Bushmanland was a bantustan in South West Africa (present-day Namibia), intended by the apartheid government to be a self-governing homeland for the San people (the Bushmen).

Administrative history

Bushmanland was established by the South African authorities with the issue of Proclamation 208 in 1976. No government or second-tier authority was established for the San Bushmen as it was believed that "they had evinced no interest in having a governing authority". Instead a Bushman Advisory Council was established in 1986. Bushmanland, like other homelands in South West Africa, was replaced by a system of non-geographic ethnic-based administrations in 1980, which were in turn abolished in May 1989 at the start of the transition to independence.