As a contribution to an Indigenous Affairs issue focused on the social suffering of indigenous people around the world, Renée Sylvain describes the reality of the approximately 100,000 San people that live in southern Africa. They suffer from deprivation of land, autonomy, dignity and social cohesion, which has created economic and psychological insecurity. Symptoms of this condition that manifest in San culture today are alcoholism, high risk behavior, intergenerational alienation and violence.

In Botswana, the dominant Tswana ethnic group disregards the indigenous ethnicity of the San. After the government legally dispossessed them of their territories, they were classified as Remote Area Dwellers, a generic term for rural poor people. This classification subjects them to aggressive development programs that overlook issues of ethnicity at the root of their social suffering. The case of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve is cited and described as a process that has highly victimized the San, resettling them to new villages characterized by poverty, alcoholism and despair.

The story of the San in Angola revolves around militarization and relocation. San were recruited or coercively conscripted to fight in the Angolan war for independence in the 1960s, then soldiers were co-opted in 1970s liberation movements in Namibia and later relocated to a South African army base in the 1990s. Nearly three decades of civil war in Angola have led to severe food insecurity, discrimination, and health problems for the San living there. Since ceasefire in 2002, Angolan society has had to absorb the return of 400,000 refugees and the demobilization of 80,000 soldiers. Former San soldiers are heavily impacted by the experience of war, resulting in alcoholism and domestic and intra-community violence.

During colonial rule in Namibia, San were dispossessed of their native territories. Today they live and work on white-owned cattle ranches, in government resettlement camps or in urban squatter settlements. San men and women suffer ethnic discrimination such as drastically unfair wage rates that tie them to their employers in systems of debt-bondage. Often the only nutritional item they can buy is beer brewed on the cattle posts. There are reports of child slavery and sexual abuse by the dominant ethnicities there. San have assimilated some of the cultural norms of these ethnic groups, such as sexism; domestic violence and alcoholism are now rife in San communities. Sylvain describes the social situation surrounding illicit brewing and cuca-shops that sell beer on credit to San in an urban zone of Namibia. It has led to gangs and sex work for young San, increased incidence of rape among San women by San and non-San men and raised the risk of HIV infection. Furthermore, when San seek health care at medical centers, they are confronted by discrimination by non-San medical workers.

Sylvain notes that damage suffered in intra-community and family relationships among the San is severely debilitating to their culture because strong kin networks are a fundamental constitutive element of their ethnic identity.

Prepared by Megan Glore