In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

24 Africa Institute for South Africa 2 Historical development of indigenous identification and rights in Africa Dr Felix Ndahinda INTRODUCTION There is a growing consensus within mainstream human rights scholarship and activism that considers some communities of hunter-gatherers and pastoralists as indigenous peoples of Africa. Hunter-gatherer groups such as the San-Basarwa of southern Africa, the BatwaPygmies of Central Africa and a number of hunter-gather communities in East Africa (Ogiek, Hadza, Awee), and also nomadic pastoralist communities including the Maasai, Boran, Rendille, Turkana, Karamojong and Mbororo, have endorsed the indigenous identity and sought recognition and protection under this legal framework. Since the end of the 1980s, a number of representatives from these communities have enlisted in a global movement advocating for recognition and protection of indigenous rights on the continent. Since (self-) identification of particular communities as indigenous peoples is a result of local and global dynamics (as this inquiry will show), there seems to be no exhaustive list of groups who consider themselves or are considered indigenous in Africa. A list compiled by the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) and the International Working Group of Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA) names 59 different indigenous groups across 26 African countries.1 However, other sources show that a larger number of countries and groups increasingly feature on listings of indigenous peoples in Africa.2 The case for recognition and protection of indigenous rights in Africa builds on the idea that claimant communities share experiences of subjugation, marginalisation, dispossession, exclusion or discrimination with other indigenous peoples worldwide.3 In essence, indigenous rights activism in Africa echoes global indigenous discourses over colonial and post-colonial injustices, historical marginality and the pressing need for empowerment measures that enhance claimant communities’ rights to self-determination. Claimant indigenous groups frequently feature in various reports as communities threatened by extinction unless positive steps are taken to reinstate their historical right over ancestral lands and to maintain their 25 Indigenous People in Africa: Contestations, Empowerment and Group Rights Historical development of indigenous identification and rights in Africa | Dr Felix Ndahinda differing socio-political, economic and cultural (including religious) institutions.4 Selfidenti fication, special connection with ancestral lands and a professed determination to safeguard differing socio-political, economic, cultural and religious systems against threats of the development-modernisation project of the state are the dominant features of global indigenous rights activism. This chapter documents the genesis of indigenous identification and the evolution of the indigenous rights movement in Africa. The inquiry attempts to find out when, how and why particular communities in Africa became involved in the global indigenous rights movement. The analysis primarily focuses on dynamics which, since the end of the 1980s, has led to the enrolment of (representatives from) particular ethno-cultural communities in the global indigenous movement. The inquiry further takes into consideration the contrasted landscapes under which notions of indigenousness, autochthony or aboriginality – whether used to mean the same or with differential nuances – are formulated. The adoption of this wider perspective in tracing the rather recent dynamics of indigenous identification and indigenous rights activism in Africa builds on the idea that ‘indigenousness’ and related concepts such as ‘aboriginality’, ‘autochthony’, ‘nativism’ and ‘authentic sons of the soil’5 have a long history within the African socio-legal and political landscape. Accordingly, any in-depth inquiry into the contemporary dynamics of identification of particular communities as constitutive of indigenous peoples in Africa can hardly ignore the historically differing constructions of indigenousness on the continent. THE EMERGENCE OF INDIGENOUS IDENTIFICATION AND RIGHTS IN AFRICA HISTORICAL CONCEPTUALISATION OF INDIGENOUSNESS IN AFRICA Advocacy for the recognition and protection of indigenous rights in Africa has generally adopted a narrow focus on indigenousness as construed under the global indigenous rights movement. In a way, it overlooks the somewhat ambiguous history of the concept as applied to particular identities as well as the competing usage of indigenousness, aboriginality or autochthony to capture realities that do not necessarily fall within the conceptual frame of contemporary indigeneity. Relatively recent dynamics within the global indigenous movement – such as the creation of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, the adoption of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2007 or the adjudication of indigenous rights within the Inter-American and the African human (and peoples’) rights systems – have generally downplayed the importance of the definition debate over who is indigenous and who is not.6 Yet beyond – and even within – the...

Share