Sibusiso Banda
Kalahari Rain Song is an unusual but yet wonderfully moving book that brings together the voices of two South African women, who are from different backgrounds but they are connected in spirit, to tell an intriguing story about the culture, spirituality and survival challenges of the Northern Cape Khomani Bushman community in the Kalahari.
Elana Bregin and Belinda Kruiper co-authored Kalahari Rain Song just after they met in October 2001 at Vetkat Kruiper’s (Belinda’s husband) art exhibition in Westville, Durban, at the Bergtheil museum. The book is set in South Africa in the post apartheid times.
The story of the Khomani Bushman community is largely based through the life story of Belinda Kruiper, who is a “colored” native of Carnarvon with the ancestors of the San or Bushman community, and is also actively involved in the promotion and protection of the bushman culture. Elana Bregin is a white South African author who is famous for have written eight books, such as Shiva’s dance, The red head Khumalo, and The magical bycicle just to name a few. She also holds a master of arts in the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN), where her thesis examines colonial and other representatives of the Bushmen. It’s Bregin’s research plus the research influence of professor Keyan Tomaselli of the UKZN, which led to Bregin in 2001 to encouraging Belinda to work join forces and write a book, of which in turn resulted in the writing of Kalahari Rain Song.
The book takes the reader into the lives of the bushman and gives them the exclusive view on the “real-bushman-life” that is fastly becoming extinct. What’s amazing is that it covers certain aspects that not even camera crew that have been doing documentaries about bushman lives for over decades has been able to capture on video, by successfully telling us Belinda’s personal journey in the Kalahari, by reflecting on the complex reality of the khomani Bushman community that Belinda is part of, while in the process using powerful photographic portraits of the Bushmen life as well as unique pieces of art by acclaimed Bushmen artist Vetkat, to powerfully evokes the Bushmen’s continuity struggles for survival, land and identity in South Africa.
Belinda and Bregin successfully use themes to convey knowledge in the Kalahari rain song, although find most of the themes some how similar to other African writers book that are also about the bushman, like example Bessie Heads’s Maru as they both to expose the discrimination of Bushman and the way they are regard by similar themes but I have gained great deal of deep knowledge about the bushman community culturally (why they prefer living in the Kalahari rather than in any other place and the reason why they act the way the do) ; spirituality (how strong their belief is when it comes to making sense of their surrounding and how they associate or why tend to interpret very situation as an message from ancestors) and most importantly, how their culture and spirituality tends to be used as tools of discrimination against them by other races which has major influence on their survival.
Culture, spirituality and survival challenges are one of the major themes that the book focuses on.
In culture theme, Belinda takes us into the lives of bushman, and we learn a lot about their customs and behavior in just one sentence: “The Bushman have always been a people out of step with the rest of the world. All they have ever wanted is to be left alone to live the life that suited them- walking the dunes, hunting and gathering, singing, dancing, painting and telling stories”. We also points out that it’s because that they have been persecuted by the world, as the world has never been able to understand their way of life, and because of this that’s why they are regarded as less than human.
Under the spiritual theme, we learn about the Bushman’s connection with their ancestors and their strong “belief of dreams, ancestral callings and spiritual visions” and the use of plants such as dagga ancestral aroma stimulus tools or signs that are used by ancestors to communicate information to them, and as such they strongly believed that Belinda was sent to them in the Kalahari by their ancestors for a reason, which leads us to the last theme.
Under the theme survival challenges, we learn that the bushman culture is hugely under threatened by western culture as their “land has been taken to them, they have been restricted access to the land, and they live under hash condition of discrimination” and hunger plus poverty of which overall has negative impacts in their health and survival, and its because of such that they belief Belinda has been sent to liberate them from the chains of discrimination so that they can regain their strength while enabling them to keep the bushman seed alive by paving a way for future generation.
When I first got my hands on this book, especially after reading the back cover and flipped through the book and saw the pictures of bushman and their art, I immediately thought this is going to be a boring book, its going to talk about the bushman facts that I already know : its will talk about their culture, art and survival (hunting) techniques, but to my surprise, when I was reading it, I found it hard to put it down, maybe it’s the way it is written, it has been personalized rather than it being a book full of facts that don’t have relevance to the reader, but future reader of Kalahari rain song can expect to be taken through a powerful “exclusive” journey filled with emotions and discovery of new and existing knowledge that is gradually becoming extinct about the culture, spirituality and survival challenges that the Khomani Bushman community faces on a daily basis.
The journey is uniquely written in a manner that is not chronological structured. There is no active dialogue between the characters: most of the dialogue is quoted by Belinda as she narrates the story, this because she (Belinda) is telling the story of the bushman through her past situational interpretation that occurred around her while she was in the Kalahari and story tends to repeat itself, for example you will find that many of the events that are mentioned in the beginning or in a certain chapter are repeated throughout chapters. Bregin explains this type of writing in the beginning of the book under the title “editor’s notes” as uniquely different as it “adds richness to the writing process”.
I feel that the book was able to tensely cover and explore every aspect and every bit of knowledge and very challenge that the bushman community in South African has been facing since the down of democracy till the present day’s state which we are at as a country. But what I feel the Bregin and Belinda failed us in is the conclusion of the book, I feel that the end of the book could have been made more interesting rather than the way she ended the book: Ending it on simple predictable manner: updating us about bushman’s struggle for food before the land claim rather than updating us whether they were able to cope in the running of the land that was given to them after the claim.
The story is simple well told, as the reader is able to connect with the dreadful plight of beleaguered Bushman in a very sympathetic manner and it’s able to successful tell Belinda’s personal journey in the Kalahari .
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