A drive through the windblown San settlements of grass and wood scattered across southern Africa is a very depressing experience: families ravaged by poverty, unemployment and alcoholism -- their hunter-gatherer tradition a fading memory.
For the past few years their leaders have spoken of a bonanza from western pharmaceutical companies in payment for the San Bushmen's knowledge of a plant that might one day cure obesity.
They have yet to see a penny.
"They are frustrated by the delay, but these are people who take things as they are. There is not huge agitation yet," said Richard Wicksteed, a documentary maker who has filmed them for two decades.
"The average San knows there is value in their medicinal knowledge. Having used hoodia when they were starving, the irony of obese westerners using it to lose weight is not lost on them."
San leaders were gathered in Tanzania for a meeting Wednesday and unaware of the Unilever deal, but once informed they would likely welcome it, Wicksteed said.
"It's very good news if handled correctly," he said.
If a portion of Unilever's millions does reach the San it would buck a long, sad history of dispossession.
These indigenous people of southern Africa have a culture dating back 20,000 years. They have survived the harshest environments, but not the predations of other humans. The more warrior-like Bantu tribes from the north, then European colonialists and finally the apartheid regime swept through their land, killing, appropriating anything of value and pushing the San into dwindling pockets of territory.
The three San groups most closely associated with hoodia -- the Khwe, Xu and Khomani -- number only a few thousand. The total number of San across the Kalahari is estimated at 100,000.
Post-apartheid South Africa tried to redress some of the injustice by granting them ownership of more than 40,000 hectares.
But their communities are broken. Only a handful remain of the hunter-gatherers of western imagination. The rest scrabble what living they can in bleak settlements which are often hundreds of miles from decent roads, schools and clinics.
"This is the last stand of the San -- the last generation that still retain some of their culture and heritage. They are a tiny people with a tiny voice," Wicksteed said.
Some South African firms have already tried to pirate the San's knowledge of the hoodia, and Unilever and Phytopharm are expected to try to stop such practices.
Chris De Plessis, a lawyer who is representing the San in Botswana, said that few ordinary San understood the ramifications of intellectual property rights, and mistrust was growing that their leaders might pocket the hoodia revenue -- if it ever comes.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to