ABSTRACT
By the end of World War II the overwhelming majority of Bushmen had became part of Namibia's invisible rural proletariat, eking out an existence on settler farms. The Bushman's economic role in the wider Namibian social formation had increasingly been supplemented, but not replaced, by an emergent ideological role. The practical minded settler’s anthropology was seen as a deviant discipline—a waste of time because any good settler "knew" what blacks needed. Anthropology, especially when practiced by foreigners, was a waste of time, "spoilt" the natives, caused "trouble" and was treated with a high degree of suspicion. The origin myth of Bushmanland attributes its creation to the government Commission for the Preservation of the Bushmen, which was chaired by the famous Afrikaner author and anthropologist P. J. Schoeman. The matter of creating a Bushman reserve is seen as exceptionally urgent.
