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Miles and Miles of Bugger All. Miles and Miles of HIStory.

Aka. Sand in the Tent

Prof. Keyan Tomaselli- our own Indiana Jones!

I knew we were in trouble when packing in Durban for our forthcoming field trip. A

group of students tasked with doing a stock take of cutlery and plates with great thought

to packing order had transferred the contents from the picnic basket to the cat’s carry

basket. Inexperienced campers brought bulky department store blankets instead of

compact, light and specialist camping gear. One student paid the expedition levy with a

fake R200 note. I learned it was fake when it was rejected by a filling station deep in the

Kalahari.

My 4x4 garage failed to fix the Sani’s headlight. The Patrol’s roof rack brackets were left

loose by students installing it, resulting in a frightful noise on the N3. Fortunately, the

rack did not slide off. After some last minute repairs to the Sani’s windscreen (repeated

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1600kms later), we set off from a relatively warm Durban into the freezing interior. Many

students had not camped before. We all froze on the first night. Students then worked out

that sharing both blankets and body heat was the solution.

The Northern Cape is huge. Vast distances conceal extraordinary histories, amazing

people and unique cultures, aesthetics and forms of expression. The cultural richness of

the province was elaborated upon recently by Johnny Clegg in the SABC2 production, A

Country Imagined. This is an intriguing title, as it encapsulates the idea of how

constructions of meaning inform the ways in which we encounter different aspects of our

still emergent nation. That nation is comprised of more difference than similarity, of

more variety than homogeneity and of more questions than answers. The Soccer World

Cup running at the same time seemed to have at last created a (if temporary) sense of a

unified nation-in-the making.

vhcjv

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Breath-taking sunsets at the Bush Camp in Witdraai and the seemingly untouched beauty of

Kimberley - moments like these make the cold tortured camping experience worthwhile.

The title of this article is drawn from a sign outside the Wildebeest Kuil (WBK) rock

engraving museum at Platfontein, just outside Kimberley. Along the miles and miles are

extraordinary and enchanting mediascapes, and cultural, historical, desert scapes.

Wildebeest Kuil museum: A view from the top

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Seminars and Snakes

Our day of seminars at the Wildebeest Kuil auditorium, near Kimberley, drew delegates

from local museums, provincial government and included cultural workers and tour

guides. This was the real world at work as these delegates wanted to learn from our

research. Johann Van Schalkwyk of the Northern Cape Department of Economic

Development and Tourism explained why students’ work should have real world use-

value. He offered examples of these done by CCMS students beneficial to the province’s

tourism marketing strategy. Students presented their work on issues of indigeneity and

media, cultural tourism, conservation and land issues and so on. Josh, a Grade 11 learner

who had joined us for his fieldwork assignment, participated actively. My experience is

that the younger the student the better they concentrate. For example, after a two hour

seminar on ideology in 1996 Warren Parker’s six year old son, Jethro, was the only one

to put up his hand when asked if there were any questions. So I asked him to put his

question. He responded crisply, “Can I go to the toilet now?” In Kimberly, we even

made the Diamond Field Advertiser. At least one journalist in the small remote and

seemingly forgotten town of Kimberley takes us seriously. One idea broached by van

Schalkwyk was how to re-brand the Northern Cape to attract more tourists:

The Northern Cape launched its “Northern Cape Real” destination market

positioning and brand in 2006. This market positioning was supported by the

slogan “A Destination as Real as the People Who Choose to Explore it!” What

this meant was that the Northern Cape is a destination for people who are

attracted to the “authentic” (culture, people, places). It also meant that the

Northern Cape is for a type of tourist who rather wishes to be walking on a

Kalahari dune than to view it from inside a tour bus, thus for people who wish to

truly engage with a destination that is in essence an unpretentious place where

people are not fake, plastic and pretentious.

Five years later a brand shift was effected, now playing much closer and stronger

to the real competitive market advantages of the Northern Cape – sport, nature &

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culture but not any sport, nature or culture – extreme sport, extreme nature and

extreme culture.

Rob Hart provided us with a tour of the Duggan-Cronin (historical) Photographic

Gallery. It surely rivals the Edward Curtis collection of early Native Americans that

exhibited last year in Durban. The two collections were this year on a comparative

exhibition at the Grahamstown Festival. Every time I visit the Gallery I think that Donal-

the-historian would love this place like a kid with new toys. Students learned who Sol

Plaatje was: author, journalist and first black newspaper editor, and founder of the SA

Native Congress, forerunner to the ANC. Moreover, he was the one who introduced

mobile cinema to South Africa, screening 16mm films made on the African American

experience all over the country. Few undergraduate media programmes teach history any

more so the hugely influential Sol regrettably remains an obscure figure in the discipline.

Rob Hart introduced us to the Duggan - Cronin Museum

David Morris of the McGregor Museum explained that museums are criticized because of

the ways in which they collect and classify things. Connections and distinctions are made

by people – they don’t exist as automatic categories. Knowledge is constructed and

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places are multi-vocal, he reminded us. Museums, he suggested, are bastions of ideology.

The multivocality of people, power and places should be critically engaged in these

exhibition spaces. The !Xun and Khwe, for example, have different interpretations of

rock art at Wildebeest Kuil in contrast to the academic perspective. Knowledge is not

final Morris reminded us. Method is message, he revealed. This is a point we should

make at next year’s Introducing Research seminars.

David Morris overlooking the pans outside the Wildebeest Kuil Museum.

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David Morris giving the students a talk at Driekops Eiland

Museums are makers of versions of the world. Pre-colonial spatiality and boundaries are

fluid, not fixed as tourists assume – this contestation is known as cadastral politics. Rock

art sites encode traces of pre-colonial spatiality challenging and subverting modern

boundaries. Engravings are argued to be the title deeds written by earlier peoples

inhabiting these places. These impressions offered by Morris would seem to apply also

to modern situations when one thinks of how FIFA deprived the livelihood of both

informal and formal traders in the vicinity of the stadiums for the duration of the

tournament.

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Bits and pieces of history - Wildebeest Kuil Museum

The World Cup Bible-mapping and Micro Fan Parks

We watched the SA-French soccer match on a big TV screen at the Platfontein Secondary

School in its huge covered and very dusty courtyard. The CCMS delegation of 16 at

times outnumbered the local audience which continuously entered and exited. The match

seemed to have little interest for the !Xun and Khwe adults who number in the thousands.

The viewing, however, gave Tom an opportunity to meet and talk to his research sources

and characters who acted in Voices of our Forefathers (2008). (Depressingly, even the

dusty settlement’s shebeen was closed. We wanted to watch the second half there.) Then,

at the school, when the first goal was scored by South Africa we heard children

screaming. We glimpsed them on the periphery of our vision pouring out of a classroom

dressed in yellow and green, dancing up and down the corridor and back into the room. It

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was an extraordinary ethereal sight, feeling and experience. The 60 or so youngsters

were in a large, warmer, classroom watching a small TV set.

Supporting Bafana Bafana wherever we could. CCMS students join the locals in Platfontein

Secondary to watch the game.

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One of the little supporters' stands in front of our Big Screen.

At Andriesvale, the old ≠Khomani preprimary school, a hanger, sported a large TV set

managed by a Christian missionary group, who were using the SA flag, soccer balls and

the matches for proselytizing. They explained to us in great detail the T-Shirt body/Bible-

mapping that cited specific verses, for which they claimed they had FIFAdom’s approval.

The multiracial nature of these groups was seemingly unremarkable, and the Zulu

students (From CCMS?) fitted in uneventfully at the Molopo Lodge, the local hangout of

mainly white farmers, hunters and safari tourists. (Black Africans don’t normally engage

in tourism as do Westerners so they are always a novel sight in these hospitality venues –

outside of conferences, that is.)

At the Molopo Lodge, 11 kms from our campsite, the only people watching the soccer

were a few of us and the international tourists passing through. This is still rugby-land.

At the dusty settlement of Welkom we found some kids playing cricket in the sandy road.

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Satellite dishes were everywhere, affixed to remote tin shacks, formal housing, and where

electricity was lacking, driven by generators, or maybe some were just for show. Some

may have just been fake. To what extent has the World Cup penetrated these remote

places we wondered?

Zipp-lining, Puberty Rites and Ethnography

In Kimberley, the students marveled at the museums they visited. They Zipp-lined across

360 metres of the Vaal River at the newly refurbished Barkley West Museum. The first

to scream was the fifth in the queue, Phume, while the last was Shanade who crashed into

the tire barrier, having failed to brake in time. Her remark after picking herself up was “I

think I broke my nail”. Varona, Roanne, Wandile, Miliswa and others showed their

courage while being propelled like space walkers across the great expanse of water into

what appeared to be a galaxy-like emptiness. It was quite surreal. Surreality is one of the

concepts that will be studied in the visual anthropology class next semester. Zipp-lining

and ethnography perhaps do have something in common.

We visited Driekopseiland, an archaeological site 60 kms south of Kimberley. Following

an enthralling poststructuralist on-site presentation by David Morris, Phume, while sitting

in the river bed concluded, “The spiritual is much more real than is the physical world”.

Phume was always filling pregnant silences were these kinds of contemplative pithy

comments. This particular conclusion had followed a discussion of the mythology of the

water snake and how the myth is symbolised in the river’s ancient bedrock engravings.

These images are not necessarily shamanstic as current convention has it, but are about

puberty rites, suggested Morris. He had come to this conclusion after many of his

indigenous staff had revealed their uneasiness at working at the site. This decidedly non-

shamanistic reading of rock art reminded us of Mary Lange’s MA dissertation about the

water snake, entitled “Women Reading the Gariep River” (2007). What is cultural

studies if not about local realities/ontologies/spiritualities? Cultural studies is not just

about the now defunct Birmingham Centre and the extraordinary corpus of theory

generated under the leadership of my colleague, Stuart Hall.

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Cultural Studies, Hoaxes and Reality

If cultural studies neglects the local then it cannot be global. Similarly, when theory

cleans, sanitizes and over-processes the mess and contradiction of empirical data to make

it coherent, logical and accessible, it tends to lose its contextual specificity, its nuance

and its experiential texture. It takes on the impression of recycled ahistorical cultural

studies drawn from other epistemological moments and places. Theory then, like Coca-

Cola, becomes global (homogenized) while losing a sense of the local, of difference and

of the spiritual. Thus does cultural studies become words without context, sentences

without grounding, and theories without the experiential. Theory, in this genre, constructs

meanings without real/material referents. Academics who construct cultural studies

theory from the socially sanitized safety of their offices thus become the praise singers of

the global theorists, neatly and unproblematically proselytizing their ideas across borders,

cultures and paradigms. This form of cultural studies is offered as the new master

narrative to explain phenomena for which it was never intended or devised, and which

does not take local frames of reference, interpretation and response into account. A

critical engagement – rather than genuflection to - preferred theorists in developing a

dialectical argument would help students to recontextuliaze global theories in terms of

local frames of reference and experience.

The Alan Sokal hoax was discussed in this context. Sokal, a scientist, purposely and

skeptically wrote an obscure jargon-laden article largely comprising gibberish, and

submitted it to a well known cultural studies journal, Social Text. The journal peer

reviewed the nonsense he had written and approvingly published the paper as legitimate

cultural studies theory supported by postulate drawn from quantum mechanics. Sokal

then trashed his own article in a devastating critique of the cultural studies messianic. He

challenged the sweeping assumptions made by those of its adherents who never let the

facts – or the real - get in the way of a good argument.

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Sitting in the wind in the hot desert sun we reminded ourselves of the need to “keep it

real” (like the Windhoek TV beer advert starring Lou Gossett Jnr.), even when the

relations we are studying are symbolic. People are real, though they are decidedly

semiotic animals, often constructing uncanny, mythical and bizarre stories around the

campfire or for gullible academic journals. While we might be entertained by these, we

need to retain our skepticism and our sense of the materiality in which people live and

conduct their goings-on in the world at large. Students constantly connected their

observations with theory, and re-thought received assumptions learned via transmission

communication models that typify the banking education assumed by large classrooms

and lecturers who are required to `teach’ often disinterested students seated in tiered rows

above them. The university world is modernist, subject to overdetermining strictures of

structure, while the field beyond the university is simultaneously premodern, modern and

postmodern. We traversed these three periods every minute of every day in the Kalahari.

Clean theory is difficult to relate to this often confusing experience.

The Dozi Experience and Gaga Students

Dozi - a celebrity in Witdraai

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The shrieking girls going gaga over Dozi, with Nhamo and Prof looking on.

Dozi, a famous Afrikaans musician, played one night at the remote Molopo Lodge. The

female students went gaga when he talked to them even as Shakira was messing with her

fans’ heads at the centre of the World Cup. Even they had heard of this huge mountain of

a man who sometimes sings in Zulu. The only one able to look him in the eye was

Nhamo, both being six-foot five. Shanade shook Dozi’s hand during some group photos

with him. She then threw away her soap and said she would never wash that hand again.

Man, oh man! Luthando tried to get his picture any which way. I must remember to write

up this encounter between Shanade and Luthando and Dozi in Dyllian and Mhiripiri (aka

Silikat) vein for the new academic journal, Celebrity Studies, which aims to examine

celebrity-commodity as a genre of representation. Dozi, however, seemed to be too

affable to think of himself as a commodity. While he might not be a celebrity in London,

he obviously has that status in South Africa – if the CCMS female gaga behaviour is a

reliable indicator. But in the Kalahari Nhamo is a celebrity, the tiny wizened globally

known traditional leader Dawid Kruiper wanted his picture taken with the very tall

Nhamo. For Dawid, well, I am his semi-celebrity, his “Koning”, though I am not sure

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whether this status extends beyond Witdraai or whether it is an attempt to leverage

influence, or whether his insobriety was eliciting pink apparitions.

Koning Nhamo and Oom Dawid

Pink Pajamas and Pink Elephants

Roanne’s pink pajama pants attracted Pieter Retief’s rapt attention while we were sitting

round the Bushcamp fire one night in the boma at Witdraai. Pieter, the manager of

!Xaus Lodge whom we had bumped into at the entrance of the Molopo Lodge compared

Roanne’s jams to Jonathan’s loud jacket he had worn in 2009 at !Xaus. Shanade was

interrogated at length about the sad song she had composed and sung last year for us at

!Xaus. Pieter and his two sleepy colleagues eventually departed our campsite by 4x4 at

2.30am, after making one helluva noise and trying to get Shanade to accompany them

back north. Last year Shanade got many marriage proposals from the locals. In previous

years our campsite at the Molopo had been buzzed by small aircraft and overloaded

bakkies of drunken white men clutching cans of Castle trying to get glimpses of our

female hotties. Roanne and Tamryn had previously edged away from Elvis-the

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≠Khomani tracker/romantic/flirt who was propositioning them. All in good fun of course.

Elvis eventually doubled over in his chair and nearly rolled into the fire, caught just in

time by the other !Xaus guide in whose arms he then snoozed.

Stasja commented that this was his common experience of Afrikaner culture in the bush:

huge tanned white men dressed in veldskoens, short pants and light clothing in sub-zero

temperatures drinking endless cans of Castle regaling the assembled circle in what can

only be called somewhat respectful, but colourful and culturally edgy banter. Joking

relationships replaced academic discourse and new sets of power relations emerged from

under the sand around the campfire. The three men from !Xaus then staggered off over

the dunes following their beer-induced pink elephants, got into their vehicle and got lost

on their way to another party. Shanade was woken at 5.30am by a sms from Pieter

thanking us for our hospitality a few hours previously!

This is the Kalahari – men big and small - who love the land, women and their beer.

They stay up all night, unwind and go stir-crazy after having to behave meticulously at

the elite hospitality establishments they manage. As Elvis recurringly retorted to Pieter’s

gruff banter, “Yes Sir! No Sir. Stuff off Sir!” By appropriating the discourse of the

dominant personality/hegemony, the minuscule Elvis was able to engage in a degree of

discursive resistance, much like the characters in Jean Rouch’s documentary, The Mad

Masters. In the mid-1970s I made a series of films for a safari company that toured the

Okavango swamps. The guides went nuts on their return to base at Victoria Falls,

exorcising their 10 days of continuous 24 hour exemplary behaviour while they

entertained and managed often irritating, naïve and demanding safari tourists. They were

exorcising their state of “bosbefok”, as they so eloquently put it – amongst their other

outbursts much too obscene to write down here. Anthropologists more politely call this

liminality – a state where the usual rules do not apply. It’s a topsy turvey world when

one is searching for one’s sanity and normality after the pampered tourists have departed

and one has a few days to recover one’s good manners before the next party arrives.

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Rugby and Reverse Cultural Studies

The Molopo Lodge was less than crazy this year. After all, it was not this time the British

Empire being thrashed in rugby, but the clueless Italians (coached by a not so clueless

South African). Besides, most of the boere like Pieter were still recovering from the Dozi

concert held in the freezingly cold covered Molopo boma the previous evening. As

Hollanders Stasja and Lisa, like Kristien, a Dutch volunteer who joined us in 2007,

remarked, they could not fathom why these folks dress in slops/barefoot, shirtsleeves and

short pants in sub-zero temperatures.

This is why I talk about reverse cultural studies. Little that makes sense in the North

makes sense in Africa. And, little that makes sense in Africa makes sense in the North.

That’s why cultural studies needs indigenizing to specific contexts. Are we following in

the footsteps of anthropological greats like James Clifford, George Marcus and Clifford

Geertz, not to mention performance scholar Dwight Conquergood and Malian cultural

theorist Manthia Diawara? Unlike the esoteric luminaries not cited here, we don’t want

to over-clean our data to devise reified theory that appeals to the spotless theory brigade –

those discursively-led scholars whose exquisite writing often ignores the empirical, the

mess of everyday life, and who play with words and ideas in esoteric journals that require

hidden codes to interpret. These wordsmiths and their opaque transcripts were the targets

of the Sokal hoax. (We discussed this hoax in light of David’s reflections of Piltdown

man, an archaeological hoax that led archaeology astray for nearly 40 years.) The above-

mentioned scholars are not part of this critique as, like us, they have paid their empirical

dues in different and unpredictable climes, they have supervised students working in the

field, and they have dirtied the cleanliness and fractured the silliness that some versions

of postmodern cultural studies have become.

The point of these somewhat satirical notes that I circulate after each trip like this one is

to draw attention to the need to rethink received theory and to include “thick

descriptions” in otherwise cleaned anthropologies and genres of cultural studies that

appear, as Meghan Morris, puts it, to be parts of the endlessly re-circulated script. How

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does the sole focus on an object of study exclude the researchers? How they are framing

the object/subject of study (an observer-observed relationship known as the ethnographic

presence)? The study of this absence-presence relation underpins much visual

anthropology and informed our response to the Biesele and Hitchcock (2008) critique of

Writing in the San/d that we engaged at the Subjects of Writing – Writing the Subject

seminar with our colleagues from Bayreuth. An analogy would be a rugby test match.

The TV set closely frames the players, formations, patterns of play, etc. The rest is

excluded beyond the frame unless narratively functional to the broadcast (the referee,

linesmen, the first aid personnel, cheerleaders, spectators mugging for the camera,

players on the bench etc). For spectators at the stadium, the experience is, however, very

different and a lot more messy. They see the distracting bird’s-eye view that includes the

runners and all the support staff during play both on and off the field watering and drying

the players, and other field personnel like physiotherapists, the spectators, the responses

to the big TV screens, advertising hoardings, huge stands etc. We’d like to study what is

included in the frame in relation to what is excluded from the frame – the inevitable

structured absences that shape any encounter. We want to reveal the camera, the

commentators, the sound engineers, in relation to that which they are recording. What can

we learn from absence in relation to presence? This relationship is in Louis Althusser’s

theory known as ‘structured absences’.

The Extreme, Marketing and Television

Research role-playing exercises were conducted in the Bushcamp by Stasja, a Dutch

NGO worker and PhD student at the University of Leiden. These included a shy

interviewee, an inebriated translator, difficulties of translation, privacy and proxemic

issues, how to deal with corrupt gatekeepers, body language issues, personal safety,

accommodation problems, how to interview leaders who have commoditized the research

encounter. He also dealt with ethics of falling love with informants and the power

implications thereof. “It was really fun”, said Tamryn, “as we had to role play different

situations in the field based on Stasja’s own experience.”

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The good CCMS students taking notes during the ethnographic exercise conducted by Stasja Koot.

Video diaries facilitated by Jutka, our ever-alert Hungarian research affiliate and

Professor of Theatre, chartered students’ daily experiences. The transcripts of these

group discussions with the endless notes written by students will no doubt form the basis

of their second semester essays and projects. These, we agreed, should be unified around

the theme of `the extreme’, the new Northern Cape tourism marketing catchphrase. As

van Schalkwyk observed:

“Extreme” in one way or another may lead to stereotyping which is good and/or

bad for destination identity creation. “Extreme” may also “push” away the

ordinary traveler – the young family and the elderly retired visitors as they may

have a perception that the Northern Cape will be a difficult and physically

demanding destination to be avoided. On the other hand, using the idea of

“extreme culture” may also have negative “stereotyping” implications for the

cultural identities we as a destination may want to benefit from – and this may

have these very cultures (as attractions) “tuning out” of the destination marketing

strategy, thus literally withdrawing from our competitive marketing strategy with

the potential of blowing up in our faces as they might very well launch a counter-

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media strategy to defend their identity and the public’s perception of who they are

and how the live their lives.

Who is willing and enjoying to be branded as being extreme? How will people

and groups react to this? Is it ethical to drag cultures along as the cutting board for

crafting a competitive market edge such as “extreme culture”? What are the

human rights implications of using people’s identities to brand a destination that

also happens to be their home as “extreme”? Is ‘authentic’ culture a commodity

they should allow to be used to at the same time benefit the owners of those

cultures as a contribution to their social, commercial and cultural development

and sustainability?

What is the extreme-ization of culture? How did the idea of ‘the extreme’ as a marketing

device come about? On googling the phrase “Extreme TV Shows” no less than 173

million hits were listed. The `extreme’ is surely the hot word of the moment, Is it

derived from Reality TV – Survivor, The Amazing Race, the Fear Factor, The Northern

Cape Race? What and who is an extreme tourist? And which sports, landscapes and

climates are extreme – river rafting, skydiving, Zipp-lining, hiking, offroading, sand

duning, hunting etc? The idea of `extreme culture’, however, was much contested by

students. Can cultures be described as ‘extreme’ – should they be? Who is being

constructed as extreme in this relationship? It is Us - the

tourists/researchers/observers/guests or them, - the observed/researched/hosts? What are

the ethical implications to be considered in this marketing strategy? Perhaps it would be

better to talk about extreme tourists and destinations than extreme cultures?

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Extreme Theories: Late Nite Talk

Students debated theory around the campfire and observed that Honours prepared them

for application of theory rather than just the reading, learning and regurgitating of it.

Nhamo pointed out that some theories, as the Sokal hoax proved, are highly suspect –

that students need to know how to tell the difference. My experience of the average

undergraduate is that they learn the jargon, sometimes the gibberish as well, but have

little idea on how to apply theory to problem solving. Some even resist understanding.

Understanding is seen by these students to delay the acquisition of the degree certificate.

But the certificate counts for little in the professional world if students can’t apply

strategy and solve problems from first principles. That’s what Stasja’s exercises aimed to

address.

A positive factor for CCMS is its highly structured, tightly knit and closely supervised

Honours programme, we were told. UKZN graduates who had gone to other universities,

they observed, found that their learning lacked structure and often failed to emphasise

education as a process. Marx and Gramsci began to make sense or (non)sense for our

team as they contemplated the intersections between theory and practice in the research

encounter. Indeed, few picked this up when we were packing at my house that Ruth’s

Maltese poodle is named Gramsci – an elicitation that was attempted by Nhamo. But

they did link theory to practice and the seminars conducted in the form of video diaries

that ran for many hours both during the day and well into the late night – much to the

astonishment of friends who phoned them from Durban. That we were hotly debating

academic matters late under the incredibly bright full moon was confusing for those who

relegate learning to a technical day-time realm – something to be memorized rather than

practiced. Theory/practice, day/night, education/recreation dichotomies are preferred by

those who consider learning a necessary distraction/interruption/irritation. These

instrumentalists are trapped in the banking education model, while the CCMS students

were actively engaging in critical pedagogy - exhilarating, entertaining and always

educating.

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Who did What

Julie (an Edinburgh PhD student) who has lived for extensive periods amongst the

≠Khomani studying land reform and poverty alleviation became our de facto academic

coordinator, setting up meetings, events, tracking down informants, getting interactions

organized, and providing historical information. She was also member of our group on

our 2009 visit. One day when we were looking for Adam Bok, a local tracking guide and

sometime car mechanic, the unbridled pleasure that registered on his face at seeing Julie

was just remarkable. Serious fieldworkers have local caché.

Stasja and Lisa

Stasja Koot (PhD student) was studying “Bushmen, Wildlife Parks and Tourism.” He

was referred to us by his Dutch supervisor, Wouter van Beeck, who has externalled some

of our students and who is publishing a chapter from their work (Kate Finlay, Nhamo).

Stasja and his partner, Lisa, a biological psychologist, ferried students in the back of their

tiny Suzuki and interviewed many of us. Blade Witbooi showed us his ceramics studio

and we walked to his abode, which could be a tourism attraction in and of itself,

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constructed as it is from Third World bricolage. Jutka discussed at length the

opportunities that Blade could exploit in selling his ceramics via Facebook and/or

YouTube. Access, of course is a problem in the desert as Tom observed, needing cell

phones, but they did open Wilderness Guide Deon an e-mail address. Josh half-offered to

reactivate the CCMS Kalahari Facebook Page set up by Wendy a few years ago. (Hi

Wendy, how do we get access? Maybe Blade could connect to this site to market his

wares?) I wrote this as the Molopo Lodge’s parrot was chirping “Hello, hello” in

different tonal ranges depending on whether or not it got a reply from the guests on the

veranda. The whole veranda periodically resonated with “hello hello” as everyone

engaged in call and response with the parrot.

Blades' pottery studio

The Bushcamp kitchen, inside a boma, was wonderfully managed by Phume, Luthando,

Wandile, Varona and Miliswa. This year we had many kampmoeders, not just Nelia,

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who would have been proud. They organized everyone into a roster and rationed the

goodies. Experienced campers like Tamryn still, however, managed to trip and sprawl

into the sand when exiting their tents. One day the camp was shifted sideways by the

wind. Like the Bushmen, students relocated their abodes/tents to protect them from the

wind. I have written about the wind elsewhere, each pan having its own musical

resonance, the wind and whirlwinds being inhabited by the departed, and having a variety

of metaphorical meanings for local communities. Everyone’s tents were invaded by the

sand – like The Day of the Triffords, nature bore down on us from all quarters reminding

us of its awesome power.

Hmmmm breakfast at the Boma, yummy oats and coffee.

Josh joined the trip when one student had to withdraw to illness. Being younger than the

rest of us, he was consulted on how to put up and strike tents and was the first to learn

how to use the video camera. We also hosted Tarira Kamuti, a geography PhD student

from UFS, who is also studying people and parks. A Zimbabwean, he and Nhamo

instantly bonded.

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The Depressing, the Despair and the Darkness

Fong Kong, the local term for `fake’ came to mind. The traditional ≠Khomani have

objectified themselves as a means of commercial survival. All they have to sell is an

image of their authenticity, as is constructed by the West. They have succeeded in this

objective exceptionally well. As van Schalkwyk observed, “To what extent should

anyone be sensitive for polemics generated by the use of a cultural identity for

commercial application?” Perhaps this success, however, comes at a price. The most

successful project at Andriesvale, as the hotelier, ironically, told us, is the bottle store.

A cause for concern - topics that fuelled our uninformed debates.

Perhaps the most startling images that greeted our students were of the drunkenness of

many of our hosts. Debates occurred on why staggering and paralytic individuals could

be found in so many places: lying on the tarred national road, around the general dealer

store, in the traditional areas, on the plakkerkamp roads, at the shacks, and even amongst

the storytellers - who were high on something - who weaved for us the magic of their

tales at the Molopo Lodge boma one very dark night. Debates about causation were long

and hard, with deeply reflective students exploring their inner souls in attempting to

explain their feelings of sadness and depression in the darkness on a moonless night. We

came to the conclusion that non-Bushman communities tend to take collective

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responsibility for excessive drinkers in their midst, largely keeping them out of danger,

out of sight and possibly even out of mind. The ≠Khomani (and the communities that

interact with them) just leave those who are drunk to fend for themselves and sleep off

their inebriation no matter where they are.

Oom Gert and Oom Bliks share their magical stories with students while fellow local Deon

translates.

However, we should take care not to inductively extrapolate from anecdotal evidence that

the most visible of the inebriated stand for the entire community or that they are always

under the influence. This assumption of communal alcoholism is one that afflicts all First

Peoples, and manifests differently in different developed societies – binge drinking in the

UK, drug taking in the USA, ecstasy consumption in discos, tik in Western Cape schools

where whole families succumb, dagga on the UKZN campus etc.

Alienation, of course, is a prime cause as far as First Peoples are concerned. Their

worlds have been traumatized and their addictions are the symptom. These imbibers and

dagga smokers are not necessarily looking for the drug-induced thrill and rush being

searched for by reckless urban ear-damaged disco/rave youngsters. They are looking for

escape. They are often overcome by a sense of failure, are devastated with development

projects that lack sustainability, promises of aid that fail to materialize or are squandered,

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and they are angry at visitors who objectify them. The myth of the ‘harmless people’

persists even as domestic and substance abuse is so visible. Respect is what they want,

and we try to offer this during our annual visits and research interactions. Indeed, this is

the way that Belinda Kruiper (author of Kalahari RainSong (2004), assesses our

contribution: we are seen to respect our hosts no matter how they are behaving. Our

female students, however, often insist that if we are expected to respect `their’ culture

then they insist that our hosts must respect ours in which sexism, drunkenness, and crude

propositioning is considered offensive.

The other talking point is the garrulous nature of our ≠Khomani hosts, all talking

simultaneously, interrupting, gesticulating, touching and poking us, shaking our hands for

long periods, getting into our personal space, always in our faces, always with stories to

tell, a good luck charm to smell and something to sell. These ≠Khomani proxemics are

very different to other cultures and other Bushman groups and they take time to get used

to – played out as they are in Silikat’s games in the sand with Charlize and

Nhamo/Lauren?. This behaviour is an attempt to establish and leverage client-patronage

relations with our researchers who always spend – for students - relatively large amounts

on their crafts and services in a very short period of time. Indeed, such expenditure is a

budgetary line item. Despite this huge spike in the local cash flow, the begging never

ceases. This is an economy based on organised begging, not necessarily exchange. The

conflict is between income derived from SA San Institute (SASI) projects that accrue to

the Institute and opportunistic claims made by individuals on that income who are not

contributors to these activities. The question of why some people/communities are not

motivated to improve their lot was often discussed what are their options? Do they have

any options? Can they compete in the formal job market?

The clinging behaviour of specific ≠Khomani individuals is also experienced by me at

my office back in Durban. On the road back I was called by the Centre’s administrator.

She asked me not to be too stressed when came into the office three days hence. I

responded that I would be less stressed if I could just get from the front door of the suite

through the foyer to my office without hearing “Prof”, “Prof”, from every quarter in the

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foyer and offices every time I enter or exit my office, or being constantly interrupted

every few minutes by someone wanting to talk to me. This is CCMS’s equivalent of the

Molopo parrot’s call and response. I call this song-and-dance ‘the cling’.

The ‘≠Khomani cling’ goes something like this:

• Where is the money I am due by that other film maker? I helped him and then

he left without paying me.

• Why does the money earned by SASI on its various projects not come to me?

• What did [author so and so] do with all the money he earned from his book?

Why have I not been paid?

• I need R10 (no reason offered).

• I’ll only talk to you after you’ve given me R20 for dope. Where’s the money?

• I made you a professor, I talked to your students, you took my picture, you

owe me. Why am I not being paid for these services?

At CCMS, the ‘administrators’ cling’ is thus:

• The Finance Division has rejected your kms claim. They won’t listen to

reason, please call them.

• No-body in the Administration answers my letters or calls, please intervene.

• This student, applicant, caller, parent, refuses to deal with me, they will only

talk to you. Please make yourself available.

• I need you to do this, that and the next thing, as I can’t get anything done

without your authority/signature/instruction.

• Issues of social space and privacy are often similarly as lacking at the

University as in the Kalahari. Many individuals just walk into my office at any

time and without appointment or apology and just start talking to me, no

matter that I may be otherwise engaged (on the PC, meeting with someone

else, reading etc.). If I am on the phone I might be accorded some leeway.

• Prof, you won’t believe this (please don’t get angry ) but …

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• “Prof, Prof, Prof” echoes up and down the suite of offices, the sand dune, the

roadside stall, our camping site …. I am not sure if I am the parrot or the

guest.

My day in both places is characterized by endless appeals, exhortations, requests for

advice, solutions, interventions, complaints, and demands that I solve my own staff’s

other people’s problems. I am often unable to get any of my own work done at my office

as a result. My appeal is because I am known in both places as “Prof”, and now in one

place as “king”. I am deemed to have the authority, the access, the ability to make the

people, computer systems and bureaucracies that (over-) regulate our lives and get in the

way of ordinary life to see sense and to work for us, rather than to obstruct our

operations.

Complaints by administrators, heads of departments about computer systems that don’t

work, or if they do work, about the inappropriate assumptions that underpin the software,

are legion. Academics are the end users but the programmers make decisions based on

design assumptions that work mainly for them. The academic sector – of which my

Centre’s administrators are part - is often left bewildered at the disorganizing and

unfriendly nature of systems that rule their lives and obstruct their performance, devised

by people who are not academics and who have little understanding of the academic

enterprise. All these end/user groups feel disempowered and alienated by unyielding

procedures that are designed by and for management rather than for

academics/users/clients, which they are unable to process and which operate according to

rules that make little sense to them. I heard this refrain often from different sectors –

both formal and informal - across the route that we took. At the Big Hole, only some

students had their student IDs. The rest, including 16 year old Josh, were charged the full

adult price. People have discretion, but computers and cash registers don’t. Anyone who

thinks we are living in a postmodern world is living in fake/fantasy/Fong Kong land of

theoretically-induced make believe. The FIFA phenomenon is just one example of

structural violence wrought on anyone who defies their trademark or their imperialist tax-

free extraction of huge wealth from host countries. And, the ≠Khomani are very aware of

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their rights in this regard, having been ripped off time and again (they will tell one at

length). Postmodernism, a recurring debate on these trips, is found mainly in the

symbolic realm, often in drug induced states, which are nevertheless subject to a

Boudrillian political economy of the sign (i.e. structure). Our interpretations of what

these structures signify can be conducted from postmodernist and post-structuralist

perspectives but the systems into which we are all trapped, and which determine our

behaviour, are decidedly modernist, structuralist, restrictive and determining.

Are we Adventurers?

Like the much more famous documentary film maker John Marshall I try to avoid the tag

of adventurer. This, however, is not always possible. As Varona reflectively wrote on my

laptop after reading an early draft of this article on the way home in the back of the

Patrol:

Kitted out in brown leather boots and that much-commented upon grey jacket, the

Prof looked as though he had just stepped out of an Indiana Jones movie. He

looked every bit the rugged and experienced explorer, ready to conquer the

wilderness with his crew straggling behind him. However, he is not the masculine

Camel cigarette stereotype; he applied his academic gaze to this community in

both a sensitive and discerning manner. He answered our questions about the

≠Khomani and explained that their physical proximity to visitors was a result of

their continuous dependency on aid from tourists. We admit that this, despite his

sun tan and appealing chin stubble, is a very different persona revealed in

comparison to Prof. at campus. (It must be the uninhibiting influence of the

Kalahari.) The gallant explorer image was reassuring as many of the students

were intimidated by the closeness of the interactions with their hosts. They were

very friendly; however they were too enthusiastic in their greetings. The first-time

visitors were initially alarmed by their greetings because they encroached on the

conventional boundaries of our personal space (whether Zulu, Indian or white

South African, or Scottish, Zimbabwean or Dutch). It was reassuring to know that

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Prof. had interacted with this community for many years and that this was normal

behaviour in the community. We were also pleasantly surprised by the easy-going

and informal atmosphere of the Bushcamp where we stayed for a week.

The Bright Side

What marked this trip was the recurring bursts of laughter. The lugubrious laughing

ladies – Wandile, Phume, Miliswa and Luthando – punctuated the night sounds around

the campfire, in their tent, and in the vehicles. Fun and learning, students’ coping in the

wild and loving it while I constantly exhorted them to “wakker maak, opstaan en

rondkyk” (wake up, stand up, and cast the [academic] gaze). The laughing ladies return

to my house in Westville in the Sani was accompanied by laughter and ululating on

coming home to Durban.

The ladies that kept us rolling with laughter.

Turning 60 two years ago was a watershed for me. My students threw me a huge party at

Zacks at Wilson’s Warf. They gave me photos of the Patrol at sunset in Botswana and a

reflexive picture of researcher shadows taken at the Ukhwi salt pan. Turning 60 was both

an advantage and a disadvantage. Before 60, I was one of the bunch, cooking, cleaning,

participating in camp organization, being ribbed and made fun of. Now, I am afforded

the respect of a wise African elder. The laughing ladies and Varona ensured me this

status. It’s good to be respected thus, which was further earned this year when – contrary

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to student expectations – I neither stayed in a heated serviced rondaval en-suite at the

nearby Molopo Lodge nor took up residence in a grass chalet at the Bushcamp. I froze,

got sunburned, had cold showers and got dusty with all the students. My creaky old bones

were refreshed by the younger bones all around me. (Is this a script for Mr Bones III?

Leon, here we come.) Laughter, fun and camaraderie were the rewards. I have no doubt

that the second semester will benefit from this collective experience that will infuse the

class as a whole.

That’s all, folks, as they say in Looney Tunes.

Kalahari Keyan (otherwise known here in the desert as “Prof Maselli”)

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