The Gods Must Be Crazy, But the State Has a Plan: Government Policies Towards the San in Namibia

Abstract

recent film The Gods must be Crazy is an amusing but thinly disguised piece of South African propaganda in which a peculiar element of South African white mythology receives prominent attention. I refer to those noblest of noble savages, Kalahari San or Bushmen. After extermination of San inside South Africa, South African popular consciousness then adopted the little brown men as a kind mascot embodying timeless values of a lost world. notion that some San in 1980s remain untouched by civilization is a cruel joke. San have been subject of a century of rapid social change and especially in last twenty years have been forced to endure all benefits of South Africa's apartheid policies in Namibia. purpose of this paper is to explore current situation of San in Namibia and manner in which they have been affected by South African policies and repression. I will focus on !Kung San, a former hunting and gathering people who live in northeastern Namibia and northwestern Botswana along a strategic border area, with whom I have worked for over twenty years (Lee I979). Unlike cinematic Bushmen living in harmony with nature and with each other, South African-controlled !Kung in Namibia if we are to believe recent south African press reports are fierce and warlike, loyal to their white masters, and hateful of South