Ghanzi In History (PART 1)

This was the case notwithstanding an enduring myth, which was officially perpetuated during the period of the British colonial occupation, that before the settlers’ arrival Ghanzi had been a so-called empty land - “nullius terra” in their legal Latin – on the basis that it had supposedly only occupied by “roving Bushmen”, that is various Khoe communities.

Mmamosadinyana’s agents then and thereafter further assumed that, as Bushmen, the Khoe were by their nature a landless people. It was on the basis of this convenient legal fiction that, in 1898, the Ghanzi District was demarcated and handed over as “Crownland” to Cecil Rhodes British South Africa Company by the then British High Commissioner Lord Milner; an act of administrative grand theft that was the beginning of a very long and sadly still relevant story.