Kalahari
Comeback to Kalahari
Comeback to Kalahari is a photo story about San People, improprerly known as Bushmen, one of the last indigenous communities, the last descendants of the mitochondrial Eve, regarded as the most remote ancestor of humanity.
In collaboration with SASI (The South African San Institute), I had the opportunity to spend some weeks with Khomani and Kwé Bushman communities inhabiting the Northern Cape in South Africa. As a result of Western colonialism and South Africa apartheid dismantled only in 1991, San have undergone a double process of impoverishment, their land and their cultural identity. The political control of territory, led by governments of southern Africa and the major diamond companies, pushed the hunter-gatherers to adopt an urban and sedentary lifestyle. Comeback to Kalahari looks at this community, who, nowadays, inhabits the vast and hostile stretches land in the Kalahari desert: unemployment, illiteracy, isolation and high cost of living jeopardize the preservation of its identity. I show this global frontier, where the sense of isolation and marginalization shape the texture of every day, with little promise of change. All the pictures were take in 2009.