Comments on: Stone-aged and primitive are what you call people when you want their land

By: RML

RML — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 11:38:50 +0000

As often is the case: follow the money!

By: Rethabile

Rethabile — Wed, 19 Apr 2006 10:28:46 +0000

So what are you saying, Rex? Are you suggesting that southern African Bushmen are like Hawaiians, and need to go “from the stone age to the jet age ‘in one lifetime’?” Personally I don’t think it’s impossible, I just think it’s not necessarily desirable.

The Botswana government sees the Baroa/Basarwa as obstacles, just as the American government saw the native Indian as an obstacle. Botswana is a rich country, there’s a lot of money to be made. Who do you think is gonna look out for the little kinky-haired man who doesn’t care for money?

By: Rex

Rex — Sun, 26 Mar 2006 08:10:44 +0000

Speaking as someone who works in a place where people have very successfully gone ‘from the stone age to the jet age’ in one lifetime, I’ll never understand why 1) people think this is impossible 2) why they continue to believe that these are ‘people without history’ — particularly in the case of the Bushmen! It looks like Google books as a copy of Robert Gordon’s “The Bushman Myth” online for free perusal:

http://books.google.com/books?ie=UTF-8&id=DOwQ9iJi90AC&dq=robert+gordon+bushmen&pg=PP1&printsec=0&lpg=PP1&sig=5cwRpX2L8Iqz_oPUhy0iE9E1Isw

You don’t have to agree with everything that Gordon writes in order to see how these sorts of prejudices are are — even when unmotivated by cupidity — incredibly poor history and social science.