ABSTRACT
The major impetus for the creation of a Bushman reserve came from settler farming interests. Academics, by highlighting the "wild" Bushmen who would be "saved" by the reserve, detracted attention from the plight of the Bushman majority, who continued to battle for survival as workers on settler farms. Bushmen preferred to work on farms that encompassed their traditional land areas. A Gobabis Legislative Assembly member stated that Bushmen were a dead loss to the country. Whereas Bushmen living beyond the Police Zone had previously had a reasonably free existence as a result of the government policy of laissez-faire, benign neglect, they now found themselves forcibly incorporated into homelands of others, especially Herero. The chapter considers their experiences on the Herero reserves and later "homeland" because Herero pose the most direct threat to Bushman lands.
