We have just left the tar road behind us. Ahead lies the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, one of the world’s most remote and unspoilt wildernesses. I have made this journey a number of times over the past decade.
But this journey is different. I promised my 12 year-old son and his friend that I would take them to visit the Bushmen. We are not alone. The dust cloud in front of us is the legal team we are travelling with. Their mission is to inform the recently removed Bushmen communities of the game reserve about the outcome of a recent appeal in their court case against the Botswana government.
In February the Botswana authorities forcibly moved the last few hundred remaining Bushmen into resettlement camps outside the reserve.
Yet despite this, there are still about 30 Bushmen who continue to live in defiance within the reserve. They have reverted to the skills that have kept them alive for more than 30 000 years. These are Africa’s first people who live today as hunter-gatherers, adapting their way of life to pastoralism and cultivation. They are the focus of our journey and the Bushmen we have come to visit.
As the gate into the game reserve draws nearer I update my younger companions about the current situation. “Why can’t they live in their own land?” they ask in disbelief.
Our attention turns to the brilliance of the landscape. At the gate we see a hoopoe silhouetted against an acacia tree and vultures circling above.
Along the road we stop. Roy Sesane, of the First People of the Kalahari, an organisation that is campaigning for indigenous people’s rights, points to the spoor in the middle of the road. “A man lion has walked here for one and half days,” he says in broken English.
Sesane is comfortable in this landscape. His eyes are shining. He is deeply part of this world.
I first met Sesane in the mid-1990s in Molapo, a traditional village 150km inside the game reserve where he lived as a hunter and part-time farmer. But although the Molapo community had defied removals for years, not even Sesane’s legacy, his undisputed leadership and commitment to his land could sustain the final resettlement in February.
It is sunset when we reach Kukama and the homestead of Amagoleng Sidanswane, a lay preacher in a Zion Church sect. Sidanswane is wearing an old suit given to him by an NGO and carries a silver baton. The community survives on the scarce supplies of water he has a permit to bring in. Twenty metres away are clear signs of a hurried removal. Cups and plates lie in the remains of a broken homestead.
Around the fire next the day Sesane and Mathambo NgaKaeja from Wimsa (an NGO working for the development of the Bushmen) give the small group the latest news from the court case.
An old !Gwi couple join the meeting. Sidanswane and his family are Kgalagadi people who speak a dialect very similar to Setswana. Anthropologically they are not regarded as Bushmen but Bantu-speakers who have lived a hunter-gatherer and pastoral existence.
For the Botswana authorities this pedantic distinction means nothing. Just like their !Gwi neighbours with whom they have lived side-by-side for centuries, they have to go. Sidanswane speaks for the community.
“This heritage our grandparents have left us, I don’t want to sell for goats and donkeys [referring to the compensation offers of the Botswana government]. I want to stay in Kukama until I die and be buried in my ancestral land where my father was born.”
On route to Metsiamenong we encounter a rare wildlife spectacle. Running next to us in full flight is a eland herd of 200 or more.
It is dark when we reach Metsiamenong. Sesane goes to signal our arrival. We are greeted with happy faces. A man joins the crowd of well wishers, playing his bow. “You give us courage when we see you,” he says, shaking our hands.
Later we heard they had all armed themselves with sticks fearing that the vehicles they had heard were removal trucks.
The spirit in Metsiamenong for the about 20 people who remain is high, despite the threats, the scarcity of water and the hardships. The next day the kids play soccer, oblivious to the importance of a meeting nearby.
Playing soccer in the sand is 15-year-old Moagi Gaoberekwe. He vascilates between the game and the meeting; between the seriousness of the situation and being a child.
Moagi reached grade eight at a school in Ghanzi. He made a decision this year to come and live with his grandfather and be a hunter.
“The child is not helped at school to think by way of mouth or persuasion,” he says, “He is made to think by the stick. I saw this and I was afraid of it, and I got out of school. Here I can stay with my grandfather and relatives and undergo the hardships that they are facing along with them. They teach me everyday tasks.”
His grandfather, Nare “Bapalo” Gaoberekwe, is defiant about leaving. “God created us here. We were brought up here. Our great grandfathers are buried here. If the government is saying this place is for the animals, we are saying, ‘No, the animals are ours’.”
He watched his wife and children removed. “They were loaded together with the wood and the grass. They [government officials] destroyed the fences of the fields and my melon and maize. I cried then and lost hope, and made a new small garden again. This is the only garden from which I survive.”
At sunset Bapalo herds his goats into his kraal. Against the purple skyline he is carrying his spear.
Around the fire that night Sesane sings a song. Mathambo KgaKaeja translates: “Please don’t let the government take our land away/ the Kalahari is our home/ Botswana is our home/ give us strength/ give us strength.”
At the crossroads to New Xade we part ways with the legal team.
As the sun sets, we see 14 silhouetted giraffes drinking from a waterhole. There is water for the game but not the people. It has been part of a strategy of the authorities to deny Bushmen permanent water supply, even though international donor agencies have offered to pay for these resources.
We have left the wilderness behind us. Soon we will hit the tar road and our journey will be over. At the beginning of the trip the 12-year olds asked why these people are being removed? I scan my mind for answers. There simply aren’t any. Why Africa’s wealthiest country (per capita) is destroying its first inhabitants, their culture and their heritage is just incongruous.
In Metsiamenong Bapalo is holding out, with very little water and a huge heart. His future, and that of the 30 Bushmen in the reserve and thousands in relocation camps, are pinned on the court case in the next few weeks. Here the fate of the last Bushmen of the Central Kalahari of Botswana will be decided.
As the landscape changes to peri-urban scenes, there is a image that simply won’t go away — it is of Bapalo Gaoberekwe in the heart of the Kalahari, walking against the purple skyline with a spear in his hand.