Emmanuel Koro

Known as a hunter and gatherer community, South Africa’s Southern Kalahari Bushmen (Khomani San Community) has invited international hunters to “come and hunt in the Kalahari Desert”, and help support conservation and socio-economic development initiatives that they urgently need.

Additionally, the Khomani San Community has invited wildlife management authorities and international hunting companies worldwide to take its offer to train wildlife hunting trackers and rangers to catch poachers.

“We want to share our intellectual property (indigenous knowledge) to track wildlife with the international safari hunting companies, and also train rangers to catch poachers,” said Brain Miaennies, a Khomani San in an interview. “We welcome credible organisations that would like to partner with us to simultaneously promote international wildlife hunting, wildlife and habitat conservation, and socio-economic development in the Khomani San Community.”

Miaennies said the Khomani San Community is underdeveloped and lacks one of the most basic necessities for humans – clean drinking water.

“We have no running water, yet a water supply pipe to a nearby town provocatively passes through our community,” said Miaennies. “It’s like we are forgotten, and nobody seems to think we matter.” 

He said the Khomani San Community owns 80 000 hectares of land which is currently lying idle inside the Kgalikgadi Transfrontier Park that they won back, under the South African government’s Land Claims Programme in 1999. 

The former president of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki, was present the day when the Khomani San Community’s land claim was signed. This was followed by the establishment of the Khomani San Community Property Association, whose role is to manage the future business operations on their 80 000-hectare land.

“We have papers that we own the land,” said Miaennies. “Unfortunately, we can’t use the land because we don’t have international hunting partners, nor do we have partners to start training wildlife trackers and also train game rangers to catch poachers.”

He added that it’s high time they started using the vast piece of land for international hunting, and as a training field for wildlife trackers and wildlife ranchers’ training to catch poachers. 

“We want international hunting to start on our 80 000 hectares of land lying idle inside the Kgalikgadi Transfrontier Park,” said Miaennies. “We now know that through international hunting, even one hunted lion can quench our thirst for clean drinking water that we need badly.”

Wildlife found in the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park where the Khomani San own land include kudu, leopard, lion, cheetah, giraffe, eland, gemsbok, grey duiker, African wild dog, painted wolf, antbear (aardvark), black-backed jackal, blue wildebeest, brown hyena, spotted hyena, springbok and steenbok.

Miaennies said the Khomani San residents’ current source of livelihoods involves working on nearby commercial farms.

Meanwhile, Khomani San Community leader Petrus Vaalbooi expressed hope that they should be able to create employment for local residents by getting them involved in the international hunting industry, wildlife tracking training, and wildlife rangers’ training programme.

“As a traditional hunting community, we didn’t know until late last year that international hunting could bring us employment, including significant socio-economic conservation and developmental benefits being enjoyed by our counterparts in Botswana and other SADC countries,” said Vaalbooi. 

They are situated in South Africa’s Northern Cape Province, and almost completely cut off from the rest of the world linguistically, because few of them understand English. The N|uu-speaking Khomani San rarely interact with other southern African wildlife producers and hunting communities. Since they reclaimed their land in the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park in 1999, they were not aware of the possibility of using it for international hunting, until late last year when they met with beneficiary southern African hunting community representatives, including South Africa’s Makuya Hunting Community. 

 “If we hunt, it will benefit the community developmentally and environmentally, like what’s happening in Botswana and other southern African hunting communities,” said Vaalbooi.  “This is going to benefit our community immensely because we can also use the money to send our children to university, and they can come back to help develop our community.” 

Meanwhile, Miaennies said although they haven’t done international hunting as the Khomani San Community, they have hunted traditionally. 

“We hunted traditionally for meat, and made biltong during the Covid-19 harsh economic conditions when some families only had a meal every second day,” he said. “We also want to be allowed to continuously hunt traditionally because it’s part of our rich tradition, and we need to fight for it.” 

 “I think it’s a missed opportunity that we own a large piece of land in the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park, and we have not used it for international hunting as other Southern African wildlife-producer communities are doing,” observed Miaennies. 

“It’s a violation of our human and indigenous rights.” 

The Khomani San could have been supported by international hunting revenue long ago. 

“By now, we should be enjoying similar socio-economic benefits that other SADC hunting communities are benefiting from, including having strong men and women, and we shouldn’t be having drug problems because international hunting jobs would be keeping our youth occupied.”

Turning to the opportunity to train people to do wildlife tracking, Vaalbooi said, “I think the world knows that the Khoisan are hunters and gatherers.

“It’s in our blood to train people to track wildlife for hunting, and I was trained traditionally. 

“The sun and the moon show us the way to wildlife. 

“We are conservationists, and also nothing is thrown away when we kill wildlife.

“We use it for meat and medicine, beauty artefacts, etc. 

“In our community, we have 10 highly- qualified wildlife trackers – it’s a natural gift that was traditionally passed on to them.”

* Emmanuel Koro is a Johannesburg-based international award-winning environmental journalist who writes independently on environmental and developmental issues in Africa.