The genocide of Namibia’s Ovaherero and Nama people by German colonial forces (1904-1907) is widely documented. But much less is made of what came next – the genocide of the country’s Bushmen, also known as the San.
In 1992, anthropologist Robert J. Gordon published a book, The Bushman Myth and the Making of a Namibian Underclass, about these indigenous people of Namibia and how they were hunted and turned into servants by German colonisers.
Now it has been thoroughly revised and has been republished as The Bushman Myth Revisited: Genocide, Dispossession and the Road to Servitude. We asked him five questions.
Why a revised, rewritten book?
Today, most Bushmen still live a life of servitude in their own country. Local San and human rights activists encouraged me to bring out an updated and inexpensive version, which the University of Namibia Press has just published. The original editions were published in the US, making them virtually unobtainable in Namibia, where they needed to be read and discussed.
Since the first edition, an extraordinary number of books on German colonialism have been published, including my own. These inspired the use of key concepts in the book like platzgeist, where a particular zeitgeist (spirit of the times) is anchored in a specific place (platz) that makes people engage in activities they might not normally do.
What was life like for indigenous people before colonialism?
The Kalahari Basin in southern Africa is one of the world’s richest ethnographic zones (areas with distinct cultures). The region is home to some of the oldest languages still in existence and the genetic diversity found in the zone indicates that it is home to one of the world’s original ancestral populations.
“Bushman” is used as a blanket term encompassing more than 200 ethnic groups. There is no “typical Bushman”; rather, they constitute a miscellany of fluid groups. “Bushman” is preferred by many local communities, possibly as a form of resistance against officialdom’s categorisation of them as San and “Marginals”. The term “San” is found only in one language, Khoekhoegowab, and means the same as Bushman.
I see them as convivial with a strong ideology of sharing. Colonial power is based on controlling access to what people desire, like money or livestock. Bushmen lived as hunter-gatherers, roaming across the landscape. They had a different concept of property, desiring neither money or livestock; they were uncontrollable and so they were treated as animals and subject to annihilation.
What was the genocidal platzgeist?
First, some background. Today’s Namibia was a German colony called German South West Africa from 1884. The 1904-1907 genocidal Herero-Nama war was decisive, as Germany sought to create a German haven by encouraging settlers.
The north-east arc of the territory, stretching from Otavi to Gobabis with Grootfontein as the epicentre, served as a magnet, with a newly completed railway line, mines, vast agricultural potential and accessible land. In Grootfontein alone, the number of settler farms increased from 15 in 1903 to 175 by 1913. Almost all these cattle ranches were on land occupied by Bushmen.
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Settlers were soon in trouble. By 1911, the Namibian press headlines screamed “Bushman Plague”. Two factors fed the panic. First, the killing of a policeman and a few white farmers. And second, Bushman activities, allegedly “brigandage” or banditry, were hindering the flow of sorely needed migrant contract workers from the Owambo and Kavango regions to work on the newly discovered Luderitzbucht diamond fields. The Chamber of Mines wanted the area “sanitised”.
Accordingly, the German governor ordered that Bushmen could be shot if they were believed to be attempting to resist arrest by officials or settlers. Over 400 anti-Bushman patrols covering some 60,000km² were deployed from 1911 to 1913.
But settlers and officials considered these measures inadequate. Settlers continued to terrorise Bushmen without as much as a slap on the wrist. “Bushman hunts” continued until the South African takeover of the territory in 1915 when the country became known as South West Africa.
We don’t know how many Bushmen died, but as I explain in my book, official estimates put Bushmen numbers in 1913 at 8,000-12,000. In 1923 it was 3,600. This gives an indication of the magnitude of the killings.
What oiled the genocide was the settler platzgeist. The dominant ethos was one of besiegement, of being threatened by unpredictable external forces. The farmers, attracted by generous government support and subsidies, were mostly discharged soldiers, ill-trained in farming, lacking crucial local knowledge, and schooled in racist arrogance. The situation bred insecurity, fear and hyper-masculinity.
Bushmen, with their reputed ability to camouflage themselves and to track and hunt using poisoned arrows for which there was no known antidote, epitomised their worst nightmare as they sought to establish overlordship on their isolated farms. Believed to be like predatory game, Bushmen had to be exterminated as a group. This was genocide.
What happened after the genocide?
Repression continued under South African rule from 1915 until independence in 1990, although it was less extreme. The possession of Bushman bows and arrows was made illegal. Bushmen were steadily dispossessed of their territory to make way for game reserves and settler farms.
As late as the 1970s, the administration was still thinking of relocating 30,000 Bushmen to the proclaimed artificially created Bushmanland, which constituted 2% of the territory they had once occupied.
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The vast majority remained in their traditional areas now under the overlordship of settler farmers, where they sank into a situation of servitude. With Namibia’s independence, the situation worsened. New labour laws set a minimum wage, making it uneconomical to keep Bushmen workers. And many farmers switched to game farming or sold to black farmers who preferred to hire their kinsfolk.
The result was that Bushmen were forced into communal areas or peri-urban informal settlements, where they eke out a precarious living.
Where does this find these people today?
Bushmen are currently found in varying states of servitude, doing largely menial labour in the north and north-eastern regions, where they were once the ancestral inhabitants. The government is trying to assist Bushmen, mainly with welfare grants and a few overcrowded resettlement farms.
Search “Namibian Bushmen” on the internet and one is bombarded with glamourised images of Bushmen in traditional dress demonstrating hunting and tracking. Such narratives, largely the result of tourism boosters, reinforce the myth of the “pristine” Bushmen. The history of genocide and servitude is airbrushed out.
