REFUGEES, RESETTLEMENT, AND LAND AND RESOURCE CONFLICTS: THE POLITICS OF IDENTITY AMONG !XUN AND KHWE SAN IN NORTHEASTERN NAMIBIA

Abstract

This study examines land use, natural resource, and development conflicts, and the effects of government policies in a remote area in northeastern Namibia, known formerly as West Bushmanland, now Tsumkwe West. !Xun and Khwe San who had been soldiers of the South African Defense Force in the Angolan and Namibian wars of independence in the 1970s and 1980s were resettled in this area along with their families. Namibian government resettlement and development projects were planned and implemented in the Tsumkwe West in the early 1990s. In part because of the ways in which !Xun and Khwe San identities were constructed over time by settlers, academics, policy-makers, the South African Defense Force, the colonial and post-colonial state, and San themselves, the people of Tsumkwe West, later, the N≠a Jaqna Conservancy, have had to struggle against other groups and the state for the stake in their land and resources. Drawing on anthropological research, work of non-government organizations, and interviews of people in the area over a period of two and a half decades, this study assesses some of the ways in which resettlement and land and resource policies have mutually affected the Namibian government, the military, private companies, donor agencies, non-government and community-based organizations, and a diverse set of peoples in northeastern Namibia.