New moon come out and give us water – traditional Bushman1 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 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 what wild Bushmen in the Kalahari said to him, in an encounter with them.)
To encounter ‘wild’ Bushmen in the Kalahari is a rare privilege. (Explain why term “Bushmen” is used and not ‘San’ – people may miss the footnote!) The Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR) is where you will find them. 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 for survival, in the most unsympathetic of environments. 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 harshness of Africa, that the ability to imagine first flickered. ‘Now’ and ‘after now’ became concepts. 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, in ostrich eggs, for example, and collected later, in times of scarcity. The contemporary tribes to the north (in Europe) never made these apparently 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 president2 of their country, who once called them ‘Stone Age creatures’. The government’s disdain for this gentle and intuitive people doesn’t stop at mere words. The wells the Bushmen used for their water have been concreted over. In 1997, their government decreed that Bushmen should be evicted from the CKGR and relocated. Village after village was brought down. Each case was an ugly spectacle of bulldozers, babies, and bedlam. Imagine you return home today to find that all remains of your home is a concrete cement slab. And then being told the government, your own ‘leaders’, have 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. Pressure from the police is routine. Virtually all the Bushmen now live in bleak resettlement camps. There are only one or two hundred of them 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, BBC3
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. They say the land is a reserve and the game in it needs to be protected – from the Bushmen. (I know there is data on how indigenous groups live in harmony and that real threat is not from such groups, but rather from “development”).
On the face of it, the argument that the animals need 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 and there is a great deal we have to learn from them.
If it seems strange that Botswana’s government has 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
Botswana is often described as Africa’s most successful democracy. It’s also the heartland of the Kalahari. Nowadays Botswana 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 Makgadikgadi 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 other environmentally destructive (careful!!) companies, their words and deeds are hardly congruent.
Debswana’s words on their website4: “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? (ek sal die sin uitlaat…)
There is something particularly distasteful about destroying (water) wells in a desert - John Simpson in a BBC article, Misery of evicted Bushmen
The words say that the wilderness must be spared. The deeds perpetuate the plunder of the Earth itself. Jwaneng is (by value) the richest diamond mine in the world; the mine itself is a 52-hectare eyesore. Orapa, 240 km west of Francistown, is a 118-hectare disfigurement on the landscape. When Debswana’s diamonds contribute to 50% of state revenue, it is easy to see why the government of Botswana are as intractable and undemocratic towards their own citizens, the Bushmen. (The link between these two sites of 52+118 ha and the location(s) of the removal of the Bushmen is not clear) Behind the scenes, it is the machinations of a gigantic diamond company and the authorities who are trying to secure laws and land rights (do you have evidence for this?) 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 its 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 strawberry yoghurt out of its 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.
[Alex, please Box THIS text and place below or alongside main story:]
Extinction, here we come
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. 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 species5. 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. December 2005
• Brazil: Murder of Indians hits 11-year high. January 20066
• India: Andaman tribes who survived tsunami ‘may be wiped out’. December 2005
• India: Massacre of [Kalinganagar] tribe in Orissa. January 2006
• Colombia: Nomads [Nukak Indians] killed, others forced to flee. December 2005
• Botswana: Three dozen Bushmen holding out in Reserve. January 2006
• For many more examples go to www.survival-international.org.
(I would contextualise the above – for what purpose were these groups murdered/moved? – are all related to big corporates or are there other motives?)
Here’s how to address some of this collective destruction:
• Be critical when shopping. Ask yourself, “Could buying this diamond, stinkwood bed, or gas guzzler impact a faraway community?” In a sense, it is like buying a pirated movie. It, or the energy that drives it, really belongs to someone else.
• Find out for yourself – use the world’s greatest search engine, Google, to get the real stories, e.g. from independent news media.
• Buy local, because foreign made products have to cut costs somewhere to get to you cheaply, and it is usually the environment and the poor who foot the bill.
[Box ends]
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
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 managed to record them in his writings and even, to some extent, on film (for the BBC). His account, and the others that exist, is 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, about ourselves. Van der Post 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 – 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 Hoodia7, a cactus plant the Bushmen have long used to treat severe abdominal cramps, tuberculosis, indigestion, haemorrhoids, hypertension, and diabetes8. 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 ragtag fugitive fleet. 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 (people may not know how this region relates to those mentioned above) is a desert enigma that has proved beyond the faculties of ordinary people. When the rains come to the Kalahari, they fall sporadically and haphazardly. 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 can smell the rain and make their way to waterholes and water-filled pans. The Bushmen share this marvellous gift. But it’s useless if they are to live like squatters in army tents. It becomes a curse, and drives them to 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.
nickvanderleek@gmail.com
Sources
1. According to Colin Louw, Secretary of the SA San Board, “Bushmen” is the preferred and non-academic name.
2. Botswana’s President, Festus Mogai.
3. Quoted from the BBC article: Misery of evicted Bushmen.
4 www.debswana/environment/envConservation-02.asp
5.www.survival-international.org/news.php
6. Guarani Kaiowa leader, Dorvalino Rocha was one of 38 of his tribe to be murdered by hired gunmen in Brazil.
7. Hoodia Gordonii.
8. 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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