Following the seasonal rains, the Kalahari Desert in central Botswana is alive with rolling waves of green grasses and stretches of bright yellow wild flowers. Large herds of antelope munch the vegetation and canter across the plains. Jackals and hyenas lurk nearby to pick off the stragglers.
Morua Kgoma (62) has picked a pouchful of tasty berries. He has also plucked fresh, pulpy leaves and pounded them in a mortar to make a kind of bush pesto. With long, elegant fingers Kgoma has expertly uncovered tubers that look like new potatoes and small onions. He will roast them over a fire for an evening meal.
”There is lots of food here,” he says. ”We can always survive here. We know where to find our food. This is where we were born and where we belong.”
But life has become increasingly difficult for Kgoma and the other San people of the Molapo community. The Botswanan government, in an ongoing campaign to force them off the Kalahari, has cut off their water supplies, closed schools and health clinics and stopped paying monthly pensions to the elderly and disabled.
Government officials have trucked them away to bleak settlements. The government campaign now faces a legal challenge by a coalition of San and human rights groups. Molapo is the last stand of the San people, the resourceful hunter-gatherers who were the original inhabitants of southern Africa and have lived here for at least 40 000 years.
”We don’t want to move away from here,” says Kgoma. ”We can dig for water and find the other things we need.
”My children have all scattered,” he says of his five offspring. ”Some got jobs, others moved out when they could not get water. But I want to stay. When I sleep here I know my ancestors are nearby. When I wake up in the morning and I sneeze, I know my ancestors are with me.”
Kgoma is surrounded by the most of the remaining inhabitants of Molapo. Once a community of more than 1 000, just 58 people have stayed.
”We don’t know what will happen in the future,” he says. ”We keep listening and hoping that the outside world will bring good news. But the government wants to throw us away. We don’t know what is going to happen to us.”
Way of life
The Central Kalahari Game Reserve was made a national park in 1961 specifically to protect the San’s habitat and way of life. Now almost all of the country’s San people live outside the park and cannot freely carry on their hunting and foraging traditions.
It is estimated there are 60 000 San among Botswana’s 1,6-million people. They are distinctive, with light brown skin and high cheekbones, and speak a musical ”click” language.
The Botswanan government of President Festus Mogae claims that it is merely ”persuading” the San people to leave their ancestral lands. ”The former residents of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve have been encouraged to move out for two fundamental reasons,” said government spokesman Clifford Maribe. ”Firstly, their modern economic activities, be it hunting, arable and/or pastoral agriculture or some other commercial activity, are inconsistent with the status of the game reserve.
”Secondly, the people have been encouraged to move out to give themselves and their children the benefit of development.”
Critics claim the government is forcing the San off the Kalahari park because it does not respect their ancient culture. Others say the government wants to have total claim to possible diamond deposits on park lands.
The most militant supporter of the San’s rights to stay on the Kalahari is the London-based group Survival International. ”The government claims it wants to move the bushmen off the Kalahari park to protect the wildlife on the park and because it is too expensive to provide them with services in remote areas,” Survival International director Stephen Corry told The Guardian.
”These reasons are clearly spurious. There is plenty of game on the park. The government is spending more money relocating the people than it did to provide them with basic services.
”The government also says it is relocating people for their own development. But the people are miserable in the new settlements. We can only conclude the Botswanan government wants to move the bushmen in order to have full claim to diamond rights on park lands.”
Corry said his organisation would continue with its 20-year campaign to support the San people through petitions, demonstrations and boycotts of De Beers diamonds and tourism.
The San have been moved to settlement camps where there is little sign of positive development. Beer halls appear to be the chief economic activity at the settlement of New Xade, where most of the people of Molapo have been resettled. Alcoholism is rampant, according to development workers. Visitors are quickly besieged by beggars, indicating the extent of demoralisation. A new school and a hospital have been built for the several thousand San residents but the rubbish-strewn settlement consists mostly of thatched huts on dusty plots. Water taps are provided throughout the camp. Despite so many people being concentrated in a small area, they do not have toilets. ”These people just want to go in the bush,” says a government development worker dismissively.
In early February five San men were arrested for illegally hunting antelope and could be jailed for up to two years if found guilty. Anger erupted in New Xade as people stoned police escorting the men to court.
A government-funded project provides employment for some San people who make bricks and another teaches agricultural skills. But overall the settlement is depressing and dispiriting.
Hope
The hope of the San people to regain their lives on the Kalahari rests on the legal challenge, which is expected to come to court in May. It alleges it was illegal for the government to shut off water supplies and other essential services to the San communities on the Kalahari game reserve and to refuse to issue them with hunting licences. The case, which is being brought by a coalition including the First People of the Kalahari, the Working Group for Indigenous People in Southern Africa and Ditshwanelo, the Botswana Centre for Human Rights, argues that the government is obliged to restore the San to their traditional land.
Alice Mogwe, director of Ditshwanelo, says the plight of the San is ”part of the biggest human rights challenge in Botswana”. They are ”the poorest of the poor in Botswana” and the government has deprived them of their hunting rights.
Mogwe suggests the government does not intend to destroy the San culture, but it does not know how to allow the San to be part of their development. She said a plan was drawn up to allow the San to continue living in the Kalahari park.
”We had a vision of them being able to live in the park and be involved in sustainable activities, like walking safaris,” she said. But in 2001 the plan broke down.
Mogwe says she hopes the court case will convince the government to return to the drawing board to come up with a better solution for the San people.
”The tragedy is that we are replaying what was learned in colonialism,” said Mogwe. ”We don’t want that to happen to the Basarwa [the Botswanan name for the San]. We want them to remain who they are and yet be a part of Botswanan national culture. We believe it is possible to do both. They need to have a sense of belonging. But how can you achieve that if their basic rights are not recognised?”
Back at Molapo, night has fallen and Morua Kgoma gathers with others around a fire. He tells stories of how the ostrich lost the ability to start fires and why the noses of the white man and black man are different. He uses the sand in front of him to trace illustrations.
Considering the difficulties of his people to stay on their land, Kgoma draws in the sand. ”We are like a circle within a circle,” he says. ”We are the small circle inside and the Botswana government is the large circle surrounding us. We need to find the way to stop being separated.” – Guardian Unlimited Â