"Our Land They Took:" San Land Rights Under Threat in Namibia

"Our Land They Took:" San Land Rights Under Threat in Namibia

Different San groups share problems of poverty, powerlessness, social disorganisation and marginalisation. In any agrarian society, the problems of poverty and marginalisation are never far removed from those of land and land tenure. The Namibian San groups have been dispossessed of most of their ancestral lands. On those lands they still occupy, there are almost always substantial issues of resource overuse, environmental degradation, occupation by non-San groups, illegal grazing, forced resettlement, the unclear legal status of communal lands, and even ongoing government threats to dispossess San of their lands. The next four chapters deal with the threats to San lands in four distinct parts of the country, and with the legal issues raised by these threats. Common threads are an inadequate legal basis for San land tenure, an unwillingness on the part of the Namibian Government to defend San interests, and a lack of legal resources to defend San land rights. The law of San land rights is the subject of chapter 6.

Sidney L. Harring and Willem Odendaal

http://www.lac.org.na/projects/lead/Pdf/landtheytook.pdf

Legal Assistance Centre

2006

© Land, Environment and Development Project of the Legal Assistance Centre, 2006

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