Lost Lands?: (Land) Rights of the San in Botswana and the Legal Concept of Indigeneity in Africa Volume 48

Zips-Mairitsch examines the legal, political, and economic context and underpinnings of the Botswana government's forced relocation of the San people from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR) in 1997 and 2002, and the December 2006 decision of the country's High Court in favor of the San. He covers indigenous peoples in international law, legal developments of indigenous peoples law in Africa, legal perspective of the San communities, the Botswana state and society, the San in Botswana, and relocation from the CKGR. Distributed in the US by ISBS. Annotation ©2014 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)
Images can be deceiving. The San bushmen in Botswana are a remnant from a time when hunters and gatherers still roamed vast areas of land in southern Africa. However, in present reality, they are oftentimes actors paid to re-enact the way they once lived. In the Kalahari town of Ghanzi, Botswana, tourists can book so-called "authentic Bushman Walks." More than anything, however, such performances of a foraging lifestyle offer "authentic" accounts of the current legal and political living conditions for Botswana's indigenous population. Displaced from their land and left without any economic assets, they have to depend on the rampant commodification of their culture. Now that San communities have joined forces in the international arena of indigenous rights struggles, their voices are getting louder and call for at least some degree of self-determination on the lands they once owned. In many ways, the legal dispute over (land) rights in the Kalahari epitomizes this global justice movement. This book examines the land rights struggle of the indigenous San people. (Series: Legal Anthropology - Vol. 1)