the San

Socialist Banner has posted on a number of occasions about the plight of the San , the Kalahari Bushmen and makes no apologies for doing so again.

These weary Bushmen — four men, three women and an infant — were nearing the end of a two-day journey, walking their way toward water. Taoxaga was thirsty, and it angered and baffled him that he had to walk so far. Closer by was a borehole, the wellspring to underground water. But the government had sealed it up, and he supposed this was just another way to drive the Bushmen from the sandy home they had occupied for millenniums.

“The government says we are bad for the animals, but I was born here and the animals were born here, and we have lived together very well,” he said.

But most of the Bushmen have moved to dreary resettlement areas on the outskirts, where they wait in line for water, wait on benches at the clinic, wait around for something to do, wait for the taverns to open so they can douse their troubles with sorghum beer. Once among the most self-sufficient people on earth, many of them now live on the dole, waiting for handouts.

“If there was only some magic to free me into the past, that’s where I would go,” said Pihelo Phetlhadipuo, an elderly Bushman living in a resettlement area called Kaudwane. “I once was a free man, and now I am not.”