"It is easy to die of thirst in the Richtersveld”, says Koos Farmer.

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Koos is a livestock farmer near Eksteenfontein and he and his deaf and dumb wife Poppie migrate seasonally with their goats and sheep. One will find people like Koos and Poppie in other parts of the arid north-western Cape and Kalahari; Kolie and Sanna van Wyk, Gert and Caroline Tieties near Kampspanne in the Kalahari or Gert Keteljie Joseph and Dampie and Grietjie Dirkse from Paulshoek in the Kamies Mountains. These people are remnants of a vanishing lifestyle, the last true pioneers of South African history. Their ancestors were the first people to occupy South Africa, and they left an indelible imprint on the cultural landscape in South Africa.

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But, if the United Nations acts to preserve a vanishing lifestyle, then there must cause for concern. This is exactly what happened in the Richtersveld. The fact that this succulent paradise is the only global ecological hotspot in an arid region, was indeed the major impetus for the UN’s decision. However, the UN also took notice of threats to the typical Nama way of living. The transhumance lifestyle affected every aspect of their lives; how they live, their dwellings, what they eat, how they prepare food, what they wear, how they entertain themselves, their farming methods, their natural medicines, their oral history, their religion and the spiritual values they attach to sheep, goats and donkeys, and what they believe in.

 

One will find a few authentic examples of the Nama lifestyle in all the communal areas of the north-western Cape. As more and more people become wage-labourers, and as they resolve increasingly to be dependent on social grants and pensions, so will the traditional lifestyles decline. This is the background of my photographic and video presentation, namely to document the traditional lifestyles of the people of the communal areas of the north-western Cape and the Kalahari. The main focus is remnants of cultural life that is threatened by modernization and the evolution from farming to a wage-economy.