Khanxhae's curse

Tshireletso Motlogelwa | Friday November 1, 2013 15:17

 

At New Xade the old men with weather beaten faces are attempting to water their cattle. Dust billows. Voices echo and occasionally, laughter pierces the sky. Boys with sticks, old men with wide brimmed hats and caps squint and give out occasional commands.

The near mid-day sun, which is usually harsh anywhere in the central parts of this semi-arid country, is intolerable in these western edges of the Kalahari Desert. Even by Botswana standards this has been a dry season but here at the edges of the Kalahari Desert the sun-baked sands cook your feet and every water droplet disappears soon as it reaches the loose sand. Its dry land, and it is the driest part of the dry season.

There is a man in the middle of the ruckus with an axe. Under him is a cow. A few metres away lies the carcass of a long dead cow. The meat may be plenty but it is not good news for these Basarwa men who are struggling to grow the cattle, but a combination of drought, ailments and unfavourable conditions mean that their foray into cattle farming remains stunted.

In a way, 70-something year old Galeforolwe Gaotlhobogwe and his friends are guinea pigs in a grand experiment – Government gave them five cows each when they were relocated out of CKGR to New Xade to assist them in settling into their new lives as farmers.

After Botswana’s longest running legal battle that pitted Basarwa within the CKGR against government, which had forcefully removed them from the reserve, some Basarwa accepted a programme whereby they would be given livestock and leave the game reserve.

But Gaotlhobogwe stands one foot in the government-induced agrarian modernity and a return to CKGR to a much more familiar environment of hunting and gathering.  After working diligently on his cattle, he saw them multiply from five to 17 but now things seem to be moving backwards again.

Gaotlhobogwe’s problem is bigger – in recent times he has heard rumours that soon Water Utilities Corporation will turn the borehole in the south western part of New Xade into the village water system. From then on, no farmer will be able to have his cattle dip their snouts in here.

Furthermore, government veterinary officials always get inoculation wrong when they turn up at New Xade.

“Dikgomo di bolawa ke santlhoko. Re ntse re kopa boRalophalo. Mo ngwageng ba tla ba kenta gangwe hela mme ga ba kente gotlhe. Go a pala,” he concludes, before one man lands the axe on the cow laying on the ground with a final thud. 

His friend, another elderly man says in the olden days they could ask to use boreholes from surrounding farms, but that was then.

“Ke dipolase hela go dikologa jaana. Ga o kake ware o ka buisana nae la nosa mo go mothong.”

“Boers?” Mmegi enquires.

“Maburu le Batswana! Akere Batswana le bone makgoa hela malatsi a. Nna le kgomo yame ha e tsene koo ke a itlhoboga,” he says with finality.

He is left with around 10 cows and the way things are going, he might have to kill one soon. If they die he might have to return to the CKGR and become another confirming statistic to the allegation that Basarwa are good for nothing and abuse government goodwill.

It is a possibility Gaotlhobogwe dreads to face.

But it is a different struggle to Txara Khanxae Saulo’s. Saulo could not care about what others think of him. He is busy trying to locate his next meal behind the Choppies supermarket’s loading bay. 

The 50-year-old 70-year-old-looking Saulo is trying to tell his story but something keeps intervening - the street boys behind him unpacking from a big pile of recently delivered goods, their excited yelps, the cars passing by which every now and then he has to stare at as if expecting some-ultimate-thing to dismount from up there, and the small boy walking about in a dazed state sniffling. “Khanxhae” as they call him, is a cheerful man. 

He cannot remember when he left school but he does recall it was before he completed his third year in primary school. He left D’Kar and made his way to Gantsi where he has been since then.

He says he has tried to find work but a combination of scant education and prejudice against ethnic background has kept him unemployed. He sustains himself by helping unload trucks at parking bays of supermarkets around the Gantsi central area. Mmegi meets him just behind Choppies waiting for the next ‘job’. He says at times he gets a plate of food for helping or ‘di-damage’ (items discarded for various reasons by the shop).

Saulo’s story, like of many Basarwa Mmegi meets on this journey, starts with a familiar tone. Life in a settlement or a ranch, school in some primary school, often away from family, difficulties with learning and ultimate abandonment of school, a return to the settlement, or in the case of Saulo, the dusty streets of Gantsi.

Activist Kuela Kiema says Basarwa from birth face a challenge that keep them on the margins of mainstream Botswana society and economy. Since pre-independence times, Gantsi was parcelled out to ranchers and therefore Basarwa remain a landless people, forced to provide cheap labour to the farmers who have a gorilla grip on the land economy of Gantsi and Kgalagadi.

However he says the biggest challenge Basarwa face is lack of access to education.  “You find a high level of drop-outs in primary schools. With the conditions from difficulties with languages to a lack of parental support, most children find it difficult to continue with school,” he argues.

Kiema who until recently was working as Cultural Centre Manager under the Kuru Family of Organisations is now in charge of education. He has seen firsthand the challenges Basarwa children face at an early age in accessing education. 

Isaac Sol, UB MA Linguistics and Languages, says language is possibly the biggest contributor to dropouts.

“Children struggle with two languages, Setswana and English. You have to understand that these children come from a language, which doesn’t even use the Roman system. How do you transition from that language, learn Setswana, get instruction in Setswana, learn English and get instruction in it within the first four years of your primary school life?” he asks.

Basarwa often face the prospect of being labelled good for nothing because of their inability to surmount the challenges put before them. Young San intellectual Job Morris says being labelled further puts one under pressure.

However, he says Basarwa need to learn to manoeuvre the limitations before them and utilise government programmes. “You have to dig in and try your best even though you know there are some problems with some of government programmes, try them,” he urges.

In Grooglagte, 80km west of Gantsi, Mmegi meets a group of women, Efa Motokwane, Qanlae Tinny Xqoshe and Qamxho Mabina. They have been trying to set up a hair salon for a few years. Recently the village social worker organised a P14,000 grant for them to start the business. However their challenge is that there is no electricity and water. So for now they have to offer their services home to home.

“Business is good, our problem is that we cannot offer the full services because there is no electricity,” says Mabina.

Mabina says the only success she has had is with the 14 goats she got from the LIMID programme.

“Di siame di a tsala,” she adds.

However for school dropout 31-year-old New Xade resident Kealotswe Motsoketso the dream to go back to school remains. He finished form 1 about 10 years ago but had to drop out because of stress.

“Batsadi ba me ba ne ba ntshitswe ko CKGR nna ke tsena sekolo ko D’Kar jaanong ke sa kgone go ha sekolo tlhaloganyo yame yotlhe,” he says.

For now, he alternates between his family back in CKGR and his uncles in New Xade.

As he walks away towards where the clutch of men are attending to a fallen cow, he looks back, “Mme sone ke tlaa se boela,” he says, half a plea half a meek threat.

The Gantsi region is littered with broken dreams, a few survive to tell the tale, but most get lost like the water in the Kalahari Desert, never to be traced except as a faint piece of nostalgia.