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WORLD RAINFOREST MOVEMENT
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AFRICAN 'INDIGENOUS PEOPLES' SEARCHING FOR A FUTURE
'Indigenous Peoples' from all corners of the African continent
have met for the first time to take stock of their situation and
organise for their future.
By Marcus Colchester
When John Hardbattle, a /Kwe 'Bushman' from the Kalahari, was a
young boy his mother explained to him about the variety of
peoples. 'God made us all. We are all the same. But, we are
different' she told him, thus encapsulating one of Africa's great
dilemmas: how to recognise the continent's cultural diversity
while at the same time ensuring equality for all humanity.
Today, John is a spokesperson for the 'First Peoples of the
Kalahari' an indigenous organisation that is attempting to
articulate the common demands of the numerous so-called 'Bushmen'
scattered across the drylands of Botswana. He was one among a
large number of indigenous representatives who had travelled to
Copenhagen for a conference on 'The Question of Indigenous
Peoples of Africa'.
A unique event, the conference brought together for the first
time African peoples as diverse as the desert-dwelling Tuareg of
the Sahara, the cattle-raising Maasai of East Africa,
traditionally forest-dwelling 'pygmies' of Rwanda, so-called
'Bushmen' from the Kalahari, as well as exiles from Sudan,
Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa. These together with academics,
lawyers, environmentalists, development specialists and human
rights advocates and some Government officials, ensured a
searching debate on the situation and prospects of Africa's
diverse peoples.
The conference was held from 1 - 3 June as a contribution to
the United Nations' 'International Year of the World's Indigenous
People' and was organised by the Denmark-based International
Working Group on Indigenous Affairs in collaboration with the
Danish Centre for Development Research and with funds from
DANIDA.
The puzzle of definitions
But what does the concept of 'indigenous peoples' mean in the
African context? The consensus that developed was that it implies
peoples with strong ties to their lands, who have been in their
region since before colonisation, were now dominated by other
peoples from whom their cultures were markedly different and who
identify themselves as 'indigenous'.
Self-identification was the key. Indeed the right to self-
identification is upheld in international law by the
International Labour Organisation's 'Tribal and Indigenous
Peoples Convention', which came into force last year. Why though
should anyone *want* to identify themselves as 'indigenous'? The
question had puzzled one of the Tuareg invited to attend the
meeting. What relevance, he wondered, has a conference on
indigenous peoples got for me?
A similar question troubled those not from discriminated
groups. Alice Mogwe of the Botswana Centre for Human Rights noted
that a common response of those from dominant ethnic groups in
Africa was to ask the question: 'if they are 'indigenous' what
does that make me?'
For those in French-speaking Africa the concept of indigenous
peoples is even more problematic. The French word 'indigene'
implies primitiveness and backwardness - conjuring up images of
folklore and curiosity. The awkward term 'autochthone', used in
French translations of international law, is obscure.
However, the discussants made clear that words are what we
make of them. Labels are assumed for convenience and evolve
suitable connotations through use. Indeed, as Howard Berman,
Professor of International Law from California, noted,
international lawyers are still not agreed on a definition of the
term 'peoples', which has been a key word in the work of the
United Nations since its inception. 'The decolonization process
didn't wait for a definition before proceeding. If it had the
colonials would probably still be there' he remarked.
Besides, other terms were even more problematic. The notion
of 'minority' was broadly rejected as unsuitable, assuming a
subordination to the Nation State, whereas what many peoples are
looking for is a greater measure of autonomy in their own areas
where they are the majority. The Berber peoples of Algeria have
a saying, 'the only minority is the regime', the conference was
told by Salem Mazhoud of Anti-Slavery International.
States, particularly African States, are, however, fearful
of any concept that apparently promotes ethnic chauvinism,
conjuring up images of secession and what Charles Lane of the
International Institute for Environment and Development called
'the bogey of ethnic violence'. However, as various speakers from
IWGIA reminded the meeting, the whole aim of asserting indigenous
peoples' rights is to provide an alternative to ethnic conflict,
opening up ways of resolving conflicts, based on negotiated
agreements between States and the peoples that comprise them. The
Tuareg, after a bitter two year war in Mali, managed to secure
just such a Treaty with their government in April last year. The
aim should be to ensure that 'indigenous' peoples can secure
their future within the African context without resort to arms.
The key is to develop accepted rights for 'indigenous' peoples.
Human Rights
Human rights were conceived as a means of securing the
individual's rights in relation to the State and internationally
have developed from the original Universal Declaration of Human
Rights of 1948 into a large body of international law. Protection
of these rights, however, assumes a benign State but when the
process of government discriminates between peoples, on grounds
of their culture or through failing to appreciate the
significance of cultural differences, individual human rights
provisions provide little defence.
Reluctantly after years of argument, the United Nations
bodies have begun to realise that group rights must also be
recognised and protected. The rights of "people's" to self-
determination, peace and subsistence are now recognised and, in
addition, 'indigenous peoples' rights to their lands and
territories, to their customary laws and to represent themselves
through their own institutions have also been made law.
African Governments have gone farther than most in
recognising collective rights. The 'African Charter on Peoples
and Human Rights' agreed by the Organisation for African Unity
in Banjul notes, in Article 19, 'nothing shall justify the
domination of a people by another'. The Charter establishes an
African Human Rights Commission to look into abuses of human
rights in Africa, which while its has not yet considered group
rights provides a hopeful mechanism for resolving conflicts
between peoples.
The problem comes, though, when the State asserts itself as
the holder of collective rights, as when the Algerian Government
claimed that 'the entire Algerian State is a league for the
defence of human rights', at the same time as it was
systematically discriminating against the Berber.
The State
Indeed, as many speakers repeatedly noted, the very notion of the
State is foreign to Africa. Sharif Harir recalls how the ninety-
five peoples of Darfur identify their problems as beginning with
the annexation of this remote Islamic Sultanate of west Sudan by
the British in 1914. Dating their troubles to 'when the
government came', the locals note the collapse of traditional
systems of resource use and self-government all came about
through the colonial impositions. Legal norms, especially those
requiring the registration of land, were instituted that took no
account of customary rights. The new adminstration imposed
leaders who became tools of the State, no longer answerable to
their own people. All power was centralized and removed to
Khartoum.
It was an experience repeated throughout Africa and which has
left an indelible mark. The colonials may have left - in theory
at least - but their laws, administration, institutions and their
values remain behind - and fit their subjects no better today
than when they were imposed. Independence has brought further
problems. Peoples remain arbitrarily divided by national
frontiers. The Tuaregs for example, now find themselves in
Mauretania, Mali, Niger, Algeria, Libya and Chad.
Many 'indigenous' peoples now find themselves the subjects
of new masters but still not masters of their own destiny. The
riverine Sudanese who now rule from Khartoum are as alien to the
people of Darfur as were the British. Many speakers noted that
conditions under the independence governments have got worse.
Indeed, in a now famous unguarded moment President Nimeiry
admitted to a visiting ex-colonial governor 'the Sudan is not as
efficiently run as when you were here.'
Mohamed Salih, of the institute of Environmental Policy and
Society of the University of Uppsala, noted that a process of
'internal colonialism' has replaced colonialism, and has led to
economic stagnation and collapse, widespread famine, ethnic
partiality and a failure of Government even to retain power.
Misrule in Africa has led to ethnic conflicts, many of which can
be seen as the continuation of the colonial wars, as the new
African States attempt to incorporate those peoples which the
colonial States never successfully subjugated. As under the
colonials, the independent regimes continue to apply what Salih
refers to as 'systematic state policies to erode or get rid of
cultural differences.'
A study by the World Rainforest Movement on the situation in
Equatorial Africa highlighted the ecological consequences of such
inappropriate policies - the devastating effects of logging and
the wildlife trade resulting from policies which deny the rights
of forest-dwelling communities. Many of the problems of post-
colonial government in the area had been compounded by covert and
overt interventions by ex-colonial powers. In Equatorial Africa,
the French had repeatedly meddled with the political process to
secure access to natural resources - timber, oil, uranium and
other minerals. French paratroops still remain encamped in Gabon,
twenty-eight years after they intervened, 'where they share a
hill-top with the fabulous palace of President Haji Omar Bongo -
an unforgettable symbol of the coincidence of interests between
the French and the ruling elite'.
Policies of assimilation
Forced relocation, the conference learned, has been a common
problem faced by 'indigenous' peoples in Africa. The Batwa of
Rwanda noted how some of the last forest-dwelling pygmies of the
country have been forced to relocate to make way for the Gishwati
forest conservation project financed by the World Bank. Destitute
through loss of their land they have been reduced to beggary.
But resettlement has not just been a means to make way for
development - dams, mines, irrigation schemes and conservation
zones - but has also been a central plank of Government's
assimilationist policies.
In Equatorial Africa, systematic torching of forest
settlements hastened the people down to road-side villages; a
policy continued by the independence governments into the mid-
1970s. Under Nyerere's 'ujamaa' ideology, 'villagisation' was
imposed on the dispersed homesteads and settlements in Tanzania,
totally undermining customary systems of land use and leadership.
Pastoralists were sedentarised in the Sahel with the assistance
of the International Labour Organisation. Resettlement of the
'Bushmen' remains the policy of the Government of Botswana and
a recent attempt to expel /Kwe groups from the Central Kalahari
Game Reserve was only stopped after concerted protests by the
human rights groups Survival International and IWGIA. In a
subsequent meeting with the local administration the /Kwe were
warned: 'You think that these outsiders will always help you.
Well, one of these days they will be gone and there will only be
us, and we own you and we will own you till the end of time and
you will not achieve what you want.'
Controls on the expression of culture have been a major means
of obliging 'indigenous' peoples to assimilate. The Berbers
continue to be denied the right to use their language in Morocco.
The /Kwe told the meeting how their children are frequently and
repeatedly beaten if they fail to understand Tsetswana in school.
The Tuareg noted how education has long been used to break
down cultural differences and cited a French colonial official
of 1917 remarking: 'We only have at our disposal a limited number
of means to transform the primitive peoples of our colonies and
render them devoted to our aims and amenable to our enterprises
and the most sure is to take the indigene in his infancy, and
ensure that he frequently visits us and submits to our
intellectual and moral customs during the following few years.
In a word, to open up schools where his spirit can be moulded to
suit our goals.'
Maasai representative Saroni ole Ngulay of the organisation
Inyuat e-Maa told the meeting how in the 1970s in Tanzania 'we
were forced to adopt western dressing patterns and those who did
not were refused transport, education and medicine'. Young
warriors were sometimes forcibly shaved of their plaited hair and
the Kenyan government has sought to abolish 'warrior' age grades
and prohibit the coming-of-age ceremonies 'when we ordain the
young men to be priests of the community'. Even the Christian
Churches have played a part in this process, by seeking to
prohibit Maasai prophets - the traditional leaders - 'as they
have learned that they cannot win our souls without first
removing them'.
Pastoralists and hunter-gatherers are widely despised by
urban groups. Their wandering lifestyles appear aimless, as if
they trail around randomly without purpose. Johannes Aron of the
'First Peoples of the Kalahari' emphasised how this
incomprehension was based on lack of consultation. 'Why' he
wondered 'were we not asked before why we move around? People
appear aimless but if we had been asked they would have found out
long ago why we do it.'
'It appears that even now it is said that the 'Basarwa'
(which means 'those who do not own' in Tsetswana) never had
rights and that they don't have rights now or a mind or
intelligence of their own. This culture that God gave us
has kept us strong through all these centuries, doesn't
that show that we are a people with intelligence? If the
government wants to help our people now - since it has
assumed this responsibility - they should give the people
their rights to land, not handouts. It is not respectful to
take everything and then settle them and give them what
they need - that way the people don't have self-respect.
The Government should ask us what we want. The other thing
that hurts is that the /Kwe are disappearing. We need our
land and we want our culture.'
'We have been hearing about development for a long time
but it seems the word is there but not the will. We hear
the word 'development' but we see our lands disappear and
our people dwindle. The government has in some way
abandoned us. They say they are our fathers and mothers yet
we are being discriminated against. It is our own
government that does this. This is painful for us.... It is
a pain to me that when I go home, I sit there and wonder,
do I have a government or not?'
Land rights
The central concern for all 'indigenous' peoples is to retain
control of their customary lands. As Kxao Moses =Oma of the Nyae
Nyae Farmers Cooperative of eastern Namibia told the conference:
'Daily life in Bushmanland revolves around n!oresi.
Bushmanland is our large n!ore. It is like a territory for
all our families. The large n!ore consist of our small
n!ore which are territories of an extended family. N!ore
means basically the place where you were born and your
parents and grandparents were born. In Eastern Bushmanland,
we have 200 of such 'family n!oresi'.
The n!ore is not just a piece of land. It is a piece of
nature. It is our natural resource. We find our entire
livelihood in such n!ore: the vegetables, the wild food
plants, the water, the game and material for our houses,
tools and so on. Each n!ore does not provide the same
natural resources, therefore, the Ju/hoan families have
learned to share them. We have learnt to help each other in
order to survive in such a harsh environment. In short, the
n!ore is our backbone for survival, and therefore the
foundation for our culture.
We wish to maintain and manage our n!oresi for our
children and grandchildren, so that we have something
valuable to offer them for their future. If you just look
across the border fence to Botswana where our brothers and
sisters have lost their n!ore rights, you might recognise
that there the Ju/hoansi are living in poverty and without
any rights, oppressed by others who have taken over the
Ju/hoansi land.
We, the Ju/hoansi, consider the right to our n!oresi,
the right to use and manage natural resources, to be
essential for our lives.
I brought this to your attention to inform you how we
are depending on our n!oresi, and how our culture and well-
being are linked to this land system. We Ju/hoansi were
born here, we grew up here, we married here. Still,
Bushmanland belongs to the government - why don't we have
the right to the land? We know the animals, we know the
bush food, we were taught how to use these valuable natural
resources for the best benefit of all our people. We are
afraid of people moving in, and taking away everything from
us. For us, land rights are a human right.'
However, the conference learned that efforts to legalise land
ownership in Africa were fraught with problems. The tendency to
give individual titles to those 'improving' land is leading to
deforestation in Central Africa where settlers clear rainforests
to stake land claims. Lack of precision in the law about the
legal entity that owns communal lands has also led to abuses. On
the one hand the State has found it easy to extinguish such
titles. On the other hand, as among the Maasai, titling has
stimulated improvident land sales, leading to the emergence of
an indigenous elite and the destitution of many others.
One pastoralist researcher had commented: 'I think the most
important thing about a title deed is that it is authority to
sell. A title deed is an instrument of alienation, not control...
Title deeds give you the unilateral independence to dispose of
land and the freedom to become poor. They are a licence the
destroy the future of your children.'
The dilemma for Africa, the World Rainforest Movement noted,
'is to find a way of legally securing communal tenure in a form
acceptable to local communities without favouring the interests
of indigenous elites and outsiders, whose power and privilege
give them unequal access to the administration.'
Indigenous Organizations
The key to overcoming such problems lies in the emergence of the
'indigenous' peoples' own organisations. While some groups have
found powerful allies in Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs),
others have found them to be all too fallible intermediaries
which often run affairs for their own gain. 'NGOs have not been
very good to us' Kaetuai ole Katampoi, a Maasai from Kenya, told
the meeting.
It was important for these organisations to build on
traditions but not to be shackled by them. 'The Maasai is his own
worst enemy', one Maasai leader had noted. 'Our society needs to
be transformed to meet our contemporary challenges' Saroni ole
Ngulay observed. The meeting learned of diverse efforts to set
up new forms of schooling, health programmes, cooperatives, land
titling exercises, farming schemes - the most important of all
being efforts of awareness raising. Organisations have emerged
which transcend ethnic boundaries and far from being vehicles for
'tribalism' have developed as a means of defence against ethnic
chauvinism and discrimination.
This encouraging trend among 'indigenous' peoples to mobilise
in the form of alliances has also crossed international
boundaries. The meeting was told that an effort to create a
network of 'pygmy' groups, who live scattered between Cameroon
and Uganda and as far south as Zaire and Burundi, had recently
been initiated with a regional conference in Mbaiki in the
Central African Republic in March this year. Batwa 'pygmies' from
Rwanda have linked themselves to the International Alliance of
Indigenous-Tribal Peoples of the Tropical Forests which spans the
globe.
The solutions don't lie only with 'indigenous' peoples
themselves, warned Mohamed Salih, who emphasised that changes in
the nature of the State were also required and implied a wider
mobilisation. Only thus could a form of government develop that
was responsive to African cultures and peoples' needs - through
decentralization and the creation of political accountability.
Concluding the conference, Jens Dahl of IWGIA projected a
note of optimism. When the conference was first planned two years
ago, it was considered impossible to find an African country
willing to host indigenous peoples from all over Africa. Today
the situation is changing. Political pluralism has now been
widely accepted, democratic institutions are being reasserted and
cultural pluralism is thus becoming a possibility. The Government
of Botswana, which was represented at the meeting, announced that
it was planning a Regional Conference on the San People later in
1993 to highlight the International Year of the World's
Indigenous People. Thus even the long mistrusted term
'indigenous' to refer to dominated peoples has begun to find
currency among African governments.
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About the writer: Marcus Colchester is an anthropologist and
human rights advocate who works as Forest Peoples Programme
Director for the World Rainforest Movement.
4 June 1993
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