Khoisan demand recognition

Representatives of the southern African Khoisan people have lashed out at government leaders in the region, demanding to be recognised as indigenous people, news reports said.

Khoisan chiefs at the NGO Forum said the majority of their people were living in poverty, after being robbed of their ancestral land, which stretched across parts of Namibia, South Africa and Botswana. The Khoisan chiefs, who have managed to get to Durban with little financial backing, said they were disappointed their plight had not been raised at the NGO discussions so far. Historically, the Khoisan were the original inhabitants of southern Africa before the arrival of other black peoples.

Solomon David Isaacs, of the Nama First Indigenous People’s Forum in Namibia stressed: “There is no such thing as resettlement. We are rejecting it as indigenous people. We don’t want a resettlement plan, we want restitution of the ancestral lands, of the indigenous lands.”