Indigenous tribes reject land sale

A filmmaker's dream of building a Hollywood-style studio in the northern part of South Africa has been blocked after a passionate campaign by the local Khoi-San community, tribes commonly known in the West as Bushmen.

But the filmmakers underestimated the will of the local 5,000-strong population who put the spiritual value of the land over any potential economic gain and nixed the plan last month.

"No money in the world can buy this land," says Ina Basson, secretary of the Pella Community Forum. "It is ours and has sentimental value. Our forefathers fought the Germans for this land and had to battle to keep it. They have spilled blood for the land and for us, and it is not for sale.

"[The producers] said Mel Gibson and Halle Berry would fly in to do movies, and that Tiger Woods would design the golf course," adds Ms. Basson. "We don't care about them. We want to live here."

The Rev. Cyril Smith, whose cathedral would have been made into a Mexican village film set, says the consortium miscalculated the level of opposition and the legal status of the land. "They should have consulted the residents first but they didn't, which made them very angry," he says. "The government, as trustees, aren't allowed to sell this land without their consent, so the film studios will not happen."

"Not even a handful will I sell to them," says farmer Piet Eiman, one of the area's oldest residents, holding pieces of soil in his hands. "We are part of the land, it can support you from a baby, to a young child, to a man. It is part of us."

Rudolf Markgraaff, chief executive at Charis Productions, one of the companies looking to purchase or lease the tribal land, says he was surprised at the opposition. "This area is desperately poor with 70 percent unemployment, high rates of AIDS, and limited facilities like hospitals and schools.

"We had letters of support from the [African National Congress] Youth League, the ANC Women's League, and another group begging us to make it happen," Markgraaff says. "They're not doing anything with this land."

But Mr. Markgraaff is wrong. The local population is preserving their culture, with some families practicing the traditional hunting and gathering lifestyle, and others herding cattle and goats, or farming desert crops. These ways of life would be threatened or destroyed by the presence of such large-scale commercial development.