanago summarising his learning
experience in his report to WIMSA on the festival.
 

Consultative Meeting on
African Indigenous Populations

WIMSA representatives Mathambo Ngakaeaja and Joram |Useb participated in the Consultative Meeting of the African Commission’s Group on Indigenous Populations organised by the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights in Nairobi, Kenya, in January 2003. The letter of invitation conveys the purpose of this meeting as follows:

“... to draw indigenous peoples/communities from Africa and experts on Indigenous issues from Africa as well as other regions of the world to discuss a Conceptual Framework Paper drawn by Members of the African Commission Group, gather input and debate on indigenous matters in Africa and discuss the recommendations to be made to the African Commission. The Group believes that your expertise in the area of rights of indigenous communities is invaluable and would be of great benefit to the work of the Group of the African Commission.”

Joram |Useb (left) and Mathambo Ngakaeaja during
the Consultative Meeting on African Indigenous Populations.

During the meeting the participants familiarised themselves with the content of the “Conceptual Framework Paper”, and Mathambo and Joram gave input on issues including “who is indigenous in Africa” and the situation of African indigenous communities today from the perspective of the San. Along with other delegates they stressed the urgency of calling for interventions to be made by African governments, the international public and human rights bodies to bring about:

• security of land tenure for indigenous peoples in Africa;
• an improvement of basic services to indigenous communities in Africa; and
• sensitisation of mainstream African populations to the equality of all citizens and the right of all indigenous African peoples to develop themselves and to determine their own pace and forms of development.

The WIMSA representatives hope that at least one of them will to be able to participate in the next session of the African Commission’s Group on Indigenous Populations to be held in Niamey, Niger, in May 2003, where the “Conceptual Framework Paper” is expected to be finalised.

“Effective Engagement with Indigenous Peoples”

Victoria Geingos of WIMSA participated as a resource person in a “Workshop on Effective Engagement with Indigenous Peoples” held in Vancouver, Canada, in March 2003, as part of a project developed by First Peoples Worldwide, a WIMSA support organisation, in partnership with the Canadian oganisation named Business for Social Responsibility. The project aims to train company personnel from the extractive industries (e.g. oil/gas, mining, logging) in building more effective relationships with indigenous communities. The purpose of this particular workshop was to provide constructive and practical guidance to company personnel. As one of several participating indigenous people with different and complementary experiences of indigenous people’s development, Victoria was expected to contribute hands-on knowledge and guidance to the workshop.

The workshop was perceived as an introduction to issues of common concern to indigenous peoples and the applicable industrialists, including land rights, community development, informed prior consent, capacity-building, joint decision-maPills processes and cultural activities, which should be viewed and treated as parts of a larger whole rather than as separate and unrelated issues, as they too often are. The workshop theme was “Journey towards Gaining a Social Licence”, and one key element of it was a range of exercises aimed at maPills the company representatives aware of indigenous people being full decision-makers in their own right.

 

Victoria Geingos presenting Hai||om cultural resource maps at the “Workshop on Effective Engagement with Indigenous Peoples”.

Group work during the “Workshop on Effective Engagement with Indigenous Peoples”.

Indigenous Peoples and Sustainable Development

Joram |Useb was invited by the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Foreign Affairs Office of the Home Rule Government of Greenland to participate in the “Workshop on Partnership on Indigenous Peoples and Sustainable Development” held in Copenhagen, Denmark, in March 2003. The letter of invitation states:

“... the Government of Denmark and the Home Rule Government of Greenland, together with representatives of indigenous organisations, like-minded countries, institutions and organisations initiated a ‘Partnership on Indigenous Peoples and Sustainable Development – Capacity-building for dialogue’ in connection with the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in August 2002. To get the Partnership off the ground, the Danish Government [is organising this workshop].”

The three-fold purpose of the partnership served as the basis of the workshop deliberations, this purpose being:

• to promote knowledge on indigenous peoples’ rights and priorities within development agencies and national governments;
• to exchange experiences of good practice; and
• to enhance the capacity of indigenous peoples to influence national policy- and decision-maPills on sustainable development.

Joram and 19 other participants from Europe, Africa, the USA, South America and Asia constituted one of the three groups tasked to discuss support to indigenous peoples’ organisations that influence key policy proposals at the global level. This group tackled questions including the following, as quoted from the background materials supplied to the groups by the organisers:

• What is already there?
• What is lacPills?
• What threats and challenges to indigenous peoples are posed by international agreements and mechanisms?
• What is the role of indigenous peoples in deciding on projects, and in implementing and evaluating those projects?
• What are the representation and capacity challenges for indigenous peoples?

Though Joram found his participation very worthwhile, the workshop had demonstrated to him the difficulty of drawing 60 participants in one direction. He appreciated the opportunity to strengthen WIMSA’s relationship with representatives of the World Bank, the International Labour Organization (ILO), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs.

Net

Net at local, regional and international levels is one key aspect of WIMSA’s work. In the period under review the regional WIMSA team, the WIMSA Botswana team in D’Kar and the WIMSA board members stayed in close contact with all WIMSA member organisations through a number of regional events, direct contact with individual member organisations and indirect contact via WIMSA support organisations including IRDNC in Namibia, Trócaire in Angola, SASI in South Africa and Letloa in Botswana. WIMSA also continued net with various NGOs, ministries, education institutions, academics, human rights societies, UN agencies, the media, and of course, WIMSA’s donors.

A number of the aforementioned bodies have already been referred to in previous sections of this report and will not be mentioned again in this section.

Net with Member Organisations

Four San organisations applied for and were granted WIMSA membership in the reporting period: the ‡Heku Community Trust, the Tsoa and Kua Cultural Association, and the Kanako Development Club, all in Botswana; Organização Cristã de Apoio ao Desenvolvimento Comunitário (OCADEC) in Angola; and the KwaZulu/Natal San Development Trust in South Africa. Two groups among Namibia’s Hai||om communities are still in the process of forming their own organisations. The group based in the town of Outjo near the the Etosha National Park and the planned ||Naisa !Anis San Development Trust requested and are receiving advice from WIMSA in the process of establishing their community trust.

WIMSA Botswana established a close relationship with the Tsoa and Kua Cultural Association and the Kanako Development Club in Botswana, and representatives of the former were elected onto the WIMSA Botswana board in March 2003. The Trust for Okavango and Development Initiatives (TOCaDI) catered to the ‡Heku Community Trust and other San and non-San CBOs operating in the Ngamiland District of Botswana. The regional WIMSA kept up close contact with the Kuru Family of Organisations, particularly with TOCaDI, the Kuru D’Kar Trust, Gantsi Craft and Letloa.

Since the WIMSA General Assembly in November 2002 when OCADEC officially joined WIMSA, there has been extensive e-mail contact between the WIMSA team and OCADEC’s representatives Daniel Gaspar and Benedito Quessongo to co-ordinate plans for the assessment of the situation of the Khwe and !Xun San communities in Angola to be conducted in June and July 2003.

In October 2002 KwaZulu/Natal San Development Trust Chairperson Makhowane Ernest Hlalanathi applied for WIMSA membership which was granted. Disagreements among the leaders of the various KwaZulu/Natal San groups rendered those groups unable to appoint delegates to the WIMSA General Assembly in November 2002.

A preliminary report by anthropologist Frans Prins provides the following background information about the San of the eastern seaboard of South Africa:

“The San have been the sole occupants of the eastern seaboard of South Africa (i.e. Mapumalanga Province, [KwaZulu/Natal Province], Eastern Cape Province, Lesotho and Swaziland) for more than 20 000 years. … The San’s mastery of the land made a dramatic turnabout when the first Bantu-speaPills agropastoralists and Khoe pastoralists arrived in South Africa around 1 800 years ago. ... The San of the eastern seaboard had thus been in contact with other groups for almost 2 000 years. Such interaction included conflict but also trading relations, the employment of the San as ritual functionaries by other groups, livestock raiding partnerships, as well as intermarriage. … The encroachment of their last remaining hunting territories by European colonists and their African surrogates spelled the end of a way of life for these independent San groups. … Most scholars believe that the south eastern San became extinct by the end of the 19th century.

hose who were not killed by colonial reprisals assimilated into the societies of their Bantu-speaPills neighbours (both Sotho and Xhosa).”30

In the same report the writer notes that since 1986 a few researchers have become aware of San descendants “who have literally gone underground during the last 100 years or so. Due to the political climate of the time they hid their ethnic identities and pretended to be either coloured and/ or Bantu.”31

San of KwaZulu/Natal in a discussion with
anthropologist Frans Prins who has worked with the
San of South Africa’s eastern seaboard for many years.

Frans Prins, who has worked with the San of the eastern seaboard for many years and who established, in conjunction with Isolde Mellet, a support organisation for them, namely the San Foundation, also conveys the following information in his report:

“... with the possible exception of two individuals it also appears that their original language has become extinct. However, most of these San people do regard rock art as an integral part of their cultural heritage and identity.”32

To date approximately 650 San descendants have been located in the Eastern Cape, KwaZulu/Natal and Mapumalanga Provinces. The KwaZulu/Natal San Development Trust in tandem with the South African San Council and WIMSA played a significant role in the negotiations with the Didima Rock Art Centre in the Drakensberg Mountains in KwaZulu/Natal.

Representatives of the KwaZulu/Natal San Development Trust will be invited to attend the 2003 WIMSA General Assembly to inform the other San of the region of their members’ current situation, aspirations and plans.

As the regional WIMSA is based in Namibia, where a national support organisation catering to San has not yet been established, the Namibian San generally refer their development-related requests to the regional WIMSA. Only the San of the Omaheke Region enjoy the services of their own umbrella organisation, namely the Omaheke San Trust (OST), a WIMSA member organisation.

Though OST activities came to a near standstill due to financial irregularities discovered in the second quarter of 2002, a number of organisational and staff changes in the organisation has enabled the revitalisation of its services. Under the guidance of its new Co-ordinator, Ian Agnew, the OST has expanded its network, lobbying capacity and projects implementation. Despite the OST having evolved into a more autonomous organisation, the exchange of views, discussions of concepts and mutual assistance that always prevalied between the OST and WIMSA has recently intensified and resulted in an excellent co-operation. In future this co-operation will be continued in respect of cultural, educational, developmental and HIV/AIDS-related activities.
 

OST Co-ordinator Ian Agnew (right) and WIMSA
Co-ordinator Axel Thoma in one of their regular meetings,
this time at the WIMSA office in Windhoek.

Table 8: WIMSA Member Organisations

WIMSA continued supporting Hai||om community facilitator Elfriede Gaeses with advice, though she spent only the breaks of 4-6 weeks between San Public Relations Officers Course terms in her community. Due to disagreements among the various Hai||om factions, Elfriede lost her office in Outjo which she had managed to secure rent free from the Outjo Municipality. Hai||om paralegal volunteer Kleofas Geingob was planning to reclaim the office and requested WIMSA to re-equip it. WIMSA intends to fulfil this request in the near future, and hopes that Elfriede’s fellow Hai||om will not seek to prevent her from sharing the office with Kleofas. WIMSA has agreed to provide advisory support to the envisaged Etosha, ||Naisa !Anis and Outjo Trusts of the Hai||om communities.

Besides arranging for the “Free To Grow” workshop for the Tsumkwe District West !Kung Traditional Authority (TA) members (see p. 17), and for two consultancies to assist the !Kung TA in its investigation of controversial land allocations in Tsumkwe West (p. 64), WIMSA continued net with the Ministry of Environment and Tourism (MET) regarding the planned N‡a Jaqna Conservancy in Tsumkwe West. WIMSA also continued its support for the Omatako Valley Rest Camp in Tsumkwe West by way of giving advice and providing funds for improvements to the campsite. WIMSA has contributed NCA funding to market research on craft products and the target market as well as research on the availability of resources needed for product development in Tsumkwe West and East conducted by the Rössing Foundation. At the campsite committee members’ request, WIMSA will assist them in revitalising the camp’s grocery shop, expanding the craft shop and constructing game lookout posts during 2003.

Contacts established by WIMSA and the Centre for Applied Social Sciences (CASS) at the University of Namibia with San in the Ohangwena Region of Namibia were revitalised when members of the Ekoka San Art Project set up with assistance from the Rössing Foundation visited the WIMSA office to discuss their community’s needs and WIMSA’s mandate.

Members of the Ekoka San Art Project and representatives of
the Ekoka San community in discussions with WIMSA team members.

Following the release of UNESCO’s publication titled New Horizons for the San by Dhyani Berger and Elke Zimprich Mazive, which presents the findings of a participatory action research undertaPills among San communities in the Ohangwena Region in northern Namibia, WIMSA invited representatives of ministries and NGOs with San in that region to participate in a round-table discussion on San development there. In the meeting information and experiences were shared and possible development interventions discussed.

It is envisaged that after further extensive discussion with the San communities in the Ohangwena Region, UNESCO, WIMSA and other organisations will co-operate to assist them to set up their own umbrella organisation, initially for their own region only but ultimately for the Ohangwena, Oshikoto, Oshana and Omusati Regions as a single entity.
Since members of the San Project Committee in West Kavango were unable to participate in the WIMSA General Assembly in 2002, Joram |Useb of WIMSA visited the project in December 2002. The committee members informed him that they had renamed the project “Mukekete San Project” after their village. He reported back that WIMSA’s support to the project in the form of oxen and ploughing equipment had been put to good use, and sorghum seed from the previous harvest had already been planted. The community agreed with Joram that they had attained a level of self-sustainability (they balance their diet with bush food) and additional material support from WIMSA was thus no longer needed.

Besides visiting San communities the WIMSA team members received numerous San individuals and/or groups of community representatives at the WIMSA office. Those unfamiliar with Windhoek requested logistical and material help, while others needed advice on implementing plans, filing complaints or obtaining documents and information. The team was able to assist in most matters.

 

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.
 

Net

Net at local, regional and international levels is one key aspect of WIMSA’s work. In the period under review the regional WIMSA team, the WIMSA Botswana team in D’Kar and the WIMSA board members stayed in close contact with all WIMSA member organisations through a number of regional events, direct contact with individual member organisations and indirect contact via WIMSA support organisations including IRDNC in Namibia, Trócaire in Angola, SASI in South Africa and Letloa in Botswana. WIMSA also continued net with various NGOs, ministries, education institutions, academics, human rights societies, UN agencies, the media, and of course, WIMSA’s donors.

A number of the aforementioned bodies have already been referred to in previous sections of this report and will not be mentioned again in this section.

Net with Member Organisations

Four San organisations applied for and were granted WIMSA membership in the reporting period: the ‡Heku Community Trust, the Tsoa and Kua Cultural Association, and the Kanako Development Club, all in Botswana; Organização Cristã de Apoio ao Desenvolvimento Comunitário (OCADEC) in Angola; and the KwaZulu/Natal San Development Trust in South Africa. Two groups among Namibia’s Hai||om communities are still in the process of forming their own organisations. The group based in the town of Outjo near the the Etosha National Park and the planned ||Naisa !Anis San Development Trust requested and are receiving advice from WIMSA in the process of establishing their community trust.

WIMSA Botswana established a close relationship with the Tsoa and Kua Cultural Association and the Kanako Development Club in Botswana, and representatives of the former were elected onto the WIMSA Botswana board in March 2003. The Trust for Okavango and Development Initiatives (TOCaDI) catered to the ‡Heku Community Trust and other San and non-San CBOs operating in the Ngamiland District of Botswana. The regional WIMSA kept up close contact with the Kuru Family of Organisations, particularly with TOCaDI, the Kuru D’Kar Trust, Gantsi Craft and Letloa.

Since the WIMSA General Assembly in November 2002 when OCADEC officially joined WIMSA, there has been extensive e-mail contact between the WIMSA team and OCADEC’s representatives Daniel Gaspar and Benedito Quessongo to co-ordinate plans for the assessment of the situation of the Khwe and !Xun San communities in Angola to be conducted in June and July 2003.

In October 2002 KwaZulu/Natal San Development Trust Chairperson Makhowane Ernest Hlalanathi applied for WIMSA membership which was granted. Disagreements among the leaders of the various KwaZulu/Natal San groups rendered those groups unable to appoint delegates to the WIMSA General Assembly in November 2002.

A preliminary report by anthropologist Frans Prins provides the following background information about the San of the eastern seaboard of South Africa:

“The San have been the sole occupants of the eastern seaboard of South Africa (i.e. Mapumalanga Province, [KwaZulu/Natal Province], Eastern Cape Province, Lesotho and Swaziland) for more than 20 000 years. … The San’s mastery of the land made a dramatic turnabout when the first Bantu-speaPills agropastoralists and Khoe pastoralists arrived in South Africa around 1 800 years ago. ... The San of the eastern seaboard had thus been in contact with other groups for almost 2 000 years. Such interaction included conflict but also trading relations, the employment of the San as ritual functionaries by other groups, livestock raiding partnerships, as well as intermarriage. … The encroachment of their last remaining hunting territories by European colonists and their African surrogates spelled the end of a way of life for these independent San groups. … Most scholars believe that the south eastern San became extinct by the end of the 19th century.

hose who were not killed by colonial reprisals assimilated into the societies of their Bantu-speaPills neighbours (both Sotho and Xhosa).”30

In the same report the writer notes that since 1986 a few researchers have become aware of San descendants “who have literally gone underground during the last 100 years or so. Due to the political climate of the time they hid their ethnic identities and pretended to be either coloured and/ or Bantu.”31

San of KwaZulu/Natal in a discussion with
anthropologist Frans Prins who has worked with the
San of South Africa’s eastern seaboard for many years.

Frans Prins, who has worked with the San of the eastern seaboard for many years and who established, in conjunction with Isolde Mellet, a support organisation for them, namely the San Foundation, also conveys the following information in his report:

“... with the possible exception of two individuals it also appears that their original language has become extinct. However, most of these San people do regard rock art as an integral part of their cultural heritage and identity.”32

To date approximately 650 San descendants have been located in the Eastern Cape, KwaZulu/Natal and Mapumalanga Provinces. The KwaZulu/Natal San Development Trust in tandem with the South African San Council and WIMSA played a significant role in the negotiations with the Didima Rock Art Centre in the Drakensberg Mountains in KwaZulu/Natal.

Representatives of the KwaZulu/Natal San Development Trust will be invited to attend the 2003 WIMSA General Assembly to inform the other San of the region of their members’ current situation, aspirations and plans.

As the regional WIMSA is based in Namibia, where a national support organisation catering to San has not yet been established, the Namibian San generally refer their development-related requests to the regional WIMSA. Only the San of the Omaheke Region enjoy the services of their own umbrella organisation, namely the Omaheke San Trust (OST), a WIMSA member organisation.

Though OST activities came to a near standstill due to financial irregularities discovered in the second quarter of 2002, a number of organisational and staff changes in the organisation has enabled the revitalisation of its services. Under the guidance of its new Co-ordinator, Ian Agnew, the OST has expanded its network, lobbying capacity and projects implementation. Despite the OST having evolved into a more autonomous organisation, the exchange of views, discussions of concepts and mutual assistance that always prevalied between the OST and WIMSA has recently intensified and resulted in an excellent co-operation. In future this co-operation will be continued in respect of cultural, educational, developmental and HIV/AIDS-related activities.
 

OST Co-ordinator Ian Agnew (right) and WIMSA
Co-ordinator Axel Thoma in one of their regular meetings,
this time at the WIMSA office in Windhoek.

Table 8: WIMSA Member Organisations

WIMSA continued supporting Hai||om community facilitator Elfriede Gaeses with advice, though she spent only the breaks of 4-6 weeks between San Public Relations Officers Course terms in her community. Due to disagreements among the various Hai||om factions, Elfriede lost her office in Outjo which she had managed to secure rent free from the Outjo Municipality. Hai||om paralegal volunteer Kleofas Geingob was planning to reclaim the office and requested WIMSA to re-equip it. WIMSA intends to fulfil this request in the near future, and hopes that Elfriede’s fellow Hai||om will not seek to prevent her from sharing the office with Kleofas. WIMSA has agreed to provide advisory support to the envisaged Etosha, ||Naisa !Anis and Outjo Trusts of the Hai||om communities.

Besides arranging for the “Free To Grow” workshop for the Tsumkwe District West !Kung Traditional Authority (TA) members (see p. 17), and for two consultancies to assist the !Kung TA in its investigation of controversial land allocations in Tsumkwe West (p. 64), WIMSA continued net with the Ministry of Environment and Tourism (MET) regarding the planned N‡a Jaqna Conservancy in Tsumkwe West. WIMSA also continued its support for the Omatako Valley Rest Camp in Tsumkwe West by way of giving advice and providing funds for improvements to the campsite. WIMSA has contributed NCA funding to market research on craft products and the target market as well as research on the availability of resources needed for product development in Tsumkwe West and East conducted by the Rössing Foundation. At the campsite committee members’ request, WIMSA will assist them in revitalising the camp’s grocery shop, expanding the craft shop and constructing game lookout posts during 2003.

Contacts established by WIMSA and the Centre for Applied Social Sciences (CASS) at the University of Namibia with San in the Ohangwena Region of Namibia were revitalised when members of the Ekoka San Art Project set up with assistance from the Rössing Foundation visited the WIMSA office to discuss their community’s needs and WIMSA’s mandate.

a
Members of the Ekoka San Art Project and representatives of
the Ekoka San community in discussions with WIMSA team members.

Following the release of UNESCO’s publication titled New Horizons for the San by Dhyani Berger and Elke Zimprich Mazive, which presents the findings of a participatory action research undertaPills among San communities in the Ohangwena Region in northern Namibia, WIMSA invited representatives of ministries and NGOs with San in that region to participate in a round-table discussion on San development there. In the meeting information and experiences were shared and possible development interventions discussed.

It is envisaged that after further extensive discussion with the San communities in the Ohangwena Region, UNESCO, WIMSA and other organisations will co-operate to assist them to set up their own umbrella organisation, initially for their own region only but ultimately for the Ohangwena, Oshikoto, Oshana and Omusati Regions as a single entity.
Since members of the San Project Committee in West Kavango were unable to participate in the WIMSA General Assembly in 2002, Joram |Useb of WIMSA visited the project in December 2002. The committee members informed him that they had renamed the project “Mukekete San Project” after their village. He reported back that WIMSA’s support to the project in the form of oxen and ploughing equipment had been put to good use, and sorghum seed from the previous harvest had already been planted. The community agreed with Joram that they had attained a level of self-sustainability (they balance their diet with bush food) and additional material support from WIMSA was thus no longer needed.

Besides visiting San communities the WIMSA team members received numerous San individuals and/or groups of community representatives at the WIMSA office. Those unfamiliar with Windhoek requested logistical and material help, while others needed advice on implementing plans, filing complaints or obtaining documents and information. The team was able to assist in most matters.

Net with Support Organisations

In 2002/03 WIMSA welcomed with gratitude two new support organisations, namely the Irish Catholic Agency for World Development (Trócaire) of Angola and Integrated Rural Development and Nature Conservation (IRDNC) of Namibia. Both organisations have assisted WIMSA with advice and logistics. Trócaire was able to raise funds from its headquarters for the planned assessment of the situation of the San in Angola, and in conjunction with WIMSA and TOCaDI, IRDNC organised a number of workshops for Khwedam-speaPills San.

At WIMSA’s request Namibia’s Legal Assistance Centre (LAC) supported the !Kung Traditional Authority in its investigation of controversial land occupations in Tsumkwe West by providing a legal practitioner to consult with !Kung community members and collect affidavits in the area. The San much appreciated the LAC-run paralegal training workshops for San community members, which they regarded as crucial for assistance with difficult issues to be rendered effectively by San for San.

Ditshwanelo, the Botswana Centre for Human Rights, continued keeping WIMSA and the other stakeholders abreast of developments concerning the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR) in Botswana and also convened regular meetings of the CKGR support coalition of which WIMSA is a member.

Table 9: WIMSA Support Organisations

Hazel Hudson of the San/Basarwa Research and Capacity Building Programme of the University of Botswana assisted WIMSA particularly effectively in arranging for the programme to support two San Public Relations Officers Course students financially. Though WIMSA, thanks to the Bernard van Leer Foundation, has funded the salaries of the new and former Education Liaison Officers in the programme, the work of this officer is focused in general on education-related matters in Botswana and thus he/she is responsible to the San/Basarwa Research and Capacity Building Programme and the Letloa Education and Culture Advisor.

The South African San Institute (SASI) based in Cape Town continued supporting the three San communities in South Africa, namely the !Xun and Khwe of Schmidtsdrift near Kimberley and the ‡Khomani of the southern Kalahari in the Northern Cape Province. WIMSA Co-ordinator Axel Thoma is a member of the SASI Board of Trustees and WIMSA is therefore deeply involved in SASI’s work.

Kalahari Peoples Fund (KPF) Co-ordinator Megan Biesele, based in the USA, visited WIMSA in July 2002. Members of the WIMSA team informed her about the organisation’s activities and Megan made the team members aware of the difficulties in raising funds in the USA after 11 September 2001, which have forced the KPF to stop supporting San students in Namibia financially.

Fortunately WIMSA’s support organisation in Milan, Italy, namely Heritage, is prepared to engage in fundraising for San students, an undertaPills to be administered by WIMSA’s Regional San Education Programme. Heritage President Silvana Olivo has already provided funds to enable the Namibian San students to purchase much-needed carrying bags for their study books. The 2001 WIMSA General Assembly mandated her to raise awareness on San affairs in Italy.

Net with NGOs

WIMSA continued net with numerous NGOs at national, regional and international levels. Only the NGOs with which WIMSA remained in contact throughout the period under review are mentioned in this section.

The practice of calling regular liaison meetings with the Nyae Nyae Development Foundation of Namibia (NNDFN) was continued. These meetings focused on the NNDFN’s plan to extend its area of operation into Tsumkwe District West. In April 2002 NNDFN Director Hosabe |Honeb was given an opportunity to elaborate on the plan in addressing the San participants in a “Free to Grow” workshop. In July 2002 the NNDFN and WIMSA co-facilitated a consultative meeting with the Ju|’hoansi Traditional Authority (TA) of Tsumkwe East, the !Kung TA of Tsumkwe West and members of the N‡a Jaqna Conservancy Committee in Tsumkwe in north-eastern Namibia. The discussions focused on the actual implementation of the long-awaited N‡a Jaqna conservancy and the division of tasks between WIMSA and the NNDFN in Tsumkwe West. In this meeting and ensuing liaison meetings it was resolved that the NNDFN should concentrate on capacity-building measures and WIMSA should continue to address human rights and land rights and support educational activities in the district. Both organisations plan to assist the Nyae Nyae and N‡a Jaqna Conservancies in their effort to set up a joint tourism project and draft a combined tourism policy. The NNDFN is currently drafting a detailed support plan for the San communities in Tsumkwe East and West.

Loose contact between the Rössing Foundation and WIMSA has evolved into close collaboration on issues relating to art and craft production in San communities and the regional NGO craft network (see pp. 43-44). Rössing Foundation Programme Manager Karin le Roux and WIMSA exchanged views and advice on the policy for costing and pricing Ekoka San Art Project art and textiles, on fair trade concepts for San crafts, and on possible support for craft production in Tsumkwe West.

In May 2002 Joram |Useb of WIMSA accompanied representatives of the Council of Churches in Namibia (CCN) in conducting an assessment of food security in San communities in West Caprivi and Tsumkwe District. CCN Secretary-General Nangula Kathindi and WIMSA representatives also met a few times to discuss Namibian San land issues and development in Namibian San communities in general.

In conjunction with HIVOS Southern Africa, Namibia’s Forum for the Future invited WIMSA to participate in a “Gender Mainstreaming” training workshop facilitated by the Gender Training and Research Programme at the University of Namibia. Victoria Geingos participated on WIMSA’s behalf, and shared her newly acquired understanding of terms such as ‘gender management system’, ‘gender mainstreaming’ and ‘gender equity’ with her fellow PRO students at TUCSIN.

WIMSA and other stakeholders stood by the Namibian Non-Governmental Organisations’ Forum (NANGOF) during a period of financial difficulty. WIMSA participated in an extraordinary NANGOF meeting in May 2002 in which the crisis was discussed openly. The same meeting established sectoral groups on training and capacity-building, human rights and democracy, policy and advocacy, rural and urban development, and natural resources and environment. Since its ensuing restructuring process NANGOF has become active again, but has decided to adopt a new approach in that the forum members rather than a secretariat will henceforth drive the forum activities.

The co-operation between the Indigenous Peoples of Africa Co-ordinating Committee (IPACC) and WIMSA in the reporting period focused mainly on the San alliance with the Batwa people of Rwanda and Hadzabe people of Tanzania proposed by Hans Petter Hergum, NCA Senior Advisor for Southern Africa. His recommendations to NCA in his paper titled “The Batwa and the Hadzabe: An NCA Assessment (Occasional Paper Number 4/02)”, stress the following reason for proposing this alliance:

“The hunter gatherers of Africa have much in common, like belonging to Africa, a similar history of oppression, hunting and gathering, [and geographical proximity]. All this makes the potential bond far greater than with other indigenous people like the Saami of Europe or Aboriginals of Australia.”

A discussion involving all stakeholders led to a suggestion for a workshop in which Batwa, Hadzabe and San involved in organisational development can meet to share experiences relating to indigenous knowledge and the role of cultural resources in indigenous communities. This workshop is expected to be held before the end of 2003.

WIMSA’s net with the Germany-based organisation Unternehmen Buschmänner revolved around the latter’s possible support for San students in Namibia. Extensive communication between Unternehmen Buschmänner Chairperson Carlo von Opel and WIMSA Regional Education Advisor Yvonne Pickering resulted in the organisation providing substantial funding for San students at the Windhoek College of Education. Unternehmen Buschmänner has also made its own members aware of San needs, and it is hoped that more funds can be raised, particularly for San girl students.

The UK-based Minority Rights Group (MRG) continued informing WIMSA of training opportunities and new policies relevant to indigenous minorities. At the MRG’s request the WIMSA team commented in detail on a draft report titled “Minorities in Independent Namibia” by James Suzman, the final version of which MRG published in December 2002. The MRG also plans to place former WIMSA Chairperson David Naude’s Khwedam translation of the “Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities” on its website.

Net with Governments

In the period under review WIMSA networked with government departments including, among others, South Africa’s Western Cape Department of Water Affairs and Forestry, Western Cape Department of Economic Development, Agriculture and Tourism and Northern Cape Department of Education, and with government officials in Botswana through the University of Botswana, but the focus was mainly on net with Namibian government entities.

WIMSA kept the Office of the Ombudswoman informed on San affairs in Namibia, particularly on the controversial land occupations in Tsumkwe District West. Ombudswoman Bience Gawanas-Minney personally visited troubled San communities in Namibia, and encouraged the San during the WIMSA General Assembly in November 2002 to unite and stand up for their rights.

At the request of the San communities of Tsumkwe West, WIMSA networked at different levels with the Ministry of Environment and Tourism (MET) to encourage and urge the MET to finalise the process of granting the long-waited N‡a Jaqna Conservancy. WIMSA team members participated in workshops on land degradation, biodiversity and bio-prospecting organised by the MET, which provided excellent net opportunities.
WIMSA continued informing Namibia’s Intersectoral Task Force on Educationally Marginalised Children (ITFEMC) and National Institute for Educational Development (NIED), which both resort under the Ministry of Basic Education, Sport and Culture (MBESC), of developments in the Regional San Education Programme, and of educational problems reported by San community members and/or school principals catering to San learners. The relevant ITFEMC and NIED representatives, and the Minister, Deputy Minister and Permanent Secretary of Basic Education, Sport and Culture, all readily assisted either WIMSA or a San community directly wherever possible.

The Namibian Minister of Women Affairs and Child Welfare honoured WIMSA by way of addressing the General Assembly in November 2002. At her ministry’s invitation a WIMSA representative, in this case Co-ordinator Axel Thoma, attended an orientation workshop for regional leaders focusing on the GRN/UNICEF Integrated Early Childhood Development Programme, which provided an opportunity to network with delegates interested in the plight of the San of the region.

The Co-ordinator’s Counterpart, Joram |Useb, also took the opportunity to network widely at the National Indigenous Fruit Workshop convened by Namibia’s Ministry of Agriculture, Water and Rural Development (MAWRD). The Agricultural Biodiversity Group, of which WIMSA is a member, provided another opportunity for effective net . The Deputy Minister of Agriculture, Water and Rural Development, Paul Smith, was always willing to advise WIMSA and other San representatives even when an appointment was requested at short notice.

Net with UN Agencies

The UN Global Environment Facility (GEF) was established in 1991, one year before the Rio Earth Summit, to support developing countries by funding projects and programmes aimed at protecting the global environment. The GEF is the designated financial mechanism to support major UN environment-related conventions and treaties such as the Convention on Biological Diversity and Convention for Combating Drought and Desertification. The GEF ’s Small Grants Programme (SGP) was established in Namibia in 2002. The WIMSA Co-ordinator was selected at the GEF/SGP National Steering Committee Member Election Meeting and later appointed by the UNDP Resident Representative as one of the 10 committee members for a two-year period. Since then the committee has reviewed the GEF/SGP Namibia country programme strategy and a number of community-based environmental projects to determine if they should be financially supported.

With regard to San early childhood development, San education in general and the Omaheke San Education Project, contact was kept up with UNICEF education consultant Silke Felton and her successor, James Diedericks. UNICEF was empathetic about the OST all-San board’s inability to state with certainty the cause of financial irregularities in the Omaheke San Education Project. The stakeholders recognised that the board was not at fault, and UNICEF offered to resume its support to the project once all queries had been answered satisfactorily.

Contact with Elke Zimprich Mazive of the UNESCO Windhoek Office was revitalised after WIMSA’s receipt of the UNESCO publication titled New Horizons for the San: Participatory Action Research with San Communities in Northern Namibia. Following a round-table discussion convened by WIMSA with representatives of the Ministry of Lands, Resettlement and Rehabilitation, National Planning Commission, Rössing Foundation and UNESCO on development work with San communities in the Ohangwena Region in northern Namibia, UNESCO and WIMSA agreed to advise each other regarding the establishment of a San-owned organisation for the region.

Net with Donors

WIMSA enjoyed continuous frank and constructive relationships with its donors throughout the reporting period, particularly with the representatives mentioned in this section.

Bernard van Leer Foundation programme specialists for Africa Tanja van de Linde and Astrid Honeyman visited Namibia in May 2002. WIMSA Co-ordinator Axel Thoma accompanied them on a trip to the predominantly San communities of Corridors 13 and 17 in the Omaheke Region. Discussions with the Omaheke San Trust (OST) team revolved around early childhood development (ECD) and the Omaheke San Education Project. Astrid returned to Namibia in February 2003 to participate in a round-table discussion convened for her by WIMSA with representatives of UNICEF and the OST. The meeting focused on the Regional San Education Programme, the Omaheke San Education Project, San orphans and San ECD. Astrid also held discussions with WIMSA’s new Regional Education Advisor, Yvonne Pickering, and thereafter proceeded to Botswana to meet with Yvonne’s predecessor, Willemien le Roux.

The Netherlands-based Global Ministries’ Executive Officer for Southern Africa, Sjoerd Hagsma, convened meetings with the OST and WIMSA in November 2002 to discuss the need for paralegal training for committed San community members, and for establishing paralegal units for which Global Ministries has pledged funds.

The WIMSA General Assembly in November 2002 provided an excellent platform for NORAD and NCA representatives to network with individual San delegates and representatives of WIMSA support organisations. Hans Petter Hergum of NCA has been a key stakeholder in the effort to bring about co-operation between the Hadzabe people of Rwanda, the Batwa of Tanzania and the San of southern Africa. The NCA Southern Africa Office in Gaborone has played an active role in the CKGR support coalition. To evaluate its own contribution to strengthening the work of WIMSA and its other partners, NCA put out its “NCA Southern Africa Partner Evaluation Questionnaire” which WIMSA duly completed.

The newly appointed Terre des hommes (Tdh) project officer for South Africa and Namibia, Judith Mthombeni, visited Namibia in February 2003 to familiarise herself with the current situation of San communities in Namibia and acquire first-hand information about the San in other countries of the region. She organised a “Tdh Country Partners Meeting” in Johannesburg in March 2003, which the WIMSA Co-ordinator attended. Two key agenda items were the discussion paper titled “For an Earth of Humanity: Development Policy Positions of Terre des hommes Germany”, and the partners’ net , lobbying and advocacy activities at all levels in South Africa and Namibia.

EED representatives visited WIMSA and the OST in February and March 2003. Edgar Brüser, Michael Tourneé and members of the WIMSA team held constructive discussions on San capacity-building, the current situation of San communities, WIMSA programmes and financial procedures. Oliver Märtin of EED accompanied OST Co-ordinator Ian Agnew to the Sonneblom/Donkerbos project in the Omaheke to familiarise himself with a San community. After this project visit he and the WIMSA Co-ordinator held discussions on developments in different San communities around southern Africa.

Throughout the reporting period WIMSA kept in contact with the Embassy of Finland in Namibia, which is interested in the work of OST, an organisation it supporting financially, and in the achievements, setbacks and aspirations of the San of the whole southern African region.

FOOTNOTES:
30 F.F. Prins (Natal Museum), “The Secret of the Southeastern Seaboard: A Preliminary Report” (undated mimeo).
31 Ibid.
32 Ibid..