posted on the web on April 20 2003

Country Data

Full Name: Republic of Botswana Capital: Gaborone Population: 1,591,232 (2002 est.) Location: Africa Total area: 312,685 sq km Language: English, Setswana Ethnic groups: Tswana 79%, Kalanga 11%, Basarwa 3% Religions: Indigenous 85%, Christian 15% Currency: Pula IGO memberships: UN, WHO, WTO Internet site: Government of Botswana Source: CIA World Factbook

There are no streetlights, neon signs, or traffic signals. There is only the moon, nestled in the great baobab trees, its rays sifted by the branches. It gently illuminates a small clearing in the village of Buitesvango, Botswana, home to the Nharo Bushmen. Beehive huts made of mud and thatch grass encircle the clearing, but no one stirs from their homes. There is only the moon—and silence.

The Bushmen, or the San, are sub-Saharan Africa’s first inhabitants, arriving on the continent nearly 30,000 years ago. Since British colonization in the 1800’s, the Bushmen have slowly been pushed from the coastline to the central, arid Kalahari Desert. As they adapted to their environment, they became adept hunters and gatherers, the keepers of the Kalahari. Armed with bows and arrows, the men would noiselessly stalk steenbok, gemsbok, and wildebeest, while the women would dig into the red sand and pluck melons and tubers, seemingly by magic. At night, their chants and clapping would vibrate against the dunes and the souls of the ancestors would mingle with the trance dancers, the tribe’s healers.

Once a vibrant culture, the Bushmen of the Central Kalahari Desert find themselves in the midst of another relocation, one that has muted their songs and slowed their dances. They have been forced instead to fight—for their rights to land, to hunt, to gather, to visit ancestral graves, to dance, to live. In Botswana, the government of President Festus Mogae is currently "encouraging" the Bushmen to leave the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR), which had been established by the British in 1961 as a residence for the Bushmen and for wildlife protection. The government claims that "many residents of the CKGR already are or wish to be settled agriculturists, raising crops and tending to livestock as opposed to hunting and gathering" (1). Their traditional way of life has "no prospect of becoming economically viable" (2). However, for Izak Kruiper, leader of the Kagga Kama Xhomani clan, the land means more than a place to be "economically viable."

"You know, the real reason we need the land is to bring back the rain. Since the Bushmen lost their land the rains have been bad, it has been dry. It’s like old Regopstaan said: only we can bring back the rain, we the little people. But we can only bring back the rain by dancing. And we can only dance if we have the land to dance on" (3).

Tonight in Buitesvango, north of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, a dance will take place. It is not for the rain—it is on behalf of all the Little People, so that they are reminded of how to dance. Besa, the healer, will dance for the land claims, for the dispossessed Bushmen, and for their voice, so the message carries to the indigenous of the world. And so, the village begins to wake.

A Modern-Day Moses

As if on cue, Nharo men, women and children emerge from their huts. As they walk toward the clearing, the moon silhouettes their long, lean bodies, and their skin still glows golden honey-brown in the dim light. Some are naked except for a xai (a small skin loincloth), some wear tattered jeans and cotton t-shirts stained yellowish brown from sweat and dirt. The mood is light; a happy cacophony of talk and laughter fills the clearing as they set about to making a fire. The women settle into a circle with the children at their side or in their laps, while the men shuffle towards the outside of the ring, eyes glancing warily at everything and nothing. Lively chatter turns to murmurs as a new group appears from the darkness of the huts.

Dawid, the leader of the Xhomani tribe from the Kalahari Gemsbok National Park in southwestern Botswana, has arrived—the healing has been arranged for him and a small choleric Nharo baby. Following closely is Dawid’s wife, Sanna, accompanied by Rupert Isaacson, a British journalist, and Xwa, the unofficial matriarch of the Nharo clan at Buitesvango, holding the sick child against her chest. Finally, there is Besa, the healer brought from Groote Laagte to revitalize the spirit of the Bushmen.

As everyone else joins the circle, Besa hovers in the background, preparing for the dance. For roughly sixty years old, he still looks strong—a compact torso peaks out from behind his thick khaki-colored coat. He is tiny—the coat falls to his ankles—with the same honey-colored skin as that of the Nharo clan. His face is smooth, with high cheekbones and round, predator’s eyes, like a leopard’s (4). Besa is rumored to be a BaKoko shape-shifter, the most powerful kind of Bushman ‘doctor.’ Shape-shifters not only heal the sick, but they can also take the form of an animal, usually a lion or leopard, stalk their clan’s enemies and seek vengeance. It is hard to believe that this slight, tiny Bushman can change into a leopard—but then again, there are his eyes. With the reflection of the firelight, they seem to glow yellow, like a cat’s.

Everyone seems to know that Besa will be able to help the sick child. A Bushman healer had done a dance for Xwa the year before—her legs had been swollen and covered in red sores. The morning after the dance, the sores were gone (5). Besa brings a power to the village tonight that far surpasses the previous healer. Trance curing dances are still some of the strongest ‘Bushman medicine,’ although they happen more infrequently due to the attempted assimilation and ‘modernization’ of the Kalahari Bushmen. However, even for the most "modern," incredulous Bushmen, the rituals still represent a powerful spirituality. They believe that the healers have an out-of-body experience at the height of the dance, enabling them to communicate with the spirits of their ancestors. Since the Bushmen can no longer visit their ancestral land, trance dancing provides the only outlet to the past. As the number of healers decline, the few who remain have become the spiritual and political leaders of their communities, serving as spokespersons on issues of political rights and land (6). This is why Dawid is here tonight—to rediscover his power to heal, so he can lead his people back into the Kalahari.

Sitting in the circle in only a xai, Dawid fixes his gaze on the fire. "A small, greying man with a squashed nose and eyes lost behind deep, mischievous wrinkles" (7), his jovial demeanor has been replaced with a look of preoccupation. He seems to search the fire for an answer to the Xhomani’s problems. The Xhomani were evicted from the Kalahari Gemsbok National Park in 1975, more than two decades before the same thing began to happen in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. Dawid, son of Regopstaan, spent the 1980’s and 1990’s fighting for a land claim in order to restore hunting-gathering and visitation rights in the park. With the help of various NGOs—the Working Group for Indigenous Minorities in Southern Africa (WIMSA) and the South African San Institute (SASI)—Dawid finally got his wish. On March 21, 1999, he signed a historic land restitution settlement on behalf of the Xhomani people with South Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki, returning 65,000 hectares, 25,000 of them in the park on their old hunting grounds (8). Unfortunately, land alone does not provide the solution to the deterioration of the Bushmen dance.

"Unless the land comes to us with love it’ll be worthless, it won’t sustain us," Dawid said to Isaacson. "We will never be secure in it if we claim it with fear and with hate" (9).

Dawid’s Xhomani struggle without "love" or support from the government. They received farming land outside of the park, but still struggle to reach an agreement with the park board about use of their land inside the game reserve. According to Mvuro Msimang, the National Park Board’s CEO, it was for the Bushmen and SASI to "advise the park when they were ready to negotiate their place in the new park. It was not the park’s place to seek the Bushmen out" (10). Increasingly frustrated, the Xhomani have turned to alcohol and domestic violence as an outlet for their anger.

Sanna, Dawid’s wife, sits quietly next to Dawid, perched like a twig that might blow away in the wind. She travels to Buitesvango for the women of her clan, who have been sold by their own men to the local colored and blacks in exchange for liquor and dope (11). Some wives of the Xhomani men wake up in the middle of the night to find their husband’s hands around their necks, slowly choking the breath out of their bodies. If the women leave the settlement they risk the very real threat of rape, so they often fight back, attacking their husbands while they sleep. The clan deals with its internal conflicts while it waits for someone, or something, to reestablish order within the community.

As a renewed healer, Dawid feels that he could help his people, that he could dance to ease the friction between husbands and wives, or the Bushmen and the government. He is as a Bushman with both victory and defeat on his side. He is someone the San of the Central Kalahari can turn to so they do not suffer the same consequences. Dawid sits, staring into the fire, patiently waiting for Besa to begin the healing.

The First People

A few of the Nharo women start, gently, to sing and clap. As the rest fall in line, the short snatches swell into a vibrant chorus, with rhythms and voices pulsing around the circle. While the women chant, Besa moves into the light of the fire and begins stamping his feet. He dances in short, shuffling steps, laughing and talking to himself, occasionally emitting high, yodeling notes that would carry him into a trance and beyond (12). His pace quickens, and without much drama he passes into the trance, his eyes belying the control of his continued song and dance. Almost business-like, he glides towards Xwa who still holds the sick baby. He takes the infant into his arms and holds it up to the sky, singing, offering it, mucus streaming from his mouth and nose (13). He hands the child back to Xwa and then places his hands upon Xwa’s head, emitting a series of high-pitched shrieks. Xwa sits stone-faced, gently rocking the baby, as if nothing was happening.

Xwa, a woman of largess, has a commanding presence in the circle. Her face has defined features, but the jowls hang from her chin and arms. She almost seems to be asking for a fight. Tonight, Xwa fittingly represents the Bushmen of the Central Kalahari—a stalwart amidst noise and confusion. Although the Nharo live outside the CKGR, Xwa has an interesting connection to the people in the Central Kalahari. She is the mother of the First People of the Kalahari, or more specifically, the mother of its founder, John Hardbattle.

Established by Hardbattle in 1992, the NGO ‘the First People of the Kalahari’ acts as an intermediary between the Bushmen and the Botswana government, negotiating land rights and the protection of their cultural heritage. In 1994, Hardbattle organized survey work of the eastern CKGR, home of the Khwe Bushmen, to help plot culturally significant spots (like burial sites) and create maps that could be referenced during land disputes. (The Khwe never recorded boundaries with modern maps—they used mental maps and had very clear ideas on features of their territory.) (14). Although Hardbattle suddenly passed away in 1996 from stomach cancer, the First People of the Kalahari continue to work alongside NGOs like Survival International, WIMSA and SASI in order to resettle the dispossessed Central Kalahari Bushmen, the Gwi and the Gana.

The history of the CKGR dates back to 1961, when it was established by the British government in order to 1) protect the people of the Central Kalahari and 2) to protect the habitats and wildlife of the region. The game reserve is the second largest in Africa, spanning nearly 52,000 square kilometers. Once in place, people used the reserve for residence, foraging for natural resources, and in some cases, arable agricultural and livestock production (15). However, when the Republic of Botswana gained independence in 1966, the Central Kalahari San witnessed the beginning of their end in the game reserve.

Diamonds for Development?

Besa continues to sway around the circle, mucus still flowing. He faces the sky, entranced, unable to see that the midnight black sky is now blanketed with stars. They sparkle teasingly, reminding the Bushmen of the one natural resource that they do not seem to have a symbiotic relationship with—diamonds. According to Survival International, diamonds are keeping the Bushmen out of the CKGR.

In 1967, one year after independence, the Botswana government recorded its first diamond discovery in Orapa, northeast of the CKGR. In order to service what turned out to be the second largest Kimberlite pipe in the world, the Botswana government created a coalition with the diamond company, DeBeers Centenary AG. The new merger, Debswana, established a site in Orapa in 1971, followed by the creation of two smaller sites, one a little south of Orapa in Letlhakane in 1977, and the last one in Jwaneng (southern Botswana) in 1982. In 2002, the government reported that 30-33% of the nation’s GDP, 50% of government revenue, and 70-80% of foreign exchange earnings were from diamond revenues (16).

Although the Debswana website, www.diamondsfordevelopment.com, continually refers to the three major mining sites, it never refers to the Gope site, a Bushman village in the CKGR, where they discovered a small Kimberlite pipe in 1980. Further evaluation involved sinking a small shaft for the bulk sampling of the deposit, but in 1997 the government declared that the "Gope Kimberlite deposit could not be developed into a commercially viable mine" (17). Debswana maintained a retention license though, requiring that the investors had to submit annual reviews to demonstrate that the mine was still economically inefficient (18). An option extends this license into 2006.

Consequently, it was in 1985, five years after the Gope discovery, when the Botswana government initiated discussion about the relocation of the CKGR Bushmen. The 1986 White Paper on Remote Area Dwellers (RAD’s—term for people in the CKGR) officially announced that the CKGR settlements should be "frozen because they had no prospect of becoming economically viable," and that the remote area dwellers were "encouraged, but not forced" to leave (19). An official information leaflet for the CKGR stated that: "Government is now encouraging these people to move to areas outside the reserve in order that they may be provided with modern facilities, schools, clinics etc. and integrate them into modern society" (20). However, the Survival International website reveals a different attitude towards this type of "encouragement."

"We didn’t want to come here," Philatwe Lentodi said in April 2002. "Government officials told us to go. They said we would get no water if we stayed. The life here is very difficult. [In the reserve] we could gather wild fruits. There is nothing like that here" (21).

From the early to mid-1980’s, the Central Kalahari suffered from severe droughts, but the Bushmen used their knowledge of plants in the desert to survive without water. However, they were also dependent on government assistance, food and water provisions, in order to keep their livestock alive. Springs dried up and sip-wells no longer yielded as much water as they had in the past. Cattle owners from outside the Bushmen villages would use the water boreholes often, leading to frequent equipment breakdowns, which would take months to repair (22). Survival International also attests that the diamond mining in Gope terminated the Bushmen’s traditional water supply (23).

Although the government is not currently mining in the CKGR, it maintains a presence with retention licensing privileges in Gope. Its current directive still focuses on making the Bushmen productive members of society, essentially assimilating them as "equal members of the Batswana" (24). With a carrot-and-stick mentality, the Botswana government offers development and compensation in the form of land, cattle, goats, jobs and goods to anyone who resettles outside of the reserve. However, it has also stopped access to social services, development assistance, and as of January 2002, it stopped water shipments into the CKGR. Apparently, the government was concerned that the "provision of services in the CKGR was unsustainable," (25) costing a minimum of Pula $50,000 per month (roughly US $8300). Meanwhile, the 2000 GDP of Botswana was US $5.6 billion, with another $25 million annually from economic aid. Starting in 1997, the Bushmen became "too expensive" to support, and in that year 1,739 "voluntarily relocated" to settlements outside the reserve, according to President Mogae’s Nov. 7, 2002 "State of the Nation Address" (26). It is interesting to note that the official Republic of Botswana website also states that "among the estimated population of 50,000 Basarwa, only about 1,000 lived in the CKGR by 1991" (27). Ultimately, the numbers do not seem to add up.

The Sun Will Rise

Besa has worked himself into a fervor, leaping in and out of the circle, healing everyone. He goes to Dawid twice, placing his hands on his head and his heart. Dawid draws figures in the sand as Besa hovers over him, but afterwards he looks up incredulously. The men outside the circle share Dawid’s suspicion—many of the young Bushmen wish to turn to a more Western life, but they still cannot escape the lure of tradition. Dawid does not wish to be more modern—he is simply under the impression that the healing did not work. He later discovers that he did not require a healing in the first place, which is why he felt nothing. He still had the power to heal in him—all he needed was the desire and confidence to draw it out from its hibernation.

Finally, Besa focuses his attention on Rupert Isaacson, a journalist writing The Healing Land, a book about the Xhomani land claim and the plight of the Bushmen in sub-Saharan Africa. Isaacson risks being arrested by the Botswana government for interacting with Central Kalahari Bushmen. The police seem to linger beyond the huts in the darkness, like lions waiting to pounce. They mingle with the Mier, the Herero, the poor colored Africans who also want to prevent the Bushmen from winning a land claim. They demand a land claim of their own. They all wait for Rupert to leave the Bushmen so they can stop him from being another voice for the San.

With a final shriek, like the sound of one desperate gasp of life, Besa collapses to the ground. He lies there, motionless, unconscious. The dance is now complete, and he is exhausted—but not dead. Tomorrow, when the sun comes up, Besa will awake rejuvenated, and everyone he has healed—Dawid, Sanna, Isaacson, Xwa, the small Nharo child and the rest of the Nharo clan—will feel the same. The Bushmen are not dead. The sun will rise, and the healers will lead them back into the Kalahari Desert.

Laura Dannen is a student at Princeton University, USA.

Bibliography

1. Question and Answer, "Why relocate?," the Republic of Botswana website, Jan. 13, 2002, www.gov/bw/basarwa/questions.html.
2. ibid.
3. Isaacson, The Healing Land, p. 88.
4. Isaacson, The Healing Land, p. 192.
5. ibid., p. 129.
6. Andy Smith, Candy Malherbe, Mat Guenther and Penny Berens, The Bushmen of Southern Africa: a foraging society in transition, David Philip Publishers, Cape Town, South Africa, 2000, p. 87.
7. Isaacson, The Healing Land, p. 55.
8. "Khomani San—a historic land deal," the First People of the Kalahari, 1/12/03, www.firstpeoples.org/land_rights/southern-africa/whatsnew
9. Isaacson, The Healing Land, p. 168.
10. ibid., p. 272.
11. ibid., p. 224.
12. ibid., p.253.
13. ibid.
14. Robert Hitchcock, "Background History on the Central Kalahari Game Reserve and Ghanzi Land and Resource Issues, the Regional Context of the First People of the Kalahari, www.kalaharipeoples.org/documents/ghanzi.htm, p. 7.
15. ibid., p. 3.
16. "Debswana," Botswana: Diamonds for Development, 1/12/03, www.diamondsfordevelopment.com/page/debswana_hist.html
17. "Background on the Relocation of the Basarwa from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve," the Republic of Botswana website, www.gov.bw/basarwa/background.html, p. 3.
18. ibid.
19. Question and Answer, the Republic of Botswana, www.gov.bw/basarwa/questions.html
20. Isaacson, The Healing Land, p. 133.
21. Bushmen statements on relocation, "Quotations from Gana and Gwi Bushmen about relocation," Survival International website, 1/11/2003, www.survival-international.org/bush%20state%20reloc.htm, p. 1
22. Hitchcock, "Background notes on the Central Kalahari Game Reserve," p. 3.
23. News, "Protests," Survival International website, www.survival-international.org
24. Question and Answer, the Republic of Botswana, www.gov.bw/basarwa/questions.html
25. ibid.
26. President Festus Mogae, Botswana, "State of the Nation Address," Nov. 7, 2002, www.gov.bw/government/stateofnationaddr.doc.
27. Question and Answer, the Republic of Botswana, www.gov.bw/basarwa/questions.html