The Hunter-Litigators

There aren't too many south Africans who can translate the motto on their country's new coat of arms, and even fewer who can pronounce its tongue-twisting clicks and glottals: "!ke e:/xarra //ke." Meaning "diverse people unite" in /Xam, one of the first known indigenous languages spoken in southern Africa, the phrase plays a part in the national identity that is more than symbolic. Now that apartheid is history, the forgotten "first people" minorities of South Africa's earliest past are claiming their heritage rights. /Xam, spoken by people known as the Khoisan, is now regarded as extinct. But descendants of the San — the desert "bushmen" of southern Africa — are leading a drive to recognize not just the existence of the historical minorities, but their cultural and other rights as well.

Over the centuries the San have been reduced to landless communities whose people at one time were killed as vermin by European settlers. Under South Africa's apartheid system they were classified as "coloured." In 1996, however, the existence of a San tribal group was acknowledged when they successfully claimed the return of some of their ancestral land in the southern Kalahari. At the same time the leaders of the San, dispersed in small communities and family groups throughout the Kalahari and Namib desert regions, formed the Working Group of Indigenous Minorities in Southern Africa (WIMSA) to protect their interests. These include land claims and rights to intellectual property such as artwork, symbols, folklore, songs, dances and the traditional use of plants in medicine. Like the Australian aborigines, the San — known for their survival skills, rock art, trance-dancing and mystic symbiosis with their desert environment — are among the most researched people in the world. They are also among the poorest. In 1997 WIMSA announced it would no longer allow the media or researchers free access to the San and drew up contracts for payment in return for insight into their ancient ways. "We were just objects for exploitation," says Joram /Useb, a Namibian San and WIMSA's assistant coordinator. "We want recognition as people, with the same rights as anyone else in the world."

In the past four years /Useb's group has taken legal action against the unauthorized use of the name San and photographs of them in books, postcards, advertisements and tourist promotions. Last year, for the first time, the San negotiated a royalty agreement with a company that has produced an award-winning documentary film on San life. "This is about righting the wrongs of history," says Roger Chennells, a South African lawyer who acts as a consultant to WIMSA. "No-one cared in the past. Now, all over the world, first peoples are speaking out." More than that, revenues from the protection deals are channeled into education and community development. "They've been giving away their culture for too long," he says. "Now they're beginning to understand the value of it and how to preserve it."

Chennells is currently helping the San pursue two important heritage claims. One involves the rock art of their ancestors. In and among the caves and mountain ranges of southern Africa are hundreds of rock art sites dating back 27,000 years. Chennells says the San should be involved in managing the sites and should benefit from them.

The second claim goes to the core of the San's traditional knowledge. To stave off hunger and thirst during days of hunting in the searing Kalahari heat, the San chew on a slice of the Hoodia cactus, which acts as an appetite suppressant. South Africa's Council for Scientific and Industrial Research isolated the active ingredient in the cactus and in 1997 patented it, as P57. The C.S.I.R. negotiated the commercial rights to P57 with Britain's Phytopharm, which in turn sold them to the U.S. pharmaceutical giant Pfizer for a reported $32 million. Pfizer hopes to have P57 out as a super slimming pill within three years. "That's like taking the San's family silver and making a huge profit out of it," says Chennells. "We have to ask the question, where does bio-prospecting end and bio-piracy begin?"

Early July the San were meeting with officials of the C.S.I.R. over the Hoodia deal. In the Kalahari, meanwhile, scientists and researchers from the South African San Institute were walking in the desert with the San, eating the Hoodia cactus and confirming its use as a part of their traditional lifestyle. If the San can prove their claim to the appetite-suppressing plant, the rewards could be fat indeed.