The San people are members of the indigenous hunter-gatherer peoples of Southern Africa, whose territory spans Botswana, Namibia, Angola, Zambia, Zimbabwe and South Africa. Historical evidence shows that certain San communities have always lived in the desert regions of the Kalahari, however, eventually nearly all other San communities in southern Africa were forced into this region. The Kalahari San remained in poverty where their richer neighbours denied them rights to the land. Before long, in both Botswana and Namibia, they found their territory drastically reduced. In 1996 the different language groups of Namibia met and agreed to allow the term San to be used externally to refer to them collectively.