Rupert Isaacson. The Healing Land. A Kalahari Journey.
London, Fourth Estate, 2001. 287 pp., Hardcover £16.99 Paperback
£ 7.99.
A
long overdue book, The Healing Land recounts the story of the Bushmen of the
Kalahari Desert (an area straddling present-day South Africa, Botswana and Namibia)
who struggle to retain their ancient hunter-gatherer lifestyle while learning
to protect and reclaim their hunting grounds from encroaching modernity. It
also speaks to the healing power of the land and of a people for whom animals
are not only equals in a habitat shared by all, but protagonists and interpreters
of a drama unfolding in silent and empty spaces. It is also the story of Rupert
Isaacson's search for "the ancestors", to whom he dedicates the book.
Anyone
who has heard of the Bushmen has heard of Laurens van der Post, whose writings
in the fifties established him as an authority on life in the Kalahari. Rupert
Isaacson's work is certainly informed by van der Post's ground breaking observations,
but the author has gone one step beyond: he has tried to avoid looking upon
the Bushmen with a paternalistic eye, to the extent possible for a Londoner
with a South African mother and a Rhodesian father. He has also attempted to
forge links, albeit not always successfully, between the different branches
of his extended family, pertaining to both ends of the political and colour
spectrum. Most importantly, he has avoided idealizing a people he has learned
to truly love and trust.
"In the beginning, so my mother told me, were the Bushmen"
is Isaacson's gentle introduction to the stories and myths of the people who
have lived in Africa longer than anyone else. In fact, the author informs us
that the Bushmen, more properly known as KhoiSan but whom others call "Hottentots",
"are considered... to be the oldest human culture on earth, possibly ancestors
to us all". With this low-key statement, Isaacson demolishes the Euro centric
notion of distinct races and the ideological underpinnings of the Apartheid
system that caused such a rift in South Africa and whose effects can still be
felt.
Isaacson's
narrative sometimes reads like a road movie, with the characters meandering
all over the place and the destination point beginning to appear like a shifting
mirage in the desert. But patience, because The Healing Land is also a lesson
in the importance of ritual and prophecy and in the futility of running against
time. Isaacson's narrative slowly unfolds to reveal the most important plot
being played out in the Kalahari Desert as well as throughout the world: the
struggle between a globalizing industrializing power-hungry elite and the gentle
and wise custodians of the land and all the creatures within it. We learn that
the Bushmen in the end win some hard-fought land-claims ...but on paper only.
We are also reminded that "a new millennium has begun, and the Bushmen
and their vast, golden land, are still there." We are also taught a lesson
in humility. Polly Loxton, the author's mother who accompanied her son on his
quest, wrote it down ever so simply in her journal:
"In the desert ...the body lightens. You need very little.
That what matters is God within. The pure heart. Loving kindness. Forgiveness.
Restitution. Reciprocity."
This is what The Healing Land is all about.
THE END