Literature and Politics Conference - 6-7 July 2009, Sydney - Australasian Association for Literature

http://www.aal.asn.au/conference/2009/abstracts/thomas-roie.shtml

Thomas, Roie

The Khoi-San People of the Kalahari: Their Struggle and their Representation in the work of Laurens Van Der Post.

This paper is part of a doctoral study into government and corporate appropriation of land. One specific case study of this study focuses on the Khoi-San people who have won a High Court battle against multi-national mining companies (supported by government) to reinstate hunting licenses in their ancestral lands.  The struggles of these people has been incessant since the arrival of Europeans in southern Africa. Writer Laurens van der Post has written extensively about the San's early colonial displacement and massacre and his sense of familial responsibility for the plight of the 'Bushmen' which foreshadows their current neo-colonial situation.