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16. History and social complexities for San at Tsintsabis resettlement farm, Namibia

Chapter of: Etosha Pan to the Skeleton Coast: Conservation Histories, Policies and Practices in North-west Namibia(pp. 427–444)

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Title16. History and social complexities for San at Tsintsabis resettlement farm, Namibia
ContributorStasja Koot(author)
Moses ǁKhumûb (author)
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.11647/obp.0402.16
Landing pagehttps://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0402/chapters/10.11647/obp.0402.16
Licensehttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
CopyrightStasja Koot; Moses ǁKhumûb
PublisherOpen Book Publishers
Published on2024-08-02
Long abstractThe theme of the 1950s eviction of Haiǁom Indigenous people from the protected area that became Etosha National Park is continued in this chapter. After this event, many Haiǁom San became farm workers. Having lost their lands under colonialism and apartheid to nature conservation and large-scale livestock ranching, most remained living in the margins of society at the service of white farmers, conservationists or the South African Defence Force (SADF). After Independence in 1990, group resettlement farms became crucial to address historically built-up inequalities by providing marginalised groups with opportunities to start self-sufficient small-scale agriculture. This chapter critically addresses the history of the Tsintsabis resettlement farm, just over a 100 kms east of ENP, where at first predominantly Haiǁom (and to a lesser degree !Xun) were “resettled” on their own ancestral land, some as former evictees from ENP. The history of Tsintsabis is analysed in relation to two pressing, and related, social complexities at this resettlement farm, namely: 1) ethnic tension and in-migration; and 2) leadership. The chapter argues that the case of Tsintsabis shows the importance of acknowledging historically built-up injustices when addressing current social complexities. The importance of doing long-term ethno-historical research about resettlement is thereby emphasised in order to be able to better understand the contextual processes within which resettlement is embedded.
Page rangepp. 427–444
Print length18 pages
LanguageEnglish (Original)
Contributors

Stasja Koot

(author)
Associate Professor at Wageningen University & Research
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8625-7525

Stasja Koot has been working with Indigenous peoples in southern Africa, predominantly Namibia and South Africa, since the late 1990s, as a researcher and a practitioner in community-based tourism. He lived at the Tsintsabis resettlement farm between 2002 and 2007. He also conducted research there, as well as in the Nyae Nyae Conservancy and Bwabwata National Park. As an environmental anthropologist, his core focus is on political ecology with an emphasis on power dynamics in tourism and nature conservation. He has published about and/or currently works on capitalism, land grabbing, philanthropy, autoethnography, trophy hunting, branding, race, apartheid and ethnicity, wildlife crime, belonging, and development. He works at Wageningen University, the Netherlands, as an Associate Professor, Sociology of Development and Change Group, and since 2019 has been a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Johannesburg, Department of Geography, Environmental Management & Energy Studies. His website is stasjakoot.com.

Moses ǁKhumûb

(author)

Moses ǁKhumûb is a Haiǁom San who is a high school graduate and trained in Indigenous people rights through short advanced training courses from the University of Namibia and the University of Pretoria. Moses has occupied a number of high-level positions in southern African Human rights organisations. He was the chairperson of the San peoples’ delegations to Southern African Development Community Civil Society NGOs, as part of a southern African regional movement aimed at asserting Indigenous people’s rights in the SADC region. He was also a delegate to the Alta conference for drafting of what is known as the Alta outcome document of Global Indigenous peoples to be presented to the UN annual General Assembly.

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