November 9, 1995
Web posted at: 4:15 p.m. EST (2115 GMT)
From International Correspondent Mike Hanna
KALAHARI DESERT, South Africa (CNN) -- The Bushmen, or San people, of Southern Africa are among the continent's oldest, and rarest, inhabitants.
Over time these gentle nomadic people have been driven from the land on which they lived. For centuries they have had no place to call their own. Now, in a democratic South Africa, they are seeking restitution, asking for the land on which they once wandered to be returned to them.
The Bushmen have made the shifting dunes on the edge of the Kalahari Desert their home for more than 2000 years. They are now poverty stricken, homeless squatters cut off by fences from the expanses of land on which they hunted and gathered as nomads.
Regopstaan, 95, is the patriarch of the clan, the leader of 250 people who are the last of Southern Africa's oldest race. "When I was young we would wander together through all the land," he said from his bed. "I wish my children were also able to freely roam." (992K QuickTime movie)
Activist Cait Andrews is attempting to make the dying man's dream come true. She and a group of lawyers have filed land claims on the groups behalf hoping that in a democratic South Africa the Sans' right to move freely in land they occupied centuries ago will be restored.
"There's a large part of the Western tradition they don't have," said Andrews. "That is competition, putting each other down, gossiping, hurting each other, killing. That sort of thing isn't part of their life at all." (136K AIFF sound or 136K WAV sound)
But lack of land has penned these nomads in poverty. Unemployment, alcohol abuse and domestic violence are part of daily life, vices to which the San people in their age-old innocence are perhaps particularly vulnerable. Under the leadership of Regopstaan's son, some members of the community have found work attracting tourists to a private game lodge.
There is no sense of exploitation here. They converse freely with the visitors, offering a wondrous insight into another time, another place, another people.
And after the tourists have gone, the old dances are still performed, as well as the songs whose origins stretch back to the time when the first human voice sounded on the subcontinent.
"My father taught us this music," said Regopstaan's son, Dawid. "We share his dream that one day we'll return to our old ways."
But farmers now till the land which the San people once roamed. To grant title here means that others will suffer the same fate of forced removal that has been part of the Bushmen's history.
"We must try to come to an agreement," said farmer Jon De Kooker. "If we can live, then the Bushmen can also live."
Other farmers are less sympathetic, insisting that the traditional hunting areas of the San people lie not on private land, but in the vast expanses of the Kalahari Gemsbok National Park. To grant unlimited access to the park is no answer either, argues the warden Dries Engelbrecht.
"They lost the true style, how to live out in the wild, and I personally think it would be dangerous for them to live in the park. They might get caught by a lion or something," he said.
But the skills of the hunter-gatherer are still being passed through the generations. On the border of the park, Klaas Kruiper plays with his 4-year-old son. These are serious games that are intended to teach the boy how to survive, lessons Klaas Kruiper learned from his grandfather, Regopstaan.
In his hut, the patriarch smokes marijuana, the traditional herb of the San that helps to ease the pain of old age.
"To be close to the creator is what makes me most happy," said Regopstaan. "There are no bad things in life because you accept everything as the creator presented it."
At sundown, the last survivors of the Kalahari San gather around the fire as did their ancestors more than 2,000 years ago. While the children play under the stars that they believe are part of their living god, the elders talk about their memories of the past. And in a country now free, they hope the creator will present them with a future in which they can again roam.
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