Review: James G. Workman's 'Heart of Dryness'
Almost 30 years ago the enchanting film, The Gods Must Be Crazy, introduced many of us to the Bushmen of the Kalahari in southern Africa. The unlikely star of the film, N!xau, playing the Bushman Xi, encounters technology in the form of a Coke bottle tossed out of a plane. But the bottle soon foments discord among Xi’s compatriots, so he embarks on a mission to throw the evil bottle off the Earth. Now, in 2009, James G. Workman introduces us to the Kalahari Bushmen again through his book, Heart of Dryness: How the Last Bushmen Can Help Us Endure the Coming Age of Permanent Drought. This time around, the tale is not amusing, but downright dismal. Workman describes in excruciating detail the campaign waged by Botswana against its Bushmen in an effort to drive them from their land onto reservations. It’s not the Bushmen’s water they are after, but their land – De Beers, the diamond conglomerate, wants to mine the area.
