Authenticity, Identity, and Humanity: The Hai‖om San and the State of Namibia

Abstract

The Hai‖om are the largest and most widely dispersed San population in Namibia. Like many other San peoples in Southern Africa, the Hai‖om were dispossessed, marginalised, and discriminated against by other groups and by the colonial state. In 1949, the South West African administration appointed a Commission for the Preservation of the Bushmen, chaired by a former Stellenbosch University professor, P.J. Schoeman, one of the architects of apartheid in South Africa. When the final report of the Commission was published in 1953, the Hai‖om were ignored, in part because Schoeman did not see them as ‘real' or ‘authentic' Bushmen. The Hai‖om were removed from their ancestral homeland in what was designated as Etosha National Park in 1953–1954. This paper examines the efforts of the Hai‖om to seek land and resource rights and political recognition from the 1980s to the present. The Namibian government appointed a Hai‖om Traditional Authority, David//Khamuxab, in 2004, established a San Development Office in the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister in 2005, and in 2007 began purchasing commercial farms for purposes of resettlement of Hai‖om. Statements by Namibian government officials underscore the importance of humanity and compassion in the ways in which the Hai‖om San issue has been addressed. It remains to be seen, however, whether the Hai‖om of Etosha will be treated the same way as other Hai‖om and other historically disadvantaged or marginalised communities in Namibia.