GHANZI

Unlike the rest of the sandy Kalahari, the porous limestone base of the Ghanzi

ridge in the past could sustain pans for most of the year. This is probably why

both the original San name, Gaents'ii (possibly the Naro word for “full/swollen buttocks”)

and the Setswana variation, Gantsi (meaning “place of flies” –attracted to cows milk) imply abundance of food. Ghanzi, still the official spelling, was an original weak effort at writing Naro.

In the 1800s Ghanzi was an important stopover on the dry trek from Walvis Bay to Lake Ngami, the then headquarters of the BaTawana. Explorers and hunters described  the presence of “fearless and independent” San and Khoi bands, although the BaTawana dominated northwest Botswana since 1825.

In 1878 the first white man to settle in the area was one Hendrik van Zyl, notorious for the many elephants and other large game he killed to fulfil the demand for ivory and skins. Although reports of explorers indicate that he built a double storey house,  today only an quarry, called Van Zyl’s Cutting, is his only legacy.
 
The declaration of Ghanzi as Crown Land in 1894, was Cecil John Rhodes’s scheme to restrict the Germans (who then ruled German South West Africa) from uniting “their” territories Tanzania and South West Africa. Rhodes wanted to expand British colonial rule in South Africa to “his” Rhodesia, and therefore promised farms and support to white farmers from the Marico and Gordonia (Mier) areas in South Africa. The first group of families (who had temporarily settled around the Marico area to wait for permission to trek, but came from the Orange Free State and Rustenburg areas) arrived in Ghanzi during 1898.

 

The hardship of the many months of trekking the merciless desert in ox wagons, sometimes for weeks without water, surviving on the juice of the tsama melons was over, but the settlement in an inhospitable, open thorn veld must have been just as difficult. The first families included the Lewis, Van Staden, Taljaard and Drotsky families. Three treks were led by Marthinus Drotsky, who never actually settled in Ghanzi as he died in Tsau of malaria, after bringing the last trek. So disillusioned were most of the first settlers with what Rhodes had promised and which did not seem possible, that after five years only the widower Taljaard and his children, who settled at what is now called old D’Kar, remained.

By 1910, however, some of the original settlers returned to Ghanzi, and for the first half of the 20th century these white farmers and the San inhabitants of the area lived a fairly peaceful co-existence. The whites grazed their cattle around permanent water holes or hand dug wells in the calcrete, while the San hunted and gathered in their own territories, occasionally exchanging labour for milk, water or tobacco. The farmers depended on the San for water and knowledge of veldfood, as supplies could only be obtained from Gobabis in Namibia or Mafikeng in South Africa, weeks and even months by donkey or ox wagon.
 
The San’s growing dependency on these introduced items gradually caused a shift in the hierarchy, but many San remember the most crucial moment in their history to be when their traditional hunting routes and territories were suddenly subdivided into farms, without any recognition of their own land use systems or leadership systems. Hunting and gathering was not recognized by the British as a land use system, neither is it recognized by the Botswana government of the present time. The fencing of the farms was ordered by the British Protectorate government in the early 1950s and some of the present farmers were employees of government who came to facilitate these surveys and fencing, and stayed on. One such a person is Richard (Dick) Eaton.

Three further groups of white settlers had by then moved in from Namibia and South Africa, and regulations and legalisation of original land ownership had become necessary. This subsequent shift in the economy suddenly changed the San into being labourers on their own land. During the early 1980s the vast majority of San, now seen as “squatters”, were moved to settlements outside the farming area, as part of the new government’s Remote Area Dweller Programme. The San had little choice but to move if they wanted access to government services, drought relief and education. The first settlements were East and West Hanahai and Grootlaagte. Bere, Kacgae, Kuke and New Xanagas were formed at the same time, while Chobokwane and Qabo followed in the 1990s.

Today there are around 200 farms in the Ghanzi district, one of only three areas of freehold land in the country. Cattle and game farming, combined with tourism and hunting forms the core of the economy. Many BaTawana also own farms in the area, including a number of parliamentarians. Cattle farming has been introduced on the San settlements and some San have formed syndicates to obtain farms or cattle posts, assisted by NGOs and government schemes.


By Willemien le Roux
Shakawe
October 2005.


Bibliography:

- Russell, Margo and Martin Russell. 1979. Afrikaners of the Kalahari: White Minority in a Black State. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Hitchcock, R. Renee and Smith, Mary R. 1980. Settlement in Botswana. Gaborone: Botswana Society.
- Tlou, Thomas and Campbell, Alec. 1984. History of Botswana. Gaborone: Macmillan Botswana Publishing Company.
- Le Roux, Willemien and White, Alison. 2004. Voices of the San. Cape Town: Kwela Publishers.



Caption to the photo:

1. Original farm house at “old” D’Kar, built by Taljaard family. No longer existing but foundations still visible.
2. Settler Christiaan Lewis (on the left) with the buffalo that nearly killed him. Note the bandages on his hands.
Photos courtesy of Mrs Grieta Lemcke.