Re-Claiming the Past by Re-Living in the Present: The ≠Khomani San Living Museum and the Restoration of Dignity in the Southern Kalahari

Introduction

The San of Southern Africa are one of the most marginalised minority peoples in the region (Veracini and Verbuyst, 2020). Over the last twenty-five years, they have been the subject of multiple socio-economic development programmes and interventions (Dyll, 2018; Robins, 2001). Despite these interventions, San communities remain some of the economically poorest in Southern Africa, suggesting that the dominant paradigms behind these many programmes and interventions need to be reconsidered. This article critiques development discourses in the Kalahari by examining a unique development project, the Living Museum, in the ≠Khomani San community in the Southern Kalahari. Unlike conventional development interventions focused on economic modernisation, the Living Museum has emerged from within the community as a space for re-claiming cultural heritage, repairing social fabric and reasserting dignity. The Living Museum has not primarily evolved as an economic development project. The article proceeds in three steps. First, we locate the ≠Khomani San within the development discourse, tracing how modernisation frameworks continue to shape their lives. Second, we analyse the Living Museum as a site of memory, belonging, and repair, paying attention to how it transcends the binaries of tradition and modernity. Third, we reflect on what this case suggests for future development practice, particularly the need to centre dignity, cohesion, and reparative justice over narrow economic metrics.

In 1999, the ≠Khomani San of South Africa were awarded, under the Restitution of Land Rights Act of 1994, one of the largest land claims in the post-Apartheid period (Chennells, 2002). This meant a transfer of ownership and management of six farms (Erin, Andriesvale, Scotty's Fort, Miershooppan, Witdraai and Uitkoms) with a total land area of 38,000 hectares (!Ae!Hai Kalahari Heritage Park Agreement, 2002; Koot and Büscher, 2019). The community's land is organised today by socio-economic activity. Thus, different farms are used for different purposes. Three are set aside for small stock farming, namely Scotty's Fort, Miershooppan and Uitkoms. Andriesvale was set up as a peri-urban settlement near a local shop and lodge, and based on our observations, is home to the largest population of the area. Erin and Witdraai are set aside for those who wish to live a more “traditional” way of life with no stock farming allowed. Erin is the least populated of the six former farms with only one family living there in the old farmhouse. ¹ Since the awarding of the land to the ≠Khomani San in 1999, various attempts have been made to bring about development in the form of socio-economic improvements in the area. NGOs and government departments have initiated diverse projects including craft-making and selling, textiles, tracking of game, tour guide training, growing of medicinal plants, home-based care, the creation of a local library, road works, a building of a bush-camp for tourism and many others. The Living Museum is one of many on-going projects being promoted in the area (see website for full details at https://www.khomanisan.com/). During our fieldwork, we observed several development projects including a Bushcamp, a Living Museum and a Medicinal Plant Project at Witdraai and Erin. The Living Museum discussed here is a simple site of grass huts, a campfire for stories, walking trails and areas for the creation of and demonstration of traditional craftwork. As part of the museum's outward facing role for visitors, members of the community dress in traditional clothes and give guided tours, talks and demonstrations, as well as occasionally performing dances for tourists. However, the museum also serves as a commercial enterprise for the community and is used for community events and ceremonies.

The 1999 San land claim was the first of its kind in South Africa to people of indigenous descent and occurred because a small group of people were identified and documented as being forcibly removed after the 1913 cut-off date for restitution (RSA, 1994). In the case of this San community, a small group were living around a borehole in what became the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park and were forcibly removed in the 1970s (Koot and Büscher, 2019; Pers. Com.). ² The older generation of ≠Khomani San remember their direct experience of forced removals, dehumanisation and destruction of social and cultural structures under Apartheid (Pers. Com. Francis and Francis, 2024). This relatively recent and documented instance of forced removal is one of the key reasons that a claim under the Restitution of Land Rights Act was considered valid, unlike those of other indigenous communities who were alienated from land prior to 1913. For most San people, their alienation from land in South Africa took place prior to 1913 and thus in the post-Apartheid democratic dispensation under the Land Acts of 1994 they did not qualify for restitution (RSA, 1994).

Generally, the ≠Khomani San are peripheral to the South African economy and live on the margins of existence (Francis et al., 2016; Koot and Büscher, 2019). With the end of Apartheid, they were excluded from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, because the cut-off date for crimes against humanity was conceived of as the Apartheid period, not the colonial period, and thus the new national narrative about South Africa's past (Francis and Francis, 2024). The ≠Khomani San land claim was viewed both as a catalyst for development and as a process of restoring rights in South Africa's post-Apartheid dispensation, in theory partially addressing the community's marginalisation. Yet, it remains questionable as to whether the claim has achieved these goals.

In this article, we explain the reparative justice approach of the South African state and locate the ≠Khomani San experience within existing modernist development discourse of the Kalahari arguing that this disourse fragments the ≠Khomani San. In our examination of the Living Museum as a development initiative, we argue that under the modernisation development discourse, San people have been trapped between a modernisation path born from a Euro-centric imaginary or an alternative primordial path that itself is appropriated in order to modernise. Discourses of tradition, modernity, and hybridity mask the lived reality of a community working to restore belonging after collective trauma from colonialism, Apartheid and poverty. The museum does not “represent” tradition or modernity, nor a hybridity of the two (cf Robins, 2001). Instead, it enacts a relational practice of remembering and belonging that refuses to be fixed in developmentalist categories and works as a space to repair dignity. Thus, participation is not reducible to commercial gain but refers to an emancipatory politics of memory and restoration. As one member of the community said, “We can’t go back to the past, go to the bush, to make life. We have to make the past right in the present times. We are hurting because of this past.” For the ≠Khomani San, re-living the past is not a retreat into “tradition” but a practice of repair – a way to overcome the identity erasure and harms imposed by colonialism and Apartheid. The traditional-modern dichotomy, rather than explaining this process, functions as yet another mode of denial. A post-development, postcolonial, peace framing illuminates the ontological ³ and epistemic hegemony of this discourse. Poverty and marginalisation are systemic outcomes of Apartheid, colonialism, and neoliberal development logics. The ≠Khomani San have not been passive: they have resisted erasure, created institutions (e.g. the Bushman's Council, the Living Museum), and sustained memory. There is a need to focus on dignity, memorialisation and the building of social cohesion to repair many of the harms caused in the past (Francis and Francis, 2024). The Euro-centric modernity episteme ⁴ impoverished the San economically, socially and culturally, and it will not release them from this.

In this article, we claim that the Living Museum is symbolic of the need for an alternative pathway. The Living Museum's significance does not rest in economic success or in the commodification of “tradition” Instead, it operates as an infrastructure of dignity – a space where the ≠Khomani San can reassert belonging, transmit memory, and heal the fractures of colonial and apartheid dispossession. It should be read not as an instance of “traditional culture” adapted to modern markets, but as an act of reparative justice and community self-affirmation. The merits of the Living Museum are not its economic benefits, framed in the commodification of culture, nor in the representation of a primordial past based on colonial stereotypes. Instead, it indicates a broader need, to repair the social fabric, by re-membering, memorialising, and re-claiming a past that was denied.

Locating the ≠Khomani San in the Development Discourse

A defining feature of the post-colonial and, in South Africa, post-Apartheid era is the emphasis on a need to “develop” previously colonised regions of the world. This agenda is a product of the development discourse that focuses on categories such as developed/underdeveloped, traditional/modern (modern and/or Western) (Everett, 1997). In this discourse, “modernity” is associated with Euro-centric ideals and measured by criteria such as progress (i.e. unidirectional change), technological advancement and high standards of living. By contrast, “traditional” is frequently seen as backwardness, stagnation and poverty (Robins, 2001). Modernisation theory and dependency theory emerged out of this discourse and, in international development, advocated for the “modernisation” of the peoples of the Global South. The problematisation of the socio-economic condition of previously disadvantaged groups of people facilitated the growth of a veritable development industry. Despite theoretical advances and critiques, local and international non-governmental organisations, consultancy groups, multilateral organisations, foreign policy arms of Western governments, as well as international financial institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF continue to advocate for a vision of development based on the modern/traditional dichotomy of earlier years.

Dominant development theories, grounded in Euro-centric ideals and the European historical experience, have long been criticised as forms of imperialism applied to the Global South, imposing value-laden concepts on post-colonial societies (Escobar, 2023, 2004, 1995). As Parashar and Schulz note, “Modernity, as we know, has piggybacked on the colonial enterprise of the “civilising mission”; more than political, material, and technological superiority, it is the normative power of the civilising mission that tends to shape the discourse of being progressive, modern, and scientific in these formerly colonised societies” (2021: 869). Even alternative approaches such as participatory development (Fals Borda and Rahman, 1991) continue to frame development as progress, retaining these embedded discourses. The pressure for postcolonial states to meet “Eurocentric yardsticks of modernisation” remains significant, with expectations for development and socio-economic parameters shaped by Euro-centric ideals (Parashar and Schulz, 2021: 871). Post-colonial trajectories in peace and development discourse, and the relationship between them, continue to be shaped by the “constraints on thought imposed by the onto-epistemic configuration of Western modernity” (Escobar, 2023: 1).

Definitions of development, whether at a state or local level, are most often tied to some form of economic growth and the accumulation of material wealth (Rist, 2008). In this regard, development discourse is based on the illusion that economic growth leads to a better life (2008, 2011). Yet, large-scale economic growth often leads to marginalisation and further poverty on the margins of the system, as for example, has occurred in the Kalahari (Francis et al., 2016). In the post-Apartheid period, further poverty has equated to further indignity. Although, post-Apartheid South Africa was a latecomer to “development” and international aid, by 1999 it had adopted the Growth, Employment and Redistribution policy which, along with the accompanying Euro-centric ideals of modernity and progress, brought the post-Apartheid state firmly into the neo-liberal developmental camp (Bond, 2004). The government adopted the discourse of the “developmental state” whereby the role of government was defined as intervening directly through programmes and policies aimed at socio-economic change, poverty reduction, and the curtailment of socio-economic inequalities for marginalised communities. This developmental state provided a syncretic ideal, ostensibly to address economic harms caused by Apartheid, but South Africa's developmental state remained subject to development discourses that prioritised Euro-centric visions of modernisation. Notwithstanding the post-development and postcolonial critiques available to academics and practitioners, modernisation therefore remains the dominant model applied to the Kalahari.

Even though the San have been awarded land rights and involved in cultural tourism, the underlying conceptualisation of development that underpins all development projects in the Kalahari remains framed by Euro-centric ideas of economic success. These models often focus on economic productivity, market integration, and commodification of culture.

Restoring Rights Through the Land Policy Framework in South Africa's Developmental State

A key feature of the immediate post-Apartheid period in South Africa was an attempt to restore rights that had been eroded or denied to communities. The land legislation and policy framework designed and adopted by the democratic government of South Africa can be seen in this light. The South African government passed multiple pieces of legislation from 1994 onwards to address land restitution, land redistribution and land tenure (Cliffe, 2000). Land restitution specifically targeted communities who had suffered land alienation under Apartheid, restoring title and rights. Redistribution aimed to provide land to communities who had previously been unable to farm because racist laws restricted access to land, enabling those who wished to farm in the contemporary period to do so. Land tenure guaranteed access to land for labour tenants and the right to live and work on that same piece of land in which they are tenants.

The San of the Southern Kalahari comprise a section of the population that was forcefully dispossessed of their lands during the colonial, segregationist and Apartheid periods. With the aid of the South African San Institute (SASI), these Bushmen ⁵ were able to lay claim to land rights in the post-apartheid period. In 1999, sixty-five thousand hectares of land was returned by the South African government to the ≠Khomani San people. The claim was settled through a series of negotiations and was therefore not subject to court proceedings (Sylvain, 2002). The ≠Khomani San land claim constitutes the largest land claim in South Africa since the transition to democracy and the only claim of its kind among indigenous people in the region.

Prior to the land claim, the ≠Khomani San did not exist as a homogenous group (Chennells, 2002). The claimants were brought together by SASI, an NGO specifically formed to provide evidence and data for the claimants making the claim and which sought out potential beneficiaries through a long process. The ≠Khomani San is a name applied to the community during the land claim that brought together a disparate group of people of Bushman heritage and with ancestry that can be traced to a common language. The name ≠Khomani arises from this language. It long applied to some of the community but was then extended to those of shared ancestry. These scattered Bushmen families comprised approximately 1,500 people in the final estimation (Chennells, 2002). After the completion of the second phase of the land claim in 2002, the claimants were tasked with the responsibility of developing leadership structures based on democratic principles and building a community out of a fragmented people, many of which had not been fully aware of their shared heritage because racialised policies of the state had negated this component of their identity. Many also believed that the oral history about their Bushman heritage would be insufficient to “prove their “authentic” identity. Their experience speaks to decades of trauma, as populations sought to hide their identity during colonialism, then had their heritage denied during Apartheid, and finally were deemed “unauthentic” in the post-apartheid period (Francis and Francis, 2024; Koot and Büscher, 2019)

Because the ≠Khomani San community had been long fragmented and scattered across the region, and came together specifically through the land claim, the resulting community provides a rich heterogeneity in the social relations among community members. This heterogeneity results necessarily in a diverse set of opinions around resource allocation, land use and needs.

Methodology of the Study

This article is based on original empirical research in the form of multiple periods of ethnographic fieldwork in the Northern Cape, South Africa with the ≠Khomani San community. The researchers have had a relationship with the community since 2003 and have spent 13 separate ethnographic field trips in the Kalahari, each ranging from three to four weeks in length, as well as conducting extensive fieldwork in other San communities in Southern Africa. As Koot claims, “one of ethnography's crucial strengths is its longitudinal research and engagement with people, often based on repeated visits over the years and in the maintenance of contact during periods of absence” (Koot et al., 2020).

Fieldwork was conducted with participants living across all the farms on which people reside (six farms), ensuring a broad geographic representation. Our long relationship with this community is built on patterns of trust and respect, ensuring that all members can participate and exercise their agency. Data is derived from semi-structured interviews and personal observations in the community and participant observation at the Living Museum, both in public facing functions and private ceremonies. ⁶ Community members determined which language(s) they wished to communicate in, which in most cases was Afrikaans, but occasionally in English among younger members. Fieldwork is critical to understanding beliefs, perceptions and practices. Our fieldwork enabled in-depth conversations with the community about the varied development projects that have been instituted; discussions about the land claim and the processes of land reparation; and discussions about the ways in which community members were alienated from the past and are reconstituting the present. Participant observation in the workings of the Living Museum facilitated in-depth discussion of the ways in which the museum project came about, the activities which constituted the Museum and perceptions of the goals of living museum project.

The Impact of the Modernisation Discourse in the Kalahari

The dehumanising and forced displacement policies and practices of colonialism and Apartheid stripped San people of their indigeneity, heritage, social cohesion and economic means. This acute erasure was economic, cultural and social. Whereas land restitution acknowledges the socio-economic rights of the San, their social and emotional deprivation is not addressed through post-Apartheid policies. Restitution practices fail to acknowledge how San were dehumanised and denied social cohesion, and dignity. Dignity, as a collective (Ikre, 2024) and a relational (Harrison, 2024) concept, is tied firmly to inherent relationships within and between communities (both San and non-San), as well as to the structural conditions in which communities are located. As a concept and praxis that links postcolonial peace and development, dignity necessitates more than an institutional or legalistic demand for recognition, it requires an active praxis of building social cohesion within and beyond community. Achieving dignity thus further necessitates the unpacking of structural conditions which continue to dehumanise and marginalise groups.

In the contemporary period, we contend that the impact of the modernist development agenda in the Kalahari has been twofold. First, the agenda's very nature produces a binary that fragments the community. In the past, like other African indigenous peoples, San were deculturated and disconnected in ways in which postcolonial theorists such as Cabral describe constitute a paradox (2016, orig. 1977). Cabral describes this paradox facing the colonial power which on the one hand must divide and separate in order to control and thus preserve and institutionalise cultural separation. But on the other hand, to ensure continued domination must destroy the identity, culture and social structure of communities (Cabral, 2016: 170). Colonialism and Apartheid denied the “authenticity” of indigenous cultures and, simultaneously, inscribed a binary identity on indigenous people to divide and control, reinforcing an identity created for them. In the Kalahari, after being hunted during colonialism (Morton, 1994), San were designated as coloured under Apartheid and forced to live and work as labourers under the baasskap paternalistic ownership system (Sylvain, 2001). This system was profoundly de-naturing, separating people from nature in ways that post-development theorists such as Escobar discuss, and dehumanising as postcolonial theorists such as Cabral detail. As one member of the community recounted regarding how this Apartheid labour system impacted their family, “We were hurting as a family. I remember moving from farm to farm with my parents.” However, with the claim, their sense of belonging began to change. “Now we have a place that we can stay. We did not know all these people before or how we were connected through our family tree. Now my toes are in my own shoes, because no-one can move us on from this land.”

The binaries of the modernist development agenda persist in the contemporary period in relation to how people live, belong and relate in the Kalahari. The traditional-modern discourse has been used, both covertly and overtly, to define individual and collective identities. Among the ≠Khomani San of the Kalahari, for instance, the dichotomy between modernity and tradition is at the centre of the contestation about what it means to be a “real” Bushman (Francis and Francis, 2010). These conceptualisations of ancestry tend to treat identity as “objectively fixed independent of their recent or current life dynamics” (Koot and Büscher, 2019: 12). The traditional/modern binary is used in scholarly circles in the Kalahari (cf Grant, 2016) as a simple descriptive tool to map the community in simplistic ways (Pers. Obs.) without a consideration of the greater meaning behind the binary thinking or what it produces. Yet, some members of the community dismiss this dichotomy. As one member of the community said about the use of the terms tradition and modernity,

Bushmen don’t see it as so black and white. Outsiders have invested a lot in these so-called categories such as traditional-western bushmen … and traditional bushmen ways in tourism … One thing that needs to change is an understanding of our ethnicity. We are tired of external forces. We are all bushmen. The understanding of our ethnicity is corrupted.

The persistent narrative among scholars and development practitioners that casts the ≠Khomani San as “traditional bushmen” or “western bushmen” uncritically buys into the racialised discourse of modernisation critiqued by post-development and postcolonial theorists. It perpetuates the dichotomy between “western” (“developed and modern”) versus “traditional” (“underdeveloped and primordial”). These categories are colonial in origin. The dichotomous narrative and the persistence of these two categories have real world impacts and, as we explain in our findings, artificially fragments the ≠Khomani San community and leads to conflict. Focusing on the false dichotomy between “modernity” and “tradition” misses the essential component of what sits under “development,” the ways in which collective trauma of the past and the present (non-past) play out in the search for a collective belonging and necessitate the re-building of a broader social fabric.

The second impact of the modernist development paradigm in the Kalahari is that development, defined through the modernity/tradition binary has created an essentialist construction of the “ideal and authentic” Bushman. Accordingly, an “authentic” Bushman must be a hunter-gatherer and must wear a “traditional” loincloth (Robins, 2001). Over the years, this essentialised definition of the Bushmen has been promoted by the media (Sylvain, 2002) and international advocacy groups such as Survival International (Francis and Francis, 2010; Suzman, 2003). Such imagery traps the Bushmen, as they are forced to appeal for support as a “primitive people” both nationally and globally.

Essentialised definitions of what it means to be an “authentic” bushman are evident in development programmes initiated and promoted by NGOs, academic perspectives and, further, in community-led development initiatives where the community try to leverage funding to support their needs. These definitions ensure that culture is commodified through various cultural tourism ventures, small scale craft making and dances for tourists (Pers. Obs). The recourse to “authenticity” is viewed as a way forward towards financial emancipation and wealth creation through commercial tourism. As one of our participants claimed, “Lots of traditional projects have happened, but nothing has changed. They carry on for say two or more years and then are dismantled. Lots has been tried here that didn’t work, hasn’t healed us, and didn’t help us to live well.” Another Bushman said,

There have been lots of development projects focusing on Bushman culture and traditional ways. Each time I try to join to improve my skills. I was a traditional guide, then a tracker, then I joined the field school to learn field skills. I did skills training through SASI. None of these have yet allowed me to provide for my family. There are new projects coming now.

It is important to acknowledge that the ≠Khomani San continue to live under the weight of structural poverty and marginalisation. Yet, as we contend later in this article, this condition does not erase their agency, nor their capacity to resist, reimagine, and rebuild. The Living Museum is evidence of this: not a capitulation to commercial logics, but a refusal of erasure and an assertion of dignity. Within conditions not of their own making, the ≠Khomani San have created a space that enables them to transmit memory, teach younger generations, and strengthen community ties. In this way, poverty is real, but it does not exhaust their lives; they craft meaningful futures that escape the narrow confines of developmentalist categories.

Identity, International Development Discourses and the Living Museum

Local development in the Kalahari connects with international development NGOs and the international development discourse. The living museum is no exception. The promotion of, as well as the support given to, development in the Kalahari by international NGOs promotes the categorisation of the Bushmen as traditional hunter-gatherers (Barnard, 1992; Francis and Francis, 2010; Robins, 2001). When this is contrasted against other development needs (such as water provision, support for sustainable stock farming or a library for children) identified by the community, the power of the discourses around indigenous identity to set agendas and to attract support is readily apparent. According to Escobar (1995, 2004, 2023), prevailing development discourses signify a development agenda predetermined by external ideas and actors. Against this backdrop, the Living Museum may be construed as an extension of the dichotomy between “traditional” and “western” that pervades modernity in the Kalahari, and even globally. Whilst the Living Museum is certainly embedded within the development discourse, its centrality in community wide events, unrelated to tourism or commercial processes, supports this.

The power of international discourse on the local is clearly apparent as participants in the Living Museum also sell crafts from roadside stalls where they dress in traditional attire, despite the cold wind that blows through the Kalahari, and illustrate a traditional past to passing tourists to promote their crafts and art. The products for sale comprise naturally made ostrich egg necklaces, bracelets, hanging mobiles and small rock paintings of animals and humans that evoke images of Bushmen rock art (see Lewis-Williams, 2003 for rock art discussion). Some choose not to do this because they do not want to put on the traditional loincloth and become an exhibition for tourists (Pers. Com.). Others simply have other roles or careers, such as goat and sheep stock farming. Development in the Kalahari runs afoul of the very concept of development as progressive. The very thing being sought is what impoverished the region. Further integration into the world system will not bring about meaningful change, but new sets of winners and losers. The economic problems of the Kalahari cannot be solved separately from the social problems. Economic and social problems are created by the same system (Rist, 2011).

The museum continues to receive support from donors. This continued support could be attributed to the fact that it fits into the international development discourse that sees the Bushmen as pristine hunter-gatherers and that development ought to maintain this “traditional” way of life. This contestation has become a criterion for inclusion and exclusion in NGO-led development programmes within the community. In addition, it has also come to be a defining feature of the kinds of development project promoted and supported in the community. For instance, the needs of those involved in sustainable pastoral farming are not given serious consideration within many funding circles because they defy the constructed notion of the Bushman as pristine hunter-gatherer (Pers. Obs.). In addition, community development projects such as playgrounds for young people (there is only one that exists at a creche funded by a privately owned mine), a library (one recently closed through lack of funding) and stock farming initiatives are not considered as important when deciding on development programmes (Pers. Obs.) since these do not advance the constructed identity of the “traditional” Bushman as presented in the international development discourse around indigenous communities.

The museum presents for tourists and development NGOs a specific nostalgia about a distant past and heritage (cf Ranger, 1983). Simultaneously, however, the museum serves an incredibly important role for members of the community, even as its economic benefits are not the solution to socio-economic challenges. Those most active at the Museum's public performances are from Witdraai, a geographic area that was central to, and drove, the original land claim. This group, sometimes referred to as the “traditionalists” (Robins, 2001), are most concerned about the lack of acknowledgement among the South African public of their cultural heritage as indigenous. They see their cultural heritage as an integral part of their community identity, and public acknowledgement as a way to further community integration. For this group, activities at the Museum offer a mechanism through which to centre their heritage more clearly in the community. Here, the museum workers and community see it as a way to “keep alive the culture of the Bushman so that it does not die.” The museum is a means of teaching younger generations about ancestry and heritage. By preserving knowledge for existing and future generations, the museum serves as a conduit for the transfer of culture and traditions that go beyond arts and crafts.

The role of the museum as a conduit is also shown by wider community participation at events and gatherings at the site. In our observations, even youth who felt that the public-face of the museum was not worth participating in, as doing so generated little income, attended broader private community gatherings. That the museum serves a larger social purpose beyond material benefit can equally be seen in the setting aside of debates to move the Museum to the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park, where it would have gained greater income. The community rejected this idea because of the museum's centrality to its broader social and collective needs.

The ≠Khomani San Living Museum and Broader Bushmen Identity and Belonging

The museum represents a shift in the broader conception, control and ownership of “development” from development NGOs to local community created institutions, that began in 2009 with the creation of an organic, indigenous and informal NGO – The Bushman's Council – which came to rival the existing South African San Institute for funding at the forefront of the land claim. The Bushman's Council developed as a legitimate structure from within the community. It replaced a previous Community Property Association that was dissolved over disputes and community mistrust. The Community Property Association was essentially an imposed institutional arrangement at odds with decision-making patterns and systems of respect and trust within the community. Nobody from the community seems to lament its demise. The Living Museum was conceived by many of the original claimants and elder members of the community and operates as a participatory project. It is run by the Bushman's Council who through a series of community meetings created a forum of delegates from each of the farms to form and promote the museum.

Notwithstanding that there are many valid critiques of living museums, not least that they trap peoples in a primitive commodified representation of culture, that they exoticise an idealised social order; there are many museums worldwide dedicated to indigenous cultures that typically emphasise the active involvement of the respective communities in their exhibitions and operations and seek to rebalance power and to re-educate the public (Ingold, 1988). This raises fundamental questions about the overarching purpose of museums. Are they primarily commercial enterprises? Tourist attractions? Centres for education? Tools for rebuilding and preserving communities? Spaces of pride in heritage? Part of a broader programme of restitution and reconciliation?

In the Kalahari, the Living Museum aims to embody all these roles. On the one hand, it mirrors conventional development models by offering the possibility of economic advancement and prosperity for the community in a region where economic opportunities are limited. Because of the community's admitted lack of familiarity with the management of a museum and local economic constraints, the museum will likely never generate a substantial income. However, it is insufficient to evaluate the museum solely from the perspective of its economic contributions. Indeed, the economic impact may be the least important component of the museum, as the community perceives and engages with it not only as a museum but as an integral part of their living space. The museum was created with non-commercial goals alongside its commercial ones from the outset and serves as a focal point for broader community activities and gatherings, holding a significance that extends far beyond any measurable economic utility or value.

The Living Museum of the ≠Khomani San people was modelled after a similar enterprise in Namibia that was visited by the Bushman Council. Participants of the ≠Khomani San Living Museum went to Namibia to observe a similar project and to learn from the experiences of the Namibian Bushmen through the sharing of ideas and knowledge about the management and operational logistics of a living museum. Living Museums in Namibia are promoted by the Living Culture Foundation Namibia (LCFN) which has created seven living museums across Namibia. The LCFN is a non-profit organisation that, “sees itself as a tool for helping Namibian language groups to revive traditional values and customs and thus to create awareness for cultural origins and history within Namibia” (Living Culture Foundation Namibia, 2024). As such, they are at their core about much more than economic opportunities.

The ≠Khomani San Living Museum serves a larger purpose, centring dignity in its approach to development, something neglected by other development projects. First, it offers a conduit through which to build greater connection across San communities. Support for the museum enabled the ≠Khomani San to build connections with San groupings in Namibia, providing connection and broader belonging among marginalised indigenous peoples. Second, the public face of the museum has enabled the ≠Khomani San to assert themselves as an indigenous people of Southern Africa, an identity previously negated and erased. The specific acts of public witnessing at the museum enable the ≠Khomani San to exercise a “politics of reminding” – to refute their erasure from not only the Apartheid past, but also to counter the political act of forgetting from the post-Apartheid period (Burnett et al., 2023). Across the Kalahari, Apartheid relegated the Bushmen to the margins and erased their heritage by labelling them as Coloured or mixed race, an appellation that still haunts Bushmen communities to this day. Third, away from the public gaze, in providing a spiritual and community space for gatherings, the museum has become an anchor that ties the fragmented community together. These gatherings include those that are ceremonial and use song and dance that connect people as participants in collective acts. Most of these events are closed to the public. After many years of fieldwork, we were invited to attend one of these private gatherings, comprising a healing ceremony constructed through dance. Such gatherings have no commercial significance or role, but they constitute an important mechanism for creating broader social cohesion. The Living Museum's significance does not rest in economic success or in the commodification of “tradition.” Instead, its value lies in its social significance. It provides as an infrastructure of dignity – a space where the ≠Khomani San can reassert belonging, transmit memory, and begin to heal the fractures of colonial and Apartheid dispossession. Thus, it should be read not as an instance of “traditional culture” adapted to modern markets, a potential critique of living museums that provide public-facing displays of “tradition,” but as an act of reparative justice and community self-affirmation. In this sense, the Museum exceeds the categories imposed by development discourse and is symbolic of the need for an alternative pathway grounded in dignity, recognition, and collective resilience.

Beyond its local significance, the ≠Khomani San Living Museum also plays an important role in fostering broader forms of San solidarity and identity. While it operates as a site of dignity, memory, and repair within the ≠Khomani community, its impact extends across national borders, connecting the ≠Khomani San to other San communities in Southern Africa. This translocal dimension underscores how the Museum functions not only as a space of cultural revitalisation and social cohesion, but also as a catalyst for a renewed and shared sense of Bushmen belonging.

The Living Museum has helped catalyse broader Bushman solidarity and understanding that crosses borders and creates a broader sense of belonging with San in other parts of Southern Africa. As previously noted, the museum helped members of the community to travel to Namibia where they spent time with another San community at their living museum, partaking in the workings of the museum, but also collaborating and sharing their experiences of being indigenous in post-colonial Southern Africa. Such connections with San outside South Africa provide a sense of a broader San community that shares a long history of alienation and exploitation in Southern Africa, and allows the San to connections beyond the state, that importantly, are not mediated by it. Many members of South African San community impacted by the land claim had no prior knowledge of their San ancestry. The apartheid policy of classifying them as “coloured” and the long process of alienation prior to this had not only fractured and alienated them on a socio-economic and political scale, but also on a cultural one. The activities of the Living Museum, including the broader association with the Namibian San and the possibility of presenting a recently re-discovered version of a past life, provides a broader sense of pride and belonging among members who are involved with the museum. This broader belonging creates a greater sense of respect and emancipation to relationships that are not mediated by the state or external actors, such mediation remaining at the heart of political culture in Africa (Francis, 2011). In addition, the visit to Namibia also instilled in them the desire for broader social cohesion as a community and as a catalyst for further understanding and memorialising a broader social identity across the region of Southern Africa.

Remembering, Reclaiming and Emancipation

In many ways, the community gatherings around the Living Museum make and re-make the bonds that define and hold the community together; they offer a way in which to find an individual connection with a collective past. In this immersive experience and acknowledgement of one another, the museum is much more than a site for tourists. As one person claimed, “they [the tourists] share us. But this is my pillow, these people, these stories, this truth.” In its public role, the museum serves as a dignified place of human mutuality in which visitors are engaged in acts of witnessing. This witnessing is a collective process as the visitors become engaged in a process of solidarity and recognition of a collective past that was withheld, unknown, and from which people were dispossessed. Thus, it is a site of human recognition of collective loss and a site of social remembering and acknowledgement as the stories told are both heard and reflected back.

In its private role, the museum is also a place through which the community connect themselves to past knowledge, practices and peoples associated with their long history, making a claim to share that past and to grieve a collective loss. The history of colonial dispossession, genocide and apartheid forced assimilation as “coloured” negated the history of the San, as they became in Fanon's (1963) terms, a people without history, without culture, who only came into being through the other. The Museum breaks that alienation from self, by embedding the community firmly in the past and future, thus rupturing the cultural dispossession and emancipating the community from their forced historical assimilation. This emancipation further connects the community to place.

The stories and songs that now bind the community might represent an idealised social order, but the transmission of past memories through them help to constitute the present. As one member of the community said,

We share all the stories of how our forefathers lived and what happened to them. It is spiritual, knowing where I come from and that I am not alone. It makes me feel free for the first time. There is no funding for this kind of thing, no workshops that pass on this kind of information. It is important that this knowledge is passed on to the younger generation. We do it here ourselves now.

Conclusion

The ≠Khomani San people have endured years of marginalisation. Even with the success of the land claim, this community sits at the edge of the periphery of the world system (Francis et al., 2016). Their crude exclusion, and location on the margins, continues to perpetuate poverty. The journey of the ≠Khomani San people reflects a complex intersection of historical marginalisation, contemporary development discourse, and community resilience. Despite the significant land claim awarded to them, the ≠Khomani San continue to face socio-economic challenges, perpetuating a cycle of poverty and marginalisation. The establishment of the ≠Khomani San Living Museum, while symbolically significant in reclaiming cultural heritage and fostering community cohesion, raises questions about the effectiveness of development initiatives that offer a binary of “traditional” versus “modern,” where activities focus on modernisation or on commodified traditional representations of indigenous identity.

Narratives among scholars and development practitioners that casts the Bushmen as “traditional bushmen” or “western bushmen” uncritically buys into the same modernisation and racialised discourse that post-development and postcolonial theorists’ critique. San people are trapped in the modernisation development discourse and are subjected to the alternatives of a modernisation path born from a Euro-centric imaginary, or the rejection of this for a primordial alternative that itself is appropriated in order to modernise. A post-development, postcolonial, peace framing illuminates the ontological and epistemic hegemony of this discourse. The modernity episteme, born from the colonial imagination, impoverished the San economically, socially and culturally, and a discourse based on the same roots that centres modernity as an explicit goal, will not transform the structural conditions of the San.

Moreover, the modernity episteme undermines the integrity of, and integration of the community. It undermines relationships and thus dignity. Future initiatives should strive for a balance between tangible economic gains and intangible benefits such as community empowerment through restoring dignity, engaging in active memorialisation and fostering a greater sense of community cohesion. Balancing both the economic and non-economic gains of development projects should be at the heart of future development projects in the ≠Khomani San community. This requires a shift towards inclusive development models that prioritise dignity and social cohesion.

The Living Museum is symbolic of the need for an alternative pathway. The merits of the Living Museum are not found in its economic benefits, nor its representation of a primordial past. Instead, it offers a place through which to begin to repair the social fabric, by re-membering, memorialising, and re-claiming a past that was denied. In essence, the ≠Khomani San Living Museum represents more than a tourist attraction. It is a symbol of resilience, of a people that despite attempts to exterminate, deculturate and dehumanise still exist. It is a symbol of re-claiming, through learning about, memorialising and telling others about a heritage that was denied. And, it is a symbol of reconnecting, through re-building relationships and social cohesion away from the modernisation imperatives of the development industry. The museum's thus greatest contribution is that it serves as a symbol of what is lacking in the modernisation imperative.