The Khoe speaking San groups speak languages (linguistic grouping Kalahari Khoe) that are more closely related to KhoeKhoe languages than to other San languages. This relationship, however, is distant. The Khoe speaking San groups are distributed over most of Botswana and their regions overlap with some of the other San groups.
1.1.1.2.1 The Tshua and Shua of eastern Botswana
The Tshua (south) and the Shua (north) consists of a number of scattered groups distributed over a large area, from the Kweneng district in the southeast of Botswana to the Ngamiland district in the northeast. They have lived in close association with Bantu-speaking groups including the Tswana, Kgalagari and Kalanga (closely related to the Shona of Zimbabwe) for over a century. The groups have various names for self identification (Tshua, Hietshware, Kua, Shua, Ts’ixa, Danisi, Deti) but all speak the eastern Khoe dialect (Table 1.1) where the word Tshua or Shua is used to refer to a “person” rather than the word Khoe. These eastern Khoe-speaking San are herders and cultivators as well as hunters. They also engage in extensive trade activities and “contract work” with neighbouring Bantu-speakers. This contract work entails an agreement, (known locally as a
“mafisa” relationship) between a local Bantu-speaking tribe and a San group. In this mafisa relationship the San group will look after the cattle of the Bantu-speaking group and in return have the right to the milk, meat in case of an accidental death, the right to use them in ploughing and in some cases the right to keep the calves. Due to these relationships
many of the San groups of eastern Botswana settled at cattle posts (Dornan, 1975;
Barnard, 1992).
1.1.1.2.2 The Khwe of northern Botswana and southern Angola
The Khoe-speaking San of northern Botswana, southern Angola and western Zimbabwe comprise the various Khwe (linguistic grouping - Kxoe) groups (including the Bugakhwe and //Anikhwe) (Table 1.1). They live in the Okavango swamp area and surrounding regions. This area is infested by tsetse flies; as a result livestock rearing is not viable. They sustain themselves through fishing as well as hunting and gathering. Linguistically, they are closer to the central Khoe speaking San than the eastern groups. Phenotypically, however, they resemble Bantu-speakers and genetic evidence also suggests a genetic makeup similar to the Bantu-speaking populations that surround them (Nurse and Jenkins, 1977;
Cashdan, 1986). They share their territory with various Bantu-speakers including the Mbukushu (cultivators), the Yei (fishermen) and to a lesser extent the Tswana, Kgalagari and Herero herders. Each group operates in a different ecological niche. The San groups are concentrated on the banks of the Okavango River and the delta area as their informal name “river Bushmen” implies (Barnard, 1992). It is not clear whether these northern Khoe speaking San groups are Khoe-San groups with extensive Bantu-speaking admixture, speakers that lost their cattle, another pastoralist population closely related to Bantu-speakers who occupied the region before the Bantu expansions or maybe a mixture of various refugee groups driven from the grazing grounds into the Okavango swamps (Cashdan, 1986).
1.1.1.2.3 The /Gui and //Gana of the central Kalahari
The /Gui and //Gana groups lived in an area now occupied by the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR) in central Botswana. /Gui has no specific meaning other than the reference to the group while //Gana is derived from a word that means “people of the well”.
The /Gui and //Gana also shared the CKGR territory with the Kgalagari. The Kgalagari are the oldest existing Bantu-speaking tribe in Botswana. //Gana individuals all tend to speak Kgalagari as well as their own language and it is believed by the //Gana themselves that they originated from a intermixing of the /Gui and the Kgalagari. The /Gui occupied the
the central and eastern part as well as the region adjacent to the eastern CKGR. The CKGR was established in 1961 and extends over 52 600 square kilometers. Only the southern (wooded zone) and central (bushveld) parts have enough vegetation to support human occupation. The central part is good hunting territory. From the 1960s to the 1980s the population in the CKGR declined from 2 000 to approximately 1 000 individuals. The Ghanzi district commissioner George Silberbauer studied the /Gui and //Gana groups extensively and constructed a borehole in the south central parts of the CKGR near the
‡Xade pan. Subsequently ‡Xade became a settlement with permanent occupation which grew from ~200 in the 1960s to ~700 in the late 1970s. In the late 1970s the people of
‡Xade were taught subsistent farming practices but with little available water this was not a successful strategy. The introduction of farming led to an increased number of livestock such as horses, donkeys and goats, which put further pressure on water supplies. Hunting on horseback and donkeys also ensued which caused a decline in large game and attracted the attention of wildlife park officials (Silberbauer, 1965; Barnard, 1992). A compromise was reached in which the San groups may stay as long as they only used traditional means of hunting.
In 1986 the government decided that the CKGR should strictly be a wildlife reserve and that residents should be relocated. San groups wished to stay in the reserve and proposed to work with park officials to sort out problems. This was declined and the resistance to resettlement was met with threats from the government and discontinuation of services. In 1997 the people of the CKGR were resettled from ‡Xade in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve to New ‡Xade, a large settlement in Ghanzi District, southwest of the reserve, and Kaudwane, a large settlement in Kweneng District not far from Khutse Game Reserve.
Promises of large compensation to people that move soon were made. In reality very little compensation was paid-out and people struggled to keep their livelihoods. A San run NGO, First peoples of the Kalahari (FPO), worked with CKGR residents and took the Botswana government to court. In 2005, the government ruled that the CKGR was off limits to people even though some residents still lived there. San people trying to access the CKGR were shot at by government officials with teargas and rubber bullets, some individuals were injured, arrested and detained. In 2006 the final decision of the court was that San groups were unlawfully removed. The government, however, was not required to restore services
because it was not unlawful for them to have stopped these services. At the end of 2006 San groups were allowed to return but without any domestic stock. They are only allowed to live from hunting and gathering practices. Hunting licenses, however, are still not issued and people are living mainly of wild foods from the reserve and food they obtain from outside (Broyhill et al., Current).
1.1.1.2.4 The Naro
The Naro live in the western parts of Botswana with the !Xõó to the south and the
‡X’ao//‘ãesi to the north. They are the most numerous of the San groups and are estimated to be one fifth of the total San population. In the 1980s they numbered approximately 9 000 individuals; ~5 000 in Botswana and ~4 000 in Namibia (Barnard, 1992). Since the late 1800s the Naro shared a large part of their eastern territory (Ghanzi block) with white and recently, black ranchers. Southwest of the Ghanzi farm block their territory overlaps with the Xanagas farm block where ranches are mostly owned by individuals of mixed white-black ancestry and also mixed Nama ancestry. Other areas south of the farm blocks and in-between the blocks are shared between the Naro and Tswana, Kgalagari and Herero subsistence herders. The Kgalagari entered the area in the early 19th century while the Tswana and Herero have migrated there since the settlement of the white ranchers. A few small San groups (Ts’aokhoe, Qabekhoe, N/haints’e and ‡Haba) that are not Naro live in the northern parts of the Ghanzi block. They are linguistically grouped with northern and central Khoe speaking San groups with some linguistic similarities to the Naro. There is very little information available on these smaller groups (Guenther, 1986; Barnard, 1992;
Guenther, 1996).
The areas occupied by the Naro have a relatively good water supply. Because of the ranches, however, the majority of the Naro have settled permanently at ranch boreholes, cattle-herding posts and towns. They supplement their traditional livelihood with herding, mafisa relationships and wage labor. They also act as tourist attractions on game farms in exchange for permission to use the land for gathering practices. They earn small salaries from ranch owners and/or tips from tourists. Some settled in the outskirts of the towns like Ghanzi and D’Kar and government settlement schemes such as the settlement at Hanahai.
one of powerlessness, despair and deprivation. They lost their land and dignity and see themselves as weaker and less intelligent than surrounding groups. Names for themselves include “voiceless people” and “rubbish people”, but they still take pride in their language and traditions such as the trance-dance (Guenther, 1986; Barnard, 1992; Guenther, 1996) (Personal observation).
1.1.1.2.5 The Hai\\om
The Hai\\om live in the northern parts of Namibia in the areas around the Etosha pan. Their name means “tree” or “bush-sleepers”. They speak a language closely related to Nama and have been classified as !Xun who acquired the Nama language. The Hai\\om themselves, however, maintain to be a separate group with a separate group identity (Barnard, 1992).