New Xade: A Modern Village in an Ancient Land

Motswana Ketelelo Moapare on growing up in a San resettlement

My home is New Xade, a remote village in Botswana’s Kalahari Desert. New Xade is a resettlement village that was created after the San, or Bushmen — a tribe of formerly semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers — were relocated by the Botswana government from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR), one of the world’s largest parks. In this paper, I examine a BBC article by Pumza Fihlani titled “Botswana Bushmen: Modern life is destroying us.1” The article portrays New Xade as disease-ridden and impoverished, with residents struggling to adapt to modern life — I contend, however, that the residents of New Xade, including myself, have embraced modern developments, and have used these opportunities to pursue a better life.

This article, written by the BBC, offers a plethora of negative commentary about the San, explicitly calling readers’ attention to the “primitive life” the San lived 30,000 years ago in the CKGR. The author further warned readers

that the San were struggling to live in a modern society, stating, “Modern life is destroying the Bushmen”. The author contends that moving to New Xade has resulted in the spread of AIDS and alcohol abuse, commenting, “The village’s liquor shop has no shortage of customers”. The author continually refers to New Xade as a “resettlement camp”. In doing so, the author implies that the nature of the village is temporary, akin to a “refugee camp” where people live in temporary structures. By extension, such a situation would preclude the possibility of sound local leadership and basic infrastructure. Furthermore, one of the photos used in the article depicts San men wearing clothes made from animal skins. This is another attempt by the BBC to show that the San long for a “primitive life”, evoking the fallacy of the “noble savage”. The author captioned the photo, stating that “some fear that traditional Bushman culture would be reserved for tourists”. As I will explain, these attempts by the author to depict the San as helpless drunkards struggling to adapt to modernity in a harsh wasteland drastically contrasts my own experience.

I’m now able to communicate with my family and friends in New Xade from the US through platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp, and Skype. Whenever I speak to my grandma on the phone, we both cry. The calls are very emotional. A few days after arriving in the US, I called my aunt via Skype voice call, and after we spoke, I asked her to give the phone to my grandma. While I was still waiting for my aunty to hand the phone to my grandma my eyes were already full of tears. I heard my aunt saying to my grandma, “Please do not cry mom”. When my grandma said “Hello, Ketelelo” I couldn’t hold my tears any longer. To my surprise she said, “Please do not cry grandson, you will make me cry too,” and she also started crying. I was so relieved to have finally spoken to her and, despite our tears, we were both happy. In addition to catching up with my grandma, I also get updates from the village from my friends who post on Facebook from their cellphones.

In contrast to the author’s assertions, the San have moved from relying on hunting and gathering to more modern forms of livelihoods. My own family has fully embraced this new way of life, and my grandfather keeps goats, sheep, cattle, and sells them to make money. I spent many school holidays at my grandfather’s farm, especially during the harvesting season. I didn’t really enjoy the farm chores, but I enjoyed coming and helping during the harvest because we would eat a lot of food. On one occasion, I was embarrassed to ask my grandfather if I should go to the farm and partake in the harvest because I didn’t help when they planted the crops. After waiting a while I finally asked him, and he said I should feel free to visit the farm. At the time, my grandpa had planted 12 acres of corn, sorghum, and watermelons. When I walked through these 12 acres to look for the biggest watermelon, I started feeling bad, and the feeling just intensified the longer I walked. I was feeling bad because I didn’t help my grandfather grow these crops. But this feeling of guilt did not stop me from finding the biggest watermelon. I was filled with joy after finding such an enormous watermelon but I couldn’t carry it — it was so heavy that I had to walk back to my grandfather’s hut to get a donkey to transport it. These experiences taught me the value of hard work and gave me a deep admiration for my grandfather as well as a greater appreciation for the challenges and opportunities of agro-pastoralism. These personal experiences also make me resentful of the BBC author’s attempts to dismiss the San’s efforts to transition to an agro-pastoralist way of life, and the government’s efforts to help them do so.

When I moved to Gaborone, Botswana’s capital, to prepare for college my schoolmates constantly asked me about the San. This was after I told them I was a “Bushman”. Most days, after finishing lunch, we would gather in the school lobby and discuss a variety of issues. One day we started talking about the different cultures that exist in Botswana. George, one of my schoolmates, asked me if I knew how to hunt and gather. To the surprise of many I replied, “No”. They all started laughing at me. I suppose this was the least expected answer after I told them I was a “Bushman”. Then George started asking me how I survived if I couldn’t hunt and gather. I told him I lived in New Xade, a modern village, and that we don’t hunt or gather to survive. He didn’t believe me, and he went on to say that he read in his school books that the “Bushmen” are purely hunter-gatherers. I said that was true 30,000 years ago, but he still didn’t believe me and said he would visit New Xade to see it with his own eyes. The conversation started to heat up and others left — George and I continued the conversation, delving into issues of civilization, marginalization and the relocation of the San. Before we ended the conversation to work on our school assignments, we agreed that George should visit New Xade to see for himself that the San are not primitive.

In conclusion, most residents and village leaders of New Xade recognize the positive gains from the relocation program. Unfortunately, media outlets like the BBC only interview and publish stories about people who reinforce their narrative of the noble savage suffering from the onslaught of modern civilization when, in fact, the San have gradually adapted to modern life like each and every other society in the world. All societies have gone through what the San are going through, and we should stop romanticizing the San’s hunter-gatherer past. There is no doubt that the San face challenges brought by modern life, but they are committed to overcoming them. All societies have transitioned from primitive life to modernity and the San are on the same trajectory of transition. The San are no longer primitive beings. We are farmers, business owners, teachers, professionals, and Michigan State University students.

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1. BBC News,. (2016). Botswana Bushmen: Modern life is destroying us — BBC News.

Ketelelo Moapare was born in Mothomelo, CKGR and his family was relocated to New Xade in 1997. He graduated from Gantsi Senior Secondary School in 2012, and completed A-levels at Maru-A-Pula in 2015 before receiving a MasterCard Scholarship to attend Michigan State University for Civil Engineering. He is now in his second semester of my freshman year. He is the star of the documentary “A House Without Snakes”