New moon come out and give us water – traditional Bushmen song
There is a place where the sun is shining. The people, who live here, in the Kalahari, look as though they have been burned in a terrible fire. From far away they look like long black sticks, swinging in the mercury heat waves. But when they come closer, across the vastness of the pan, their sandals crunching against the dry biscuit bed, you notice their eyes. They are faraway eyes, a trace of the East in them, but far more than that, they are today, the most ancient people walking the Earth. They are walking again, deeper towards the Pans, to escape the hands of man, the government, the Empire of the West. For they are today, also the most endangered people walking in the world.
Story by Nick van der Leek
A Long Time Ago, in Africa
“Good day. We saw you from afar and we are dying of hunger.” – Laurens van der Post in The Heart of the Hunter (referring to an encounter with Wild Bushmen in the Kalahari)
I have been to the Kalahari and not once encountered wild Bushmen, though I know some have had this rare privilege.
The Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR) is where you will find the wild Bushmen. They live, as the animals do, away from contagious contacts with modern man. They are the pathetic remnants of a group we know as the San, who have been hunted by white man and Bantu over a hundred years. Few men believe that we come from people just like these. Through the ages, the people we call ‘Bushmen’ developed the skills and strategies (in the most unsympathetic of environments) for survival. If you think survival in the wilderness doesn’t require much skill or intelligence, try it yourself (or watch Survivor).
There was a time when man could not talk, when he did not think to draw, when he had no idea of beyond now. When someone in the tribe died, they left him where he fell. The idea that sometimes you are living, and sometimes you are dead, began to register. It was with the Bushmen, in the harsh deserts of Africa, that the ability to imagine first flickered. ‘Now’ and ‘after now’ became a concept. So did ‘having enough’, and ‘not having enough’. The idea that some days there is water, and other times not, meant that water should be stored (for example, in ostrich eggs) and collected later, in times of scarcity. The tribes to the north (in Europe) never made these seemingly elementary breakthroughs. Now the Bushmen began to imagine life after death, to make marks on a rock as symbols of themselves and the animals. With symbols came instruments, weapons, sounds and language. And with language came all the richness of a culture, including religion.
The Bushmen chose the Mantis, a small, bewitching insect with large eyes and a sharp, beaklike countenance, for their God. It is a humble choice for a God, but no doubt they saw in the Mantis something that they had come to admire, a faculty they saw necessary for their own survival: prowess and acuity. For how can even a religion exist without a language, and the brains to configure and communicate it? It is the Bushmen, with their ingenuity and knack for survival that led to all the tribes of the world today. We did not descend from the strong but clumsy and dimwitted Neanderthals. Our Bushmen forefathers wiped them out with ingenious weapons, spears or arrows or some other technology. In short, our Bushmen ancestors were a lot smarter than anyone else around. And so, we came from these clever little people.
Outcasts
They were giants of their kind, cunning and very old… – Laurens van der Post in The Heart of the Hunter
Today, the Bushmen are treated as outcasts by the president1 of their country, who once called them ‘Stone Age creatures’. The government’s disdain of this gentle and intuitive people doesn’t stop at mere words. The wells they used for their water have been concreted over. In 1997 their government decreed that Bushmen should be evicted from the CKGR and relocated outside of it. Village after village was brought down. Each case was an ugly spectacle of bulldozers, babies and bedlam. Imagine you returned home today to find that all remained of your home was a concrete cement slab. And then being told the government, your own leaders, had decided to force you to live somewhere else. How happy would you be?
The Bushmen have lived in the Kalahari for over 20 000 years. Now they are the most endangered people in the world (there are only one or two hundred Bushmen still holding out in the reserve).
Somehow it is too much of a coincidence that so much wealth lies under the land of so few Bushmen – John Simpson*
The Botswana government says they don’t want the Bushmen living like wild animals with wild animals. They want to give them an education, have them living in proper homes. How considerate! They say the land is a reserve and the game in it needs to be protected – from the Bushmen. Consideration again!
On the face of it, the argument that the fauna needs to be protected may seem plausible. On the other hand, if there is a community of people in the world able to survive in the desert and co-exist with nature without damaging their environment, it is these people. They have done so for millennia (think about that, for a thousand years and another thousand years…) and there is a great deal we have to learn from them.
If it seems strange that Botswana’s government have such a high regard for their wildlife, making the animals more important than their own citizens living among them, then the real imperative begins to emerge.
Diamonds Are Forever – contemporary aphorism
Botswana is Africa’s most successful democracy. This is the heartland of the Kalahari. The word ‘Kalahari’ is believed to have come from a marginalized community in Botswana called the BaKgalagari. Botswana nowadays produces almost a third of the world's diamonds by value, far more than any other state. This represents about half of government revenue. The world’s largest and second largest diamond mines – Jwaneng and Orapa, are to be found in the Central Kalahari region of Botswana. It is easy to see what impact these massive compounds have had on the environment.
Orapa, slightly smaller than Jwaneng, is situated in a more ecologically sensitive area, close to the edge of the massive Makgadigadi Salt Pans, some hundred miles east of the delta. Debswana, an offshoot of De Beers, the largest Diamond Mining Company in the world, knows that the sands of the CKGR are not as barren as they seem. Like Shell and other environmentally destructive companies, their words and deeds are hardly congruent.
Debswana’s words on their website2: “The development of the Orapa and Jwaneng game parks [both mines and parks fall within the CKGR] disproves the traditional image of mining companies being a threat to conservation, but rather shows Debswana to be an active player in revitalising these areas for the benefit of all.” For the benefit of all?
There is something particularly distasteful about destroying [water] wells in a desert - John Simpson in a BBC article, Misery of evicted Bushmen
The words are that the wilderness must be spared. The deeds are the plunder of the actual Earth. Jwaneng is (by value) the richest diamond mine in the world; the mine itself is a 52 hectare eyesore. Orapa, 240km west of Francistown is a 118 hectare disfigurement on the landscape. When Debswana’s diamonds contribute to 50% of government revenue, it is easy to see why the government of Botswana are as intractable and undemocratic towards their own citizens, the Bushmen. Behind the scenes, it is the machinations of a gigantic diamond company and the authorities who are trying to secure laws and land rights so as to get to the sparkling wealth beneath the bare feet of the people whose wealth it has been for 20 000 years. The Company says it ‘recognises that it’s people are its most important assets, and…the Company contributes towards the growth of the nation.’ Perhaps, but in an important way, harm is coming to the Bushmen. Irreparable harm.
Good Morning Mankind
When you open your refrigerator, and scoop a pink wad of yoghurt out of its strawberry container, you might remember that things weren’t always this way. A long time ago, people were here, and they were not so different from us. That’s because they found the world, and survived its earthquakes and ages of ice. Their refrigerator was the cold Kalahari night, their oven the sun that was always baking the land. They found the land and learned to live in it, and left to us their knowledge and the gift of being who we are.
Mankind.
It’s an interesting word. Are we really? We creatures of Western civilisation need to realise that the diamonds we buy to bejewel our heart’s desire, the oil that goes into our gas tank, the hamburgers we eat from certain food chains, sometimes even the wooden furniture that was plundered from a forest far, far away, all these things come at a terrible price. It is a fact that we are currently living through at least the third greatest extinction event in the history of life on our planet. The driver of this destruction is – let’s face it – the hand of man.
Indirectly it is your and my desire to consume hamburgers and whatever else we consume each and every day. Our consumption has consequences. Some of those consequences are in far-flung places, but the impact is very real. When each economically active individual, with all their wants and needs, is multiplied to a level of a population, and a market, then what you create is an appetite, and a million machines are built to satisfy our voracious appetites. There is another word for such reckless consumption – the indiscriminate massacre of environments and everything in them.
Is this the way the world ought to be? Is all this pain a necessary end and is it, in fact, progression? If a species can’t survive, shouldn’t it be allowed to disappear?
It may be easy to acquiesce in the case of an unknown butterfly or a small beetle, but what happens when this wanton destruction includes members of our own species†. Here’s an easier way to answer the question: would you want to be wiped out?
- Brazil: Indians thrown off land – ranchers burn down houses (16 Dec2006)
Murder of Indians3 hits 11-year High (9 January 2006)
- India: Andaman tribes who survived tsunami ‘may be wiped out’ (22 Dec 2005)
Massacre of tribe in Orissa (5 January 2006)
- Colombia: Nomads (Nukak Indians) killed, others forced to flee… (30 Dec 2005)
- For many more examples go to www.survival-international.org
The way to make amends for these unthinkable levels of collective destruction begins with our attitudes, the way we value ourselves and others (people and things) less powerful than ourselves. To do something about it, you can start by changing the way you consume.
If the Bushman had no use in the world of our day, if he contributed nothing to society and paid no taxes and did not work, what possible justification could there be for the great expense of effort and money it would take to preserve him? – From The Heart of the Hunter, by Sir Laurens van der Post
Have we lost the sense of the significance of the small in life? Sir Laurens van der Post was one of the last people to see tribes of real Bushmen, something like they were when they walked the Earth since ancient times. He was able to record them in his writings and even to some extent on film (for the BBC). His account, and the others that exist, are fascinating.
When we look at the original people, we see the talent and mastery that man has developed from his profound intimacy with the land. We begin to learn, peculiarly, mysteriously, about ourselves.
He writes in his book, The Heart of the Hunter: I believed one did not know human beings very well until one saw them that way as well – in other words, knew them also through a kind of wonder they provoked in one.
The Bushmen and aboriginal people everywhere, have a wonderful, original culture. Their art, herbology, medicine and food gathering strategies are fascinating, and they have faculties that we rightly regard as miraculous.
Aboriginal people everywhere are famous for their superhuman senses. The ability to see a tiny speck over a great distance has been verified time and again by foreigners carrying binoculars or some other device. The Bushmen are well-known for their incredible tracking skill. Almost all the ancient people have a gift for being able to communicate over large distances, to pick up information – that’s without a cell phone. Their understanding of the natural environment, especially its herbs, is nothing short of astonishing. The world has only recently heard about Hoodia4, a cactus plant the Bushmen have long used to treat severe abdominal cramps, tuberculosis, indigestion, haemorrhoids, hypertension and diabetes5. Bushmen eat a part of the hoodia stem to ward off hunger and thirst whilst hunting and roving through the wilderness. It is very sad, knowing the wealth that the Bushmen still have to offer humanity, that even when van der Post encountered them, they’d been diminished to a rag tag fugitive fleet. What remains of them is hard to say. Few, if any Bushmen, live today, unscarred and unfettered by the meddling of Company men and their minions.
Hope Springs Eternal
It’s the land that is our wisdom;
it’s the land that shines us through;
it’s the land that feeds our children.
It’s the land; you cannot own the land, the land owns you – from the song, Solid Ground, by Dolores Keane
By a stroke of luck, the Kalahari Thirstland is a desert enigma that has proved beyond the faculties of ordinary people. When the rains come to the Kalahari, they fall sporadically and in a haphazard pattern. This means only those attuned to the land, only those who can smell where the water is, are able to find it and move to it. Herds of wild animals flourish in what may seem like nothing more than a desert. The largest population of elephants in the world have found their refuge in the desert and the dry in Botswana. They are able to smell the rain and make their way to waterholes and water filled pans, like many other animals. The Bushmen share this marvellous gift. Unfortunately the gift is useless if they are to live like squatters in army tents. It becomes a curse, and drives them into alcoholism and prostitution. Some have escaped and secretly returned to the lands that have always belonged to them. If you find them, let me know.
Email: nicolasvdl@yahoo.com Words: 2 501
*Quoted from the BBC article: Misery of evicted Bushmen
† www.survival-international.org/news.php
1.Botswana’s President Festus Mogai
2.www.debswana/environment/envConservation-02.asp
3.Guarani Kaiowa leader, Dorvalino Rocha was one of 38 of his tribe to be murdered by hired gunmen in Brazil.
4. Hoodia gordonii (pronounced HOO-dee-ah)
5.http://altmedicine.about.com/od/
popularhealthdiets/a/hoodia1.htm
“Hoodia is a cactus that's causing a stir for its ability to suppress appetite and promote weight loss. 60 Minutes, ABC, and the BBC have all done stories on hoodia. Hoodia is sold in capsule, liquid, or tea form in health food stores and on the Internet. Hoodia is also found in the popular diet pill Trimspa…”
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