Omaheke San Trust Programs
Sustainable livelihood
The activities under this programme focus on income generation in the san communities in Omaheke. Most San people live on the margins of villages dominated by other ethnic groups and often rely on casual labour jobs. Many San people rely largely on the government food programmes like food for work and drought relief. Because the san in Omaheke have never acquired land, not under the apartheid rule or the present government they have not been able to build up their own livelihood and have been forced to depend on others.
The OST livelihood programme investigates different possibilities for san people to generate their own income and motivate and assist them to use those opportunities. We do that by starting small projects based on ideas or initiatives of San people or groups of San people. These initiatives get support in the form of finances, training and monitoring. One example is the Community Based campsite at
corridor 17
The San are famous for their knowledge of wild plants for food and medicine. OST
and partners investigate the possibility to use natural resources like
wild plants in an economical and environmental sustainable way. One
example is the devils Claw wild harvesting project in conjunction with
CRIAA SA-DC (http://www.criaasadc.org/).
Legal
The O.S.T legal Unit was started in May 2003 and consist of two paralegal staff. The initiative idea was to give practical legal advice to San people who are living in Omaheke region, about their legal rights, administrative matters, constitutional and development problems.
A paralegal is a community base person trained to give practical advice to communities and individuals about their legal rights. Paralegal are also trained to provide legal education and to assist community organizations .In many countries, such as United state of America and South Africa , paralegals are accredited people who assist lawyers in their work. They do paralegal work in the same way that paramedics provide assistance to health-care professionals (doctors and nurses).Paralegal is not a lawyer and cannot represent people in court proceedings.
Namibia is a developing country and has a shortage of skills and services at almost all levels. Poor people have very limited access to lawyers and legal services. This is why it is important for paralegal to be deployed throughout the country.
The following factors make essential that paralegals being deployed in all parts of Namibia and particularly in rural areas.
- The shortage of lawyer acting (or willing to act) for poor people in rural areas.
- The cost of having a lawyer to act for them.
- The shortage of lawyers who are willing to work in communities to help resolve legal problems.
- Communication problems such as language and distance make it difficult for community members to reach lawyer.
HIV/Aids
Namibia ranks as one of the five countries most affected by HIV/AIDS in the world with a prevalence rate of 22% (2002 HIV Sentinel Survey). This is a steady increase from the 4.2% measured in 1992 during Namibia’s first sentinel survey. AIDS has already caused life expectancy at birth in Namibia to fall from 58.8 years in 1995 to 43 years in 2000. Young people (10 to 24 years) are estimated to account for up to 60% of all new HIV infections.
According to the 2002 Sentinel Survey, the Omaheke Region in central-eastern Namibia, has a prevalence rate of 12.8%, up from 9% in 2000. About 7 000 San (Ju|’hoansi, Naro and !Xõó) live in the region. Most of the men and women work as farm labourers on communal and commercial farms. San farm labourers in this region earn a mere pittance of N$80-200 (about US$12-30) per month on average, but very few would risk leaving a job since they lack means to purchase their own livestock from which to earn a better income, and in any case the San lands have been overgrazed by the animals of unscrupulous farmers. There are no more bush foods left to gather on these lands and where wildlife still roam, hunting is prohibited, thus hundreds of these ancient hunter-gatherers go hungry from day to day. Most communities rely on government food handouts, but very often delivery is late or only a fraction of the expected supplies actually arrive. The upshot is that the San in the Omaheke are not concerned about HIV/AIDS, but only about where to find the next meal. There have been cases of San adults having sex with minors for bread, and rape is not reported, very often due to fear of more hunger.
While many HIV awareness programmes exist in the Omaheke Region, most do not reach the San people for a variety of reasons. Essentially they relate to geographical and cultural marginality, illiteracy, language difficulty, poverty and hunger, and all the social ills that these problems trigger. Having been marginalised as a population group in every Southern African country in which they reside, San communities throughout the region have special information and training needs that national HIV/AIDS programmes have not yet or simply cannot provide.
Few accurate statements can be made regarding the status of HIV/AIDS in the region. There are no concrete figures available because HIV testing is irregular and very few inhabitants take the test voluntarily. However, the number of people suffering from AIDS is still much lower in the Omaheke than in the Caprivi Region, for example, where a large number of Khwe San live. This is probably also true for the HIV infection rate. But among San in the Omaheke the present near invisibility of the problem of HIV/AIDS has given rise to ignorance and false perceptions of security. There is a fear that the rates will increase rapidly if no immediate effort is made to improve on information dissemination and the availability and application of effective means of prevention.
OST’s initiative will be directly linked to existing San income-generating and capacity-building projects. These include, for example, a community-run campsite for tourists, an agricultural project (livestock and crop production), community healthy food shops, craft production and sales, and training and educational activities.
The issue of HIV and its consequences have a direct impact on all of OST’s work and therefore, HIV should not be viewed as an issue in isolation. Over the next few years, OST’s will focus on mainstreaming HIV through each of its programmes. OST’s objective is to ensure that all staff have a thorough knowledge of HIV and its implications on all of OST’s programme and organizational activities, both for now and in the future. To achieve this, we will begin by bringing the issue to a more personal level so that staff have a thorough understanding of HIV and AIDS and how it relates to them personally as well as develop a level of comfort in discussing the issue. Staff will then go back to their individual programmes to assess how HIV impacts their work and will then examine ways to address HIV within their own programme.
OST’s HIV objectives for 2004 – 2006 are the following:
- Increase community awareness on HIV and AIDS
– use trained Stepping Stones facilitators to conduct outreach activities;
- Research and identify resources for educating on HIV for low literacy groups;
- Completion of community shop at Donkerbos/Sonneblom & Corridor Post 17;
- Provide training in literacy, arithmetic and record keeping for shopkeepers;
- Conduct oral history interviews on traditional San culture and its relation to health care in general and HIV in particular;
- Conduct research on San farm labourers, culturally appropriate means of information dissemination, and San people and their relation to authoritative figures (police force, medical officers etc);
- Develop an OST organizational HIV policy.
Education
Enrolment for next year and school and hostel fees
At OST we work very hard to ensure that all San learners are enrolled
when they begin Grade One and when they also move to another school.
This may sound straightforward but the process can be very complicated.
For example, many of the San live in remote areas where there is no
transport, many do not possess birth certificates or are aware of their
age, many cannot speak Afrikaans or English, most parents are
unemployed, the majority of them are illiterate and most have never been
to school.
As if these were not big enough obstacles for us at OST, the absolute
poverty that San communities live in, means very few can afford to pay
school and hostel fees for their children. OST does not have funding to
pay for these fees and many schools are not aware of the fact that
legally, very poor children do not have to pay these fees. This is
Government policy.
Meetings with schools to raise their awareness
As I mentioned just before, very few schools are aware that poor San
children do not have to pay fees. Other schools may be aware of this,
but are not happy to enrol children who cannot make a contribution. This
is why meeting with school Principals and teachers is so important. We
spend much time explaining to them that although a San child may not be
able to contribute financially, they are entitled to equal opportunity
of education and must be assisted.
We also provide information and training for teachers and hostel workers
about the very difficult situations facing San learners. For example,
many teachers may not be aware of the traditions of the San and may get
angry or frustrated with San children who do not mix easily with other
ethnic groups or who have difficulties in adjusting to life in the
classroom. Others do not understand why San parents seem not to be
interested in the education of their own child.
Dealing with runaways
At the OST we understand how frustrated teachers can be with some of the
issues that San children may bring to the classroom. For example, we
spend an awful lot of time dealing with runaway children – often in the
evenings and even at weekends! This can be a particularly challenging
part of our work at OST, but we believe that in order to help the
children we need to understand why they run away.
There is a list of why San children feel the need to run away. This list
includes; homesickness (remember that many children come from very
isolated rural areas and have never been away from home before),
bullying by other children and sadly sometimes even teachers, the stigma
of being different and of being ‘San’, having no nice clothes,
toiletries, food provisions or writing materials and feeling deprived
and ‘not good enough’ in order to make friends with other children. Many
San children also find it extremely difficult not being able to
communicate with anyone in their mother tongue.
At OST we also recognise that children will always be children and that
some see running away as an excuse for an adventure! So, whilst we will
always do our best to return runaways to school, we believe that if a
child is persistently running away and the parents are not taking
responsibility for their child – we need to ask ourselves whether our
resources will be better used elsewhere. For example, there will always
be another child who would take the place at that school.
Tackling drop-out rates and giving examples of San achievers
Like the issue of runaways, we are faced with similar problems in
relation to the drop-out rate of San children. We often hear San
children say things like ‘My parents don’t think it is important for me
to be in school’ or ‘they don’t understand why school will help me and
they would rather me be at home’.
Some people feel that the education of the San children is something
which will never be achieved. It has been said by some people that
‘Grade 8 is the Grade 12 of San children’. We do not think that this is
acceptable. We want every San child to be sufficiently supported to be
able to achieve Grade 12.
One of the things that we are doing at OST is encouraging young people
and adult San learners who have dropped out, or who have never had a
formal education to enrol at NAMCOL. Here they can repeat the Grades
that they never managed to complete earlier on in their life. OST will
sometimes pay the exam fees and other necessary equipment fees for these
San learners.
We are doing our part to help San learners to meet this objective. We
are making plans to present our San members of staff at OST and at other
partner San organisations as ‘role models’ for San learners who have
never met another San person who has had a good education and who now
has a job. However, we must emphasise that this objective can only be
achieved where a school truly wants to help its San learners and where
the parents are also taking an interest and giving as much practical
support as possible to their own child.
Success after Grade 12
In the future we would like to see more and more San children achieving
Grade 12, thereby providing themselves with a better chance of being
able to move away from a life of poverty and deprivation. OST is aiming
to educate all of the communities that we work with to take seriously
their own, and their children’s education. In partnership with WIMSA we
are now looking at assisting young people who have completed Grade 12,
to move onto University and although we have very limited resources for
our education programme at OST, we are able to access a grant for these
students to be able to pay their fees at University.
One of the problems facing San communities today is that wherever they
go to seek professional advice, they never see a ‘San face’. We are
doing our best to address this by encouraging San children to think
seriously about planning to finish Grade 12 and moving into a profession
which desperately needs San people – such as becoming a teacher, a
doctor, a nurse, or a civil servant. We believe that the worst thing
that an adult can do to a child is to ‘squash their dream’ and we
encourage all adults here today to assist us with practically empowering
our San children.