Environmental Engineering Reference
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he continues, “is about equality of opportunity of access to positions of
legitimate authority and the limitations this imposes on the exercise
of power” (p. 31). As such it is an organizational framework “ruled” by
the majority (in a representative democracy) that makes and executes
decisions. Band societies, on the other hand, make decisions on the basis
of a series of judgments that can be formed because everyone had access
to a common pool of information. According to Silberbauer, consensus
arrives when “people consent to judgment and decision” (p. 31). Consen-
sus is reached when there is no longer a signifi cant opposition to the deci-
sion, which is different from accepting by unanimity.
It was also noted that the Hoodia benefi t-sharing agreement has raised
high and somewhat unrealistic expectations. Some of the San believe that
they are sitting on a potential gold mine and that they will become mul-
timillionaires overnight. The recent signing of a new bioprospecting
agreement between the San of Southern Africa and the CSIR has rein-
forced this feeling. The new agreement regulates a partnership between
the South African San Council and the CSIR with regard to researching
the indigenous knowledge of the San people on the usage of indigenous
plants, to the benefi ts of both parties (as claimed in the joint press
release). The leader of the South African San Council argues that the
agreement is benefi cial in the sense that it records and conserves the San's
indigenous knowledge and provides proof of ownership and possible use
of the San knowledge in future development projects. Two weeks prior
to the signing of the agreement, when community members in Andries-
vale were questioned about this new agreement, they were not aware of
it. Furthermore, they seemed reluctant to sign such an agreement for two
reasons. First, some argued that the Hoodia benefi t-sharing agreement
has so far shown no concrete results and question why they should sign
a new agreement. Second, some people felt very uncomfortable with the
idea of generating together with a third party a database of their tradi-
tional knowledge. They felt as if they would lose control over their
resources and knowledge and had fundamental problems with this
concept of joint partnership unless the terms and conditions were clear
from the start. Anthropologists have also identifi ed the importance of
trust among members of ethnic groups and trust in the system as impor-
tant concepts in San societies (Hitchcock 2002). In other words, the new
agreement shows the same fl aws as the Hoodia benefi t sharing, namely
not being participatory. Consistent with what Greene (2004) suggests, it
could be argued here that raising the expectations that large sums of
money are going to be transferred to the San may have been an effective
