Contested Karoo: Interdisciplinary perspectives on change and continuity in South Africa’s drylands
Edited by Cherryl Walker and M. Timm Hoffman. UCT Press, May 2024. Open access.
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By MAEDER OSLER
WHEN I COME across a book about the Karoo and rural things, I am often arrested by its covers. Just like the Karoo and those rural things themselves, they seem to hold the promise of hidden meanings that will gradually reveal themselves in what is to come.
The front cover of Contested Karoo is no exception. It hints at the mystery, allure, and many other dimensions of this vast, enigmatic part of our country, reaching inwards, outwards and upwards through the skies, on land and underground.
The book entices us into following its main themes as best we can, among others in the interests of advancing our main goal, namely to develop a new model or models of rural communication. Some of these themes – notably land use and tenure, employment, restitution and the environment – resonate strongly with me in the part of the Karoo I am writing from and about: the grassy Karoo, including parts (at least) of the Northern Cape, the Eastern Cape and the Free State.
This stretches the Karoo way beyond its ‘formal’ boundaries – but this is a point made throughout this book. The dimensions it highlights are extensive and expansive, and clearly justify more investment in continued research.
But back to the cover: the windmill (can you hear it working, even though it seems to be missing a vane?) and the rather dwarfed power line speak of some of the current leaps in technology on, over and under the Karoo landscapes. As this book helps us to understand, this is translating into considerable investments in wind power, solar power, minerals, and gases from sands and from rocks under the sands – which need to be watched closely …
The orange glow and streaks in the sky can be shepherds’ warnings or shepherds’ delights, speaking of spaces for wind turbines or for plants, animals, locals, stoep talkers, travellers, tourists …The scattered clouds speak, as always, of an endless promise of rain.
Above and beyond that is the cosmos – the planets, stars, planets, dark holes and constellations, allowing radio telescopes to tap into a vast fabric of radio waves from the beginning of time. And beneath it, below the visible surface, gas suitable for fracking, probably shale gas — and in the seas west of the Karoo, so much more? For where does the Karoo really start and where does it end?
The dark, brooding slant of land, plant shapes and other forms speak of temperature, air and moisture drainages for animals, birds, insects and humans, for when rains can work their magic, and scents their secrets. And where even the rocks, soils and sands are never really silent.
This is a place on the move: of health, recoveries, healings, exiles, refugees, openness and shelter, of co-operations and conflicts, of investments and wealth, of jobs, unemployments and poverties. Here are landscapes of new power relations.
The back cover is equally evocative and provocative, showing sheep – the traditional jewels of the Karoo – placidly grazing at the foot of the unearthly form of a giant wind turbine.
But I’m running ahead of myself, oblivious of the dongas, ant-bear holes, dubbeltjies and acacia thorn trees, hyenas, jackals, rooikatte and wild pigs. And leguans … So here some nuts and bolts, a synopsis by the UCT Press, as well as an explanation of how us tover-visitors and other Karoo dwellers could access the book – for free.
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Sherryl Walker held a Research Chair in the Sociology of Land, Environment and Sustainable Development at Stellenbosch University, and M Timm Hoffmann held a Chair in Plant Conservation at the University of Cape Town. The books draws on years of research by an interdisciplinary team led by Walker at Stellenbosch University (supported by the Nationial Research Foundation), as well as research by the Plant Conservation Unit (supported by the Leslie Hill Endowment Fund).
UCT Press explains the book as follows:
‘This interdisciplinary collection explores significant land use changes in South Africa’s semi-rid Karoo region and their implications for social justice and the environment, across different scales. It brings together recent scholarship by established and younger researchers, in both the social and the natural sciences, to examine the ways in which the Karoo is being reconfigured as a new ‘resource frontier’ and the tensions and contestations that result.
‘Along with ongoing mining, major investments in astronomy (notably the Square Kilometre Array radio telescope), renewable and non-renewable sources of energy (solar, wind, potential shale-gas mining), biodiversity conservation, and commercial game farming are reshaping land use and authority in this vast and long-marginalised area. While promising significant benefits to society at large, these developments are built on older histories of dispossession and extractivism – histories that many Karoo residents fear are being reproduced in new forms today.
‘Collectively, these dynamics place this unique region at the centre of national and global concerns around climate change, the politics of knowledge production, the conservation of threatened biodiversity, and the meaning and possibility of sustainable development. These issues are explored through a series of case studies of selected developments, complemented by chapters providing more historical context and general overviews. While challenging perceptions of this region as a peripheral wasteland, this collection raises conceptual and policy questions that resonate far beyond the Karoo itself.
‘It also highlights the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration in research aimed not only at understanding but also at responding appropriately to the mounting challenges of our time.’
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An equally refreshing aspect of the book is the way in which it’s been published, and how it is being distributed. It’s an ‘open access’ book, which means that anybody can download a copy from the UCT Press website, free of charge. To download the book, click here.
Hard copies can be ordered from Sun Media, which will be printed on demand. Understandably, seeing it’s got to be printed and delivered, this will cost a bit of money. To order a copy via email, click here.
Open access publication has been made possible with the financial support of the NRF and the University of Cape Town’s URC Open Access Journal Publication Fund. According to Walker, this is particularly fortunate as it makes the book available to a wider audience, especially those – like many Karoo dwellers – who cannot afford to buy books.
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Meanwhile, back to the farms, the towns, the roads and the veld … the themes in this volume resonate with Karoo towns, farms, landscapes and skies. In many ways, they are the daily fare of the people living in this region, who translate them and give them shape.
The book moves me with expectant delight at sharing some experience of farming, education and journalism, and of living in the Karoo; of agendas and sustainable development goals; of the broad landscapes of land reform; and that’s only for starters.
For example, opportunities for breaking the strangleholds of so-called illiteracies and so-called in-numeracies; breaking cycles of poverty, unemployment and poor health; breaking through the barriers of perennial subsistence and below- subsistence wages, and cycles of dysfunctional temporary employment; how asset building by farm worker families can roll over into new investments and new rural economies, with dramatic results; and how investments in rural media could work to benefit everyone. These agendas remain to be articulated, inspired in part by substantial and fascinating publications such as this about the Karoo.
In a conclusion, Walker and Hoffman express the hope that the book will ‘encourage more research and stimulate further inter-disciplinary collaboration in this compelling region called the Karoo’. Our hope at Toverview is that we — as well as other emerging digital platforms of tutal, communication – will also join some of these contested highways and byways. Readers are welcome to assist.
As a start, in the months to come, we hope to tease out some of the book’s content in more assimilable or popular form, and also to place some of its fascinating maps …
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Cherryl has sent us this picture taken at the launch event at UCT on 16 May. It includes the editors, the contributors who could attend, as well as the discussant. From left to right are Hana Petersen, Boitumelo Malope, Timm Hoffman, Cherryl Walker, Igshaan Samuels, Renelle Terblanche, Emma Archer (discussant), Stephanie Borchardt and Clement Cupido.
