Indigenous Peoples and Conservation Organizations

122 The Ju/’hoan in Namibia
(LIFE) Program. This program, comanaged by
WWF–US, would provide grants, training, and
administrative and technical assistance to local
NGOs and community-based organizations
(CBOs). Its goals were to develop or strengthen
representational decision-making bodies; expand
skills in resource management and planning, as
well as project development, implementation, and
monitoring; increase economic benefits from
resource use by promoting community-based
tourism and other enterprises; and increase access
to knowledge and information on which to base
decisions. The LIFE Program would also act as a
“buffer” between the local organizations and
USAID, the primary donor, by absorbing some
administrative, reporting, and financial management
requirements. Both MET and WWF–US
also pledged financial resources to the program.
In January 1994 LIFE made its first grant in the
Nyae Nyae area to the Nyae Nyae Development
Foundation of Namibia (NNDFN), an NGO that
was formed in the 1980s to aid Ju/’hoan efforts at
self-reliance and to support the back-to-the-land
movement. From early efforts to dig wells and
supply them with pumps to build cattle herding
in the n!oresi, the NNDFN expanded its support
until by 1994 it included an integrated development
program of education, preventive health
care, agriculture, income generation, and natural
resource management.
The LIFE grant was provisional for six months,
while an effort was undertaken to see what the
community wanted to do. In July the Nyae Nyae
Farmers Cooperative (NNFC) council met and
asked the NGO to scale back its staff support and
delegate more authority to the community. A new
institution—community rangers—was established,
and 10 young men were selected at district
meetings to monitor game movements and keep
people informed about what was happening in the
development program. In August, the LIFE advisor
and representatives of MET and the NNDFN
came to Nyae Nyae to assess the situation.
The LIFE Program decided to work directly with
the NNFC. Realizing that community-based
organizations face the dual task of identifying
their priorities and developing the capacity to
meet them, the LIFE Program is designed to provide
CBOs with more proactive technical assistance
than a professionally staffed development
NGO would receive. In this case, several things
were immediately apparent from discussions with
community members. The NNFC, despite the
lofty aims of its creators, was alienated from the
people it was supposed to represent. 3 The
Representative Council did not communicate
effectively with its constituents and made only
superficial decisions. Several community members
would buttress this opinion in coming
months by saying that their nominal representative
to the council was not in fact chosen.
Several n!oresi kxaosi reported that someone different
attended almost every meeting. As one
council member explained the selection process,
“Whoever is in the n!ore when the truck arrives,
jumps on and goes to the meeting.”
The gap between the community and the
Management Committee, the small group of five
men selected by the council to run things day to
day, was even wider. The committee made decisions
on behalf of local residents but rarely communicated
the results. It rarely consulted the
community about how planning and implementation
of the development program could be
improved. Visits by committee members to the
n!oresi had practically ceased. Most community
members were unaware of what the committee
was doing, and felt that the people on it should
be replaced.
Ironically the new “representational” system had
increased stratification within the community.
Many NNFC leaders were young men who had
received an education. They felt comfortable
around outsiders and were confident in expressing
themselves as individuals. Lacking the
attributes required by the new structure, older
community members became marginalized.
Women also lost much of their right to participate
in decision making since they generally did
not attend school, did not have needed language
skills, and knew little about other cultures
because they were shielded from extensive interactions
with outsiders.
While it was clear that the current structure was
ineffective, it was unclear what should develop in
its place. The Ju/’hoan wanted to engage in the
national political process and eventually with the
wider global society. They needed an organization
that government would consider legitimate
and representative in the new Namibian democ-