One of the most striking examples of the devastating effect South Africa's illegal military occupation has had on the Namibian population is the plight of the San community. Deprived of much of their traditional land by South Africa's bantustan policy, and threatened with further land expropriation, the San population has been forced into poverty, destitution, or, as virtually the only alternative, military service in the South African army.
A report released by the Department of Governmental Affairs in Windhoek in August 1984 revealed the pressures exerted on the San to induce or coerce them to act as spies, informers, trackers or soldiers for the SADF. The report, entitled 'Investigation into the Bushman population group in SWA' and produced by a firm of town and regional planners from Cape Town in South Africa, was accepted in principle by the Administrator General, and its recommendations were due to be 'systematically implemented'. The proposals included using San farm labourers in the white farming region in the north as a good source of information about 'the movements of insurgents from the north', and relocating San who were forced out of the northern Etosha region several years ago back to 'their familiar traditional area', where they could serve as 'informants against insurgents'.
The report supported the proclamation of eastern Bushmanland, part of the San bantustan, as a nature reserve, a plan first proposed in 1978.
The excision of about six thousand sq km of land would involve the expropriation of all the traditional water holes in the area where several small farming communities have established themselves in recent years, engaged in cattle rearing and vegetable cultivation.
The report admitted that the San community already suffered widespread poverty. More than 80 per cent of the 29,000 San living in Namibia had a per capita income of less than R5 a month. By contrast, those recruited into the army earned between R480 and R600 per month. Some five thousand San soldiers and their families were based at the military base of Omega, where all facilities were provided by the army, making families completely dependent on the military.
The investigation found that 95.4 per cent of San had not attended school. The people were generally poor. Many were concentrated at South African army camps, either as soldiers or as 'civilian camp followers', at military bases where they had become 'a problem for the SWA Territory Force'. The introduction of alcohol had led to health problems, malnutrition, neglect of children, the breaking up of family units, prostitution and assault. At Tsumkwe, the main administrative centre, there was 'a general atmosphere of begging and poverty'.
The consequences of depriving the San of their land and making them dependent on army handouts have been spelled out in several reports by an anthropologist, John Marshall. He warned that about two thousand three hundred people would become completely destitute if forced off their land by the proclamation of a nature reserve, a move amounting to 'quiet genocide'. They would not be allowed to keep cattle in the nature reserve, and only about eight jobs would be created by this venture. They would be forced to join the approximately two thousand people living in rural slums around Tsumkwe, and near other administrative police and army posts where most were dependent on government handouts.
