The Social History of the Khoisan in Botswana: An Experience in Development of Marginalised Ethnic Communities

Abstract

Social history is an account of people’s social experiences over time. These experiences can be derived
from different social domains or disciplines, such as politics, economy, environment, land, human rights,
and sociology. It is, therefore, an integral and objective history, rather than create a parallel history of
people. Its focus is to interpret people’s experiences. The Khoisan have a secondary or subaltern position in
their social historical development in Botswana. They are under marginalisation, ethnically, linguistically,
and culturally. This marginalisation determines current social and historical condition of the Khoisan of
Botswana as they find themselves in secondary or inconsequential social historical development. The
Khoisan are talked about and planned for without objectivity and specificity as to how imposed social
interventions could impact their lives. This is so because in Botswana, the Khoisan have not been
constituted as an ethnic group that has rights to land, language, culture, natural resources that they could
control for improving their lives. Therefore, the aim of this article is to interrogate issues about which the
Khoisan are spoken about such as ethnicity, land, economic development, and how lack of their culture and
language in the official government education system reflects their social historical condition of perpetual
marginalisation. The paper further calls for socio-political and economic programmes that can preserve
the Khoisan’s socio-cultural and economic systems. The reason for this is that without specific social
strategies for them, the Khoisan cannot feel emancipated to decide on their lives nor confident to work in
ensuring their continued existence as ethnic groups with their unique social and historical identity. Sociohistorically,
these constitute their most excruciating experiences in the development of Botswana.