Human Rights and the Judicialisation of African Politics by Peter Brett

Author:Peter Brett [Brett, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781351972628
Google: ZUNvDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 34498795
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2018-09-18T09:59:25+00:00

This desire to target San for development without calling them by name reflected dilemmas integral to legitimating ‘developmental paternalism’. Various statements by RADP staff made its paternalist dimensions obvious. Some even complained that San cannot be ‘domesticated’ for a ‘civilized life in the villages’ because ‘they remain living among wild animals’ (Gulbrandsen 1991, 130–131, in Saugestad 2001, 103; for interviews from 1978 to 1982 see R. Hitchcock 2002, 805). In ‘public debate’, however, ‘the concept of “domestication” has long been replaced with the more politically correct “integration”’ (Saugestad 2001, 103). The Ministry of Local Government and Lands addressed the RADP in ultra-modernist terms, telling staff to ‘go into the remote areas, scout around for the Remote Area Dwellers, settle, develop and finally integrate them into the entire population of the country’ (Ministry of Local Government and Lands 1979, unpaginated). And it informed the Programme that ‘time is past when man can any longer rely on prayer or nature to unfold itself’. RADS should be taught ‘to bury their ethnic differences and animosity’ and (perhaps most astonishingly) ‘to look at their life objectively’ (Ministry of Local Government and Lands 1981, 3, 8). The parallels here with colonial reforming efforts are clear. As early as 1976 Margo Russell criticised an emerging tendency for GOB officials to deploy the same rhetoric about San ‘slavery’ and ‘feudalism’ once used by colonial reformers (Russell 1976; for examples Ministry of Local Government and Lands 1981, 9; R. Hitchcock 1999, 107). More recently Keitseope Nthomang (2004, 421) has attacked the RADP for ‘colonial forms of development practice that privilege the world view, interests and needs of the Tswana-dominated government rather than those of the Basarwa’.1

In the years around 1980 bureaucratic and governmental pressures for relocation from the CKGR combined with calls from conservationists. Most notably the famous lion and hyena researchers Mark and Delia Owens, authors of Cry of the Kalahari (1984), identified San hunting as a cause of declining wildlife populations (R. Hitchcock 1999, 106–107; 2002, 805; Zips-Mairitsch 2013, 300; for environmentalism’s importance at this time Conklin and Graham 1995, 697–698).2 In 1984 the newly founded Kalahari Conservation Society also proposed relocation, provoking heated media debates (Zips-Mairitsch 2013, 300). These demands had been catalysed by the (bureaucratically controversial) creation of Special Game Licenses (SGL) in 1979, allowing subsistence hunters to kill certain amounts of certain kinds of wildlife (R. Hitchcock 2002, 805). In practice, these licenses were only granted when San used ‘traditional’ methods (such as poisoned arrows) and not hunting aids (such as horses or vehicles) (Zips-Mairitsch 2013, 298).

The government was confronted with considerable San reluctance, and the creation of game licenses exemplified its slowness to implement villagisation (R. Hitchcock 2002, 805; Zips-Mairitsch 2013, 305). In 1982 it even built a school and health centre inside the Reserve at!Xade, the largest settlement. This followed migration to the area provoked by the availability of year-round clean water, leading, in turn, to the cultivation of crops and the acquisition of livestock (Saugestad 2005, 2). In 1986 a

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