The sun sets on the San
October 25, 2004 Edition 1
Jonathan Ancer
After three days of searching for the San's spiritual leader, we finally track him down - he is under a tree, drunk or stoned or both.
"You have come to steal my knowledge," 65-year-old Dawid Kruiper accuses, waggling his finger and then letting off a stream of obscenities.
Here is a man who just five years ago sat down with President Thabo Mbeki to sign an agreement that made his people the richest landowners in the Kalahari.
Here is a man who, people say, is an articulate and inspiring leader, who is able to represent the needs of his nation to international audiences ... when he is sober.
Unfortunately that doesn't appear to be too often, and in his fall from possible greatness, he has become a symbol of a nation falling to pieces.
Not far away from where Kruiper stands in his tattered jersey and dirty trousers, is the place where another symbol of hope fell - with a bullet in his back.
His name was Optel Rooi.
He was called Optel because he was "picked up" as a 14-year-old poacher by the San after he had been tracked for three days.
In the 21 years that followed Optel never rose to greatness, but his story was inspiring: from poacher to tracker of other poachers; from misguided youth to champion of conservation.
Then in January the mild-mannered, softly-spoken man was found dead, allegedly shot in the back by police who said he had broken into a nearby bottle store.
Now, in death, he is likely to play a major role in shaping the San's future. His killing has ignited a fuse.
The community believes a policeman pulled the trigger, killing Optel in cold blood. They are furious that after 10 months no one has been arrested.
To some extent Optel has united the divided community and has led to the Human Rights Commission launching an inquiry.
But the inquiry, which begins in Andriesville on Tuesday, will delve deeper than investigating the circumstances surrounding Rooi's death: it will look at how a divided community can begin to regain its dignity.
That dignity was displayed by Kruiper in 1999 when he met Mbeki at the Molopa Lodge to formalise a land deal agreement 25 years after the community was booted out of the then Kalahari Gemsbok National Park.
Kruiper signed on behalf of his people - the Khomani San - for six farms, totalling 40 000 hectares of prime Kalahari land, worth R15 million.
With that signature a new era dawned for a marginalised community - the Khomani San became the richest land owners in the Kalahari.
Now, five years later, little trace of a great leader is left as Kruiper launches into a tirade against the government, us, and anyone else who comes to mind.
He holds a postcard produced by an international organisation to raise awareness of the San. The organisation has incorrectly identified the man in the postcard as Kruiper.
"This is a matter for the courts," he shouts and then remembers that we haven't paid him.
"I want money for every single word I say," he warns.
"Every. Single. Word."
Apparently he is skilled at getting money out of journalists wanting stories on the plight of his people.
It is said that a Japanese documentary team recently handed over R30 000 in exchange for an interview.
When we tell him that we won't hand over any cash, he lets off a stream of obscenities and tells us to get off his land.
It's a land that lies neglected as groups of San sit along the roads leading to the Kgalagadi Transfrontier National Park.
They squat in ostrich-skin loincloths, selling curios to curious tourists. They thrived as hunter gatherers; now they survive as tourist attractions.
When a car screeches down the road, the San dance, cheer and wave their bows and arrows to attract attention.
Jan Vorster and 13-year-old Mackai, who doesn't go to school, have set up a craft stall on the side of the road.
"Some days are good, some days are bad," Vorster says philosophically.
The 26-year-old makes between R20 and R100 a day on his crafts. He says he makes a little bit extra when a tourist pays to watch him hunt small wildcats.
A Cape Town couple stop and Vorster and Mackai begin dancing. The woman asks Vorster to speak "your language". He makes a few clicking sounds.
Then she asks Mackai to hold Gemsbok horns on his head.
Mackai obliges. The tourist snaps a photo. Her husband pays R10 for a rock with a painting of a San hunter aiming an arrow at a porcupine.
The San are trapped between two worlds: hankering after their traditional ways, but needing to make money to survive.
The San - literally and metaphorically - are at a crossroads.
At a four-way stop on the road to the Molopa Lodge, Oom Jack is coughing and spluttering. He takes a pull on a newspaper-rolled cigarette, which smells like dagga, and exhales.
"When I was born, I could walk around any part of the land and hunt, but now I'm stuck behind fences. I'm in prison. Dawid Kruiper is our leader. He'll tell you the whole story of the Bushmen: all the problems, all the mess," Oom Jack says.
At the heart of the "mess" is a split within the 650-strong community between those describing themselves as "traditional Bushmen" and those whom they describe as "Westerners".
Stef Snel, a documentary filmmaker who worked with the San in 2000, explains how the split came about.
When Kruiper's father, Regopstaan, made the original land claim, the Khomani San numbered about 50 members.
"There was pressure from the government for the community to swell its ranks before it could be considered to get land," Snel says.
As a result, the claimant group, which was mostly the Kruiper family, decided to find others to strengthen their case.
Families who had their origins further south, and were not directly related to the group of San who had been evicted from the Park, became claimants.
Researchers also went looking at family trees to find people who had lost touch with their roots.
"In apartheid days, the San were considered the lowest in the barrel and so many denied their ancestry," Snel says.
"But they were unearthed for the land claim, and because it was a different political climate and money and land were involved, it was easier for people to acknowledge their heritage."
The "new Bushmen" and the traditionalists clashed and tension between the factions, who jointly own the land, has boiled over.
The decision to "let the others on to the bus" is considered by members of the Kruiper group as their most regrettable mistake.
Elias Festus, 43, who had worked as a tracker for 12 years and now sells crafts, says: "We are unhappy that our farms are being run by a committee of Westerners."
He is sitting on the ground. There's a plaster cast on his left leg, which he says was broken after he was run over by a donkey cart, known in these parts as a Kalahari Ferrari.
"These people don't follow Bushman traditions; they want to do things the Western way.
"We want to hunt, live in grass huts and perform our rituals and traditions without their interference. We want to follow the old ways," he insists.
I notice his cellphone and ask him how he reconciles cellular technology with "the old ways".
Festus doesn't answer. He just laughs. He picks up a bow, notches an arrow and pulls back the string.
He takes aim at a milk carton about 40 metres away, and releases. The arrow whistles through the air, pier-cing the carton.
Another "traditional bushman", 36-year-old Selikat, claps his hands and sings in the clicks of the old language at his grass shelter on one of the San's farms.
Selikat says the day was a typical one at the intersection. He spent it working on necklaces (which he sells for R50), bangles (R20) and bows made out of Gemsbok horns and arrows (R70). He makes about R50 a week.
"It's too little. What must we do? We are unhappy."
His day's earnings are being put into the pot on the fire - potatoes, onions, mealie cobs and a chicken leg.
According to Selikat, "outsiders have infiltrated the community and are pretending to be bushmen".
"They're fighting us; not with blood, but with politics. They're stealing our culture; they're stealing our traditions. We drink because of the stress."
The drink of choice is the cheap wine nicknamed "killing me softly" by the community.
Nursing Iron Brews at Molopa Lodge are Arrie Tities, 37, and Fonnie Brou, 26. The deputy chairman and treasurer of the Community Property Association (CPA), which is charged with managing the six farms, are not wearing loincloths.
They're dressed, like most young South Africans, in jeans and T-shirts (although Tities is wearing a camelthorn seed and ostrich-shell necklace around his neck).
Like most of the other members of the CPA, they are "Westerners".
Tities was born on a farm in the Kalahari and lived in a tent until he was seven. Then his family moved to Upington and he left his San roots behind him, only to embrace his identity when the land claim was instituted.
"I can't speak the language," Tities says.
"There are too many clicks and your tongue does cartwheels.
"When I went to school in Upington people didn't know I was a bushman, but I've always been proud of who I am. I know the culture and I respect the traditions. Being a bushman is not about the clothes you wear. It's in the blood."
Brou didn't even know he was a San until his grandmother was identified in the land claim and his family was registered as claimants.
"It was a surprise," he says. "But when I got used to the idea of being a bushman, I came to celebrate it.
"I was happy that our people were given land. It's just sad that we can't work with the traditional leaders. They say it's their land and they don't want us to manage the farms," Brou says.
Eventually, in July, a San Bosberaad was called to iron out differences between the two factions.
At the moment the only thing the two groups agree on is their disgust at the killing of Optel.
Members of the San are now pinning their hopes on the HRC hearings sparked by his killing. They want the country to hear their cry for help.
They are searching for answers on how to repair the rift within the community, make the farms work and end the brutality perpetrated on the San.
If that doesn't happen the San, the people who have the oldest genetic markers on the planet, won't be able to pass on their culture to a next generation.
The first step starts with getting to the bottom of the murder of a reformed poacher.
