Africa's Bushmen May Get Rich From Diet-Drug Secret - Part II
Leon Marshall in
Johannesburg
for National Geographic News
April 16, 2003
Brink of
Extinction
The South African San
Institute (SASI), a non-governmental organization that mobilizes
resources for the benefit of the San, explains they have been driven
to the brink of extinction first by African agro-pastoralists who
started arriving from central Africa from about 1,800 years ago, and
then by European settlers who arrived from the mid-17th century.
SASI says few San are
able to live by hunting and gathering today. Most work as farm
laborers. A few groups run nature conservancies, but others live
unemployed in marginal settlements, with no income other than small
pensions from the state.
Nigel Crawhall, a San
linguist who heads up SASI's culture and heritage management
program, believes the Hoodia-drug deal could help rescue what
remains of San culture.
The SASI program is
essentially about trying to mend San society and reconstruct San
culture, and so set its remaining communities on a more sustainable
path.
The San have largely
lost their sense of community and identity by being dispossessed of
their territories and becoming physically dispersed. They have
suffered language loss and some of their important social
institutions have become dysfunctional.
Reconstructing San
society and culture is an intricate process which is aimed at
getting dialogue going between the elders who still have knowledge
of some of the old ways and the younger generation who have lost it.
The purpose is to get them talking about what had gone lost and what
not, and about safeguarding that which is important. It is a process
of self-discovery, says SASI.
Apart from the
prospective financial benefits from the Hoodia deal, Crawhall
says, there is much it could do to assist this difficult process,
also by way of creating a more helpful relationship between the San
and the world they live in.
He explains: "The San
thought nobody was interested in them. Now Hoodia has come
along. They are excited and have even become a bit secretive about
their use of plants, even though most of this has already been
written up in books. But their young people do not know about these
uses, and that could change now that there is this mass market of
the developed world wanting to use their discovery for body
cosmetics.
"What struck them was
that anybody would want to use such medicines to lose weight. So
there is also this interesting interface with the outside world."
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