ABSTRACT
Subsequent to the successful resolution of the land claim in 1999, these optimistic 'bushman' images and narratives were replaced by front-page Cape Times reports of conflict, homicide, suicide, alcohol abuse, AIDS, and social fragmentation at the new San settlements adjacent to the Kalahari Gemsbok National Park, Northern Cape Province.2 Reports also focused on allegations of financial mismanagement by the ^khomani San Communal Property Association and divisive leadership struggles.3 A striking aspect of these conflicts was the emergence of intra-community tensions between the self-designated 'traditionalists' and the 'western' bushmen at the new settlement area. This divide drew on markers of cultural authenticity that included genealogies, language, 'bush knowledge', bodily appearance, clothing and so on. These tensions, only a year after the land signing ceremony, raised a number of troubling questions. Why had what was widely perceived to be a cohesive and 'harmonious' San community so quickly come to be seen as a deeply fractured group of individuals struggling to constitute themselves as a community? Was the notion of San community and solidarity a strategic fiction fashioned by the San and their NGO allies during the land claims process? What happened in the post-settlement phase to unleash processes that undermined this prior appearance of solidarity? In other words, how could one explain the dramatic shift from media celebrations of a pristine and consensual hunter-gatherer culture in March 1999, to the more sober, and at times quite grim, journalistic descriptions of the Kalahari San settlement a year later. Finally, why did local constructions of a 'great divide' between 'traditional' and 'western' bushmen emerge when they did?
