2 - The Politics of Indigeneity

Summary

Right to land is among the most significant interests for San today. Very often, these interests are couched in terms of ‘indigeneity’ or being indigenous to some particular territory, and therefore having rights that others will not enjoy. Several ILO Conventions (especially ILO Convention 169, in 1989), and pronouncements by the World Bank and the UN Working Group for Indigenous Peoples have altered definitions of who is, and therefore who is not, to be considered indigenous. Yet, as anthropologists (especially Adam Kuper) have made clear, neither the definition nor the rights are as obvious as claimed. What about someone who is half Bushman? Or ¼ Bushman? Or who has never been a hunter-gatherer? What special rights might such a person enjoy? Is a claim to such privileges not the same as those made by whites in the ‘old’ South Africa? Much ink has been spilled on these questions, and the decisions of Botswana courts on Bushman claims to land and other resources, especially in the CKGR, has been ambiguous. This chapter will review the literature on these issues.