Despite an international campaign protesting the removals, the Government of Botswana has since 1997 moved more than 1,000 of 1,700 ethnic |Gui, ||Gana, and Kgalagadi residents out of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR). As part of the government’s Remote Area Development Programme (RADP), two settlements were established. The main settlement is New Xade, called Kx’oensakene in |Gui and ||Gana languages. The name has an interesting origin. In mandating the relocation, the government officer told the people, “We offer you relocation to a new settlement to find you a more developed life.” In ironic reference to this speech, the people named the settlement “looking for life.” Kx’oensakene/New Xade is a typical government-planned settlement in Botswana, with an elementary school, clinic, water supply, town offices, public works, and police station. Residents were given a cash payment and either 15 goats or five cattle, in addition to pension monies and food distribution, as incentives to move. But these benefits—intended as compensation for their relocation—were more than offset by the difficulty of accessing natural resources in a new and unfamiliar territory over 70 kilometers west of their old settlement.
The manner in which the San were allocated land in Kx’oensakene is instructive about how bureaucracy deals with small-scale indigenous societies. In the new settlement totaling about two square kilometers in size, people were assigned fixed residential plots, 25 by 40 meters each, arranged in a grid pattern. Though applicants were asked which of the three ethnic groups they wanted to live with, lots were allocated in arbitrary order, without regard for kinship or prior residential groupings. As a result, roughly 300 households found themselves at fixed sites and surrounded by strangers.
Before sedentarization, they lived in small and flexible groups, traveling from place to place in search of food and good company. Immobile in settlements of high population density, maintainance of a flexible lifestyle has become much more difficult for them. How have the people responded to this drastic change? Research conducted in December 2000 showed that although 335 plots were distributed, less than two-thirds (204) were actually occupied. Of the 131 missing households, the residents of 37 plots had gone back to their former communities in the CKGR or in the Ghanzi ranching area, 30 had moved to other plots belonging to their relatives, and 44 were making camps outside of the fixed residential site in peri-urban squatter camps. The whereabouts of the remaining households were unknown.
The number of people abandoning town residential plots in favor of peri-urban squatter camps is on the increase. The 115 adults in 20 peri-urban camps in December 2000 increased to some 28 camps with 138 adults in May 2001, a number accounting for one-fourth of all adults in Kx’oensakene. The peri-urban camps are of two types: A-type camps in the outermost ring, more than 5 kilometres from the town centre, and B-type camps located within 5 kilometres. The A-type camps move en masse, changing location every few months. B-type camps, on the other hand, are semi-permanent.
In terms of subsistence, A-type camps mainly pursue hunting and gathering. They make camps near food-rich areas and set traps for small antelopes. The people in B-type camps also pursue hunting and gathering, but they keep goats and/or cattle and make agricultural fields near their camps or move to field areas in rainy season (although not annually in the Kalahari).
Those who have chosen to remain in the main settlement are mostly wage earners with clear-cut reasons for being there. Of these, 13 are political appointees such as chiefs and members of Village Development Committee; 48 are involved in one of the 12 income-generating projects which include dressmaking, vegetable gardening, carpentry, and candle-making; and 158 are wage laborers, employed by the government.
These clear differences in subsistence strategies among A-type and B-type camps and town plots have not led to the breakdown of relationships. Ties between the camps and townsite have instead become stronger. Consider the case of Kirema, for example. He lives on his town plot with his wife ||Ooho, two school-aged children, two smaller children, and an aged father. They are living in the ||Gana section of town, ||Ooho ’s language group. In June 2000, ||Ooho’s mother left the plot and established a B-type camp two kilometers away with the families of ||Ooho’s brother, sister, and aunt, who had abandoned other plots in town.
After relocation, Kirema and ||Ooho worked as wage laborers. Kirema has recently expanded their income through participation in the vegetable gardening project. His wife is involved in basket making. When their wages are paid, they buy sugar, tea, and tobacco to give to ||Ooho’s mother and other members of the camp. On food distributing or pension days, Kirema, ||Ooho, and ||Ooho’s town-dwelling sister go to the government offices to get foods or money for their relatives living in the out-camp. They also attend village meetings to get information and notices for them. In return, goats belonging to the townsfolk are kept in ||Ooho’s mother’s camp. When ||Ooho’s mother’s camp gathers wild fruits, hunts game, or butchers livestock, camp members bring portions for their relatives in plots, as well as firewood and building materials. In this way, people co-operate with close relatives using different subsistence strategies.
People often gain access to different subsistence strategies through relatives. Kulushie had been relocated into the |Gui area of town, but moved out. Among the first in Kx’oensakene to make a B-type camp, Kulushie was considered a pioneer of this residential shift. At his camp, two kilometers from his town plot, he looked after goats owned by relatives. In December 2000 he moved with his wife !Kaha, five small children, and !Kaha’s mother to an A-type camp 8 kilometers away to live with !Kaha’s aunt. During seven months in the outer region, they shifted their campsite three times to gather wild fruits. In June 2001, Kulusie returned to his townplot with !Kaha and their children, looking for wage-work, while his wife’s mother and other relatives remained in the distant camp.
These examples make clear how people maintain their diversity of subsistence activities in spite of government policies in Kx’oensakene. The dense population has scattered to various areas to follow different subsistence strategies. Strong kinship ties help maintain resource sharing, allowing flexible shifting between strategies. And this cooperation in turn further strengthens already-strong relationships. The people are trying with some success to convert the inflexibility of the settlement into a multi-faceted environment they can live with. If kx’oensakene means “looking for life,” the residents there seem to have found it—through a combination of old and new and by holding on to their diversity and flexibility.
