by Sue Ricketts
One day a small tribe of San bushmen was walking along on a dry,dusty path in the Kalahari Desert. The group mostly consisted of women and children with two men to accompany them for safety. As they came around a corner of the scrub-brush lined road, they saw an amazing sight.
A white-man’s cart, drawn by oxen and loaded with boxes and supplies was trundling slowly along the same path from the opposite direction. Sitting high atop two wooden crates was a scraggly- bearded Afrikaner. Behind him was a little woman in a sunbonnet and two small children where laughing and playing with wooden sticks sitting high upon a tarpaulin yellow with dust which covering intriguing unknowable things.
Abraham “Braam” Le Roux was bringing his dearest Willemien, along with their children, to live in the Kalahari Desert.
Instant fear gripped the minds of the San and most went running pell-mell into the coarse brush and back along the trail. They ran in fear of their lives because they all knew that the white man would shoot first rather than wait for anything they might say. The two men stood their ground the longest in hopes of giving the others a chance to get away. They raised spears and shields and shook them fiercely in hopes of somehow convincing this fearsome apparition to go away. Only bad things happened when white people were around!
The very tiny woman in the huge sun hat, the sides of which hid her face, suddenly jumped down from the cart. She began walking towards the two remaining bushmen and began talking in their own language.
“We come in peace,” she said in their clicking tongue, “we wish to share food with you and spend time here in your homeland. We wish to build a house to live here so that we may always share with you. In token of our good will we have brought some rolls of calico for us to make clothing together. Please ask your women and children to come back and share some food with us”
The startled Bushmen stared but would not speak until finally the huge man climbed down from the cart and walked a distance away. The little woman went back to the wagon and shushed the children away and lifted the tarpaulin so that they could see there were no guns present and that right on top was the promised calico. She reached in and brought out a metal tin which proved to be filled with sweet dates. The bushman came forward and gingerly took a date in hand and tasted.
Neither knew what to make of this event. After waiting a respectable time to make sure the dates hadn’t been poisoned, they sat down in the road to share more food treasures. When they were satisfied that there was no danger from these strange white people, one of the San went to find the women and children so that they could share the bounty of food brought by Braam and Willemien in their wagon. The first permanent missionaries had arrived in the Kalahari.
This is a true story. The white couple and their children never left the wild country and spent their whole lives acting as an interface between the San and the government of Botswana. They advocated in all ways for them to preserve their traditions and their way of life. If you don’t know the rest of the story about Braam and his adventures, I encourage you to continue reading or do your own research. And if you feel inclined, take the time to find out how you might support the survival of the San after 100,000 years in the same place on Earth, the Kalahari Desert
From the records:
Braam and Willemien, together with a group of D’Kar residents, set up Kuru as the first San support organization in Botswana. Working with people whose self-esteem had been crushed by centuries of persecution was an extreme challenge . San were classified as vermin by the first white settlers in South Africa, the San could be shot on sight. One of their first goals was to rekindle pride in San heritage by setting up a cultural centre that would teach the younger generation, born and raised on farms, about their traditions and survival skills. To understand the people better, Braam and Willemien went to live for months at a time with a group of free-roaming San, sharing their twig huts and daily routines.
In the early 1990s, Braam was involved in the formation of the San advocacy organization First People of the Kalahari, and the region-wide Working Group of Indigenous Minorities (Wimsa). Although his style was never confrontational, these were politically sensitive initiatives and in 1993, he had his work and residence permits in Botswana summarily withdrawn by the ethnic Botswana-dominated government. Ironically his expulsion raised an outcry that drew worldwide attention and support for the San. He was allowed to return two months later and, in 2002, he was granted Botswana citizenship.
Braam carried the world on his shoulders, often fretting that the pain he witnessed among a people in transition was exacerbated by his own involvement, because he had encouraged them to move too fast, or perhaps in the wrong direction. But he also had a great sense of fun, and visitors to his home could always expect adventure.
Living since 1997 on the edge of the Okavango delta, Braam liked to explore the waterways in his small motorboat, and sit beside a campfire on a tiny spit of land with Willemien as an angry hippo threatened them from the water for beaching the boat in its regular pathway. It wasn’t unusual to waken next morning to find a huge croc submerged to its nostrils in the pool where he had washed the night before.
In 2007 Braam stepped back from Kuru and was involved in a crocodile farming venture, and in growing organic vegetables on a small plot of land bedeviled by monkeys who stole his entire first crop of mangoes and watermelons. Although he was an endlessly resourceful man who had built the family’s homes in remote locations with his own hands, he had not yet found a way of foiling these annoying thieves.
It was while he was out securing his boat in a welcome Kalahari rainstorm that Braam died suddenly. He is survived by Willemien, their children Laurika, Eben and Hettie, and two grandchildren.
• Abraham Hercules Le Roux, human rights advocate and development worker, born 10 July 1951; died 17 November 2009
