Lost Lands? stems from Manuela Zips-Mairitsch’s law dissertation that was revised for publication in 2009 and then further revised, translated from German to English, and published in 2013. Her account follows the struggles the San have faced historically and politically, primarily in Botswana but also in southern Africa more generally. She examines their attempts to reaffirm their status as an indigenous group within a particular legal context in Botswana as well as more generally through the concept of indigeneity within Africa. Zips-Mairitsch reminds us that the San are not a homogenous group, and instead have several sub-regional lifeways and names in their languages; they are also known as “bushmen” and other often derogatory terms (155-159). Furthermore, through one sub-group in particular, the !Kung, studied by the Harvard Kalahari Research Group, they have been quite famously represented in anthropology as one of the last remaining hunting and gathering groups in the world (166). Because of this infamy and what I had previously learned through documentaries, general anthropology textbooks as well as publications mainly from the Harvard Kalahari Research Group, I was intrigued to learn from a more updated account of the San’s contemporary status.
Lost Lands? is bookended with a pithy preface by legal anthropologist René Kuppe and an epilogue that reiterates the significance of the legal implications of the San court cases in Botswana by Werner Zips, another anthropologist. The rest of the work is divided into six parts after Zips-Mairitsch’s brief introduction. Also included are two series of high-quality photographs (fifty-two in total), the first series before the third section of the book and the second series before the book’s sixth section. Each image has a descriptor but these often seem partial, leaving the reader wondering about the images’ larger contexts.
Although Zips-Mairitsch refers to San court-case wins in the introduction as the basis of her study, she does not return to these specific cases until the final section. Instead, Zips-Mairitsch begins with the legal concept of indigeneity in international law and then moves to discuss this issue in Africa, where indigeneity has at times been conceived of as a threat to the national unity forged in postcolonial nation-states. Next, she covers San history in southern Africa, characterizing the varied San groups and the debates surrounding how they have been understood and represented, and briefly reflecting on how their legal worldview might be interpreted. The fourth section chronicles Botswana society and history during pre-colonial periods, the colonial period as a British protectorate, and the periods after independence in 1966. The fifth section characterizes the San in Botswana and government development policies aimed at them, highlighting how they have been continually marginalized by the cattle-herding Tswana who came later into the region but preceded European colonialism and maintain the most power in Botswana society. The sixth section describes the Botswana government’s rationale for relocating those San living in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve to settlements outside and also details the court cases of some San contesting their illegal relocation and denial of access to water. Although a small portion of San regained their rights to return to the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, Zips-Mairitsch’s final subsections indicate their continued predicaments as the Botswana government very narrowly interprets what they are allowed to access in the national park.
As a legal account first, this book is quite a frustrating read for someone hoping for more ethnographic detail, this detail seemingly apparent but not fully contextualized in the two series of photographs. While Zips-Mairitsch includes references to interviews throughout the work and occasional observations, her main method for explication is citing other scholars as well as legal or policy source materials. In addition, she organizes the work in an outline form, flowing from the most general to the specific, such as starting with the question of indigeneity in international law with several subsections. It is not until the third section (155) that San-specific issues are again the main focus, and what I hoped to learn begins to be revealed. The issue of intercultural justice is also a significant contribution, first noted in the preface by Kuppe, but it feels incomplete in the occasional discussions of the varied “cosmovisions” of the San versus those embedded in Western legal systems. I agree with the author’s analysis that the San have been continually stereotyped as primordial and therefore understood in terms of what they lack economically and culturally (see Laura Nader’s work) by both locals and outsiders to Botswana. But, overall the organization of this work is disjointed, creating difficulties in following the author’s narrative and argument.
Nevertheless, with perseverance, Zips-Mairitsch’s (translated) prose occasionally reveals insightful statements. A favorite for me comes at the end of the third section where she writes, “Culture is always dynamic. Therefore, it should not be frozen in time neither because of scientific interests of preservation nor touristic reasons of economization” (184). This quote also creates some disappointment because she only superficially and briefly mentions tourism as economic strategy in Botswana generally and for the San specifically. While this book has much to offer in terms of historical and legal coverage, those interested in San contemporary lifeways in particular, might consider looking to other works for a more complete picture.
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[Review length: 868 words • Review posted on September 12, 2017]