Beschreibung
Images can be deceiving. The San portrayed on the cover
seem to be a remnant from a time when hunters and
gatherers still roamed vast areas of land in southern Africa.
In reality they are actors paid to re-enact the way
they once lived. In the Kalahari town of Ghanzi, Botswana,
tourists can book so-called “authentic Bushman Walks”.
More than anything, however, such performances of a foraging
lifestyle offer “authentic” accounts of current legal
and political living conditions for Botswana’s indigenous
population: displaced from their land and left without any
economic assets, they have to depend on the rampant
commodification of their culture.
Now that San communities have joined forces in the
international arena of indigenous rights struggles, their
voices are getting louder and call for at least some degree
of self-determination on the lands they once owned.
In many ways, the legal dispute over (land) rights in the
Kalahari epitomizes this global justice movement.
