Topnaars seek greater control over !Nara

The Topnaar community living on the banks of the Kuiseb River in the Namib Desert hope to gain greater control over the !Nara plant, with the enactment of the proposed Access to Genetic Resources and Associated Traditional Knowledge Bill.
The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Natural Resources is currently undertaking countrywide consultations with traditional communities on the Bill.
The aim of the Bill is to regulate access to genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge, and to protect the rights of local communities over such resources, as well as knowledge and technologies.

Concession holder
It also provides for fair and equitable mechanisms for benefit sharing.
Chief Seth Kooitjie of the Topnaar Traditional Authority said at Utuseb last Friday that despite the fact that the community is the concession holder of the versatile medicinal plant, it does not reap all the benefits thereof.
“Our resources are being misused,” Kooitjie said.
“The main aim of the Bill is to streamline commercial activities from the resources in a free economy, but the owners of the natural resources are being robbed and the natural products are not used in a sustainable manner.”
He said while hundreds of researchers from all over the world travel through the Namib Desert annually, using traditional knowledge of resources, the local community only get “a bottle of cool drink” in return.

Traditional knowledge
With the enactment of the Bill, researchers will in future have to get proper authorisation from government ministries and traditional authorities, before they can approach local communities, in their search for traditional knowledge or natural resources.
The Topnaar community also feels that audiovisual material of their traditional knowledge should be better regulated.
Kooitjie has complained about non-concession holders, who are harvesting the !Nara plant at the Kuiseb Delta, and selling !Nara seeds without authorisation in Walvis Bay.
Currently, in the absence of a legal framework, the traditional authority cannot act against such illegal practices.
There is also a rumour that the !Nara plant was smuggled to China, where attempts are being made to cultivate it there, albeit without much success, he said.
His brother, Willem Kooitjie, a senior councillor of the traditional authority, added that mining activities in the desert are damaging the !Nara plant, because proper rehabilitation of mining sites is not being done.
“The destruction of the !Nara plant means that it will be lost to future generations,” he warned.
The Topnaars suggested that the Gobabeb Training and Research Centre should share their findings of research done over the years with the local community, “to bring back the knowledge”.
Members of the community wanted to know how the Bill would address losses sustained through past exploitation of natural resources.
They also felt that marine resources should be included in the Bill.
Chief Kooitjie said that the Topnaar community, as the “original Strandlopertjies”, who have lived in the Walvis Bay and Swakopmund area since 1624, still do not have rights over the marine resources.
CATHERINE SASMAN