Kalahari Desert

The Kalahari Desert is a large, arid to semi-arid sandy area in southern Africa that covers about 500,000 km². It covers 70% of Botswana, and parts of Zimbabwe, Namibia and South Africa. Some sources extend the area of the Kalahari to over 2.5 million square kilometres and include Gabon, Republic of the Congo, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Angola, and Zambia.

Related Topics:
Desert - Africa - 500,000 - Km² - % - Botswana - Zimbabwe - Namibia - South Africa - Gabon - Republic of the Congo - Democratic Republic of the Congo - Angola - Zambia

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The Kalahari has vast areas covered by red-brown sands and no permanent surface water. Drainage is by dry valleys, seasonally inundated pans, and the large salt pans of the Makgadikgadi Pan in Botswana and Etosha Pan in Namibia. However, the Kalahari is not a true desert. Parts of the Kalahari receive over 250 mm of erratic rainfall annually and are quite well vegetated; it is only truly arid in the south-west (under 175 mm of rain annually) making the Kalahari a fossil desert. Summer temperatures in the Kalahari range from 20 to 40 °C. In winter, the Kalahari has a dry, cold climate with frosts at night. The average low winter temperature can be below 0 °C.

Related Topics:
Salt pan - Makgadikgadi Pan - Etosha Pan - Fossil desert

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The Kalahari has a number of game reserves - the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR, the world's second largest protected area), Khutse Game Reserve and the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park. Animals that live in the region include brown hyenas, lions, meerkats, several species of antelope (including the oryx or gemsbok), and many species of bird and reptile. Vegetation in the Kalahari consists mainly of grasses and acacias but there are over 400 identified plant species present (including the wild watermelon or tsamma melon).

Related Topics:
Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park - Hyena - Lion - Meerkat - Antelope - Oryx - Gemsbok - Bird - Reptile - Grass - Acacia - Watermelon

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The area is the ancestral land of the Bushmen (!Kung San) peoples. There are many distinct tribes, and they have no collective name for themselves. The names San and Basarwa are sometimes used, but the people themselves dislike these names (San is a Khoi word meaning outsider, and Basarwa a Herero word meaning person who has nothing) and prefer the name "Bushman". They are thought to have been the first human inhabitants of Southern Africa; there is evidence that they have been living there continuously as nomadic hunter-gatherers for at least twenty thousand years. The Bushmen of the Kalahari desert were first brought to the western worlds attention in the 1950s when author Laurens van der Post published his most famous work The Lost World of the Kalahari, which was also turned in to a BBC TV series. This and other later works about the Kalahari prompted the creation of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve in 1961 in order to preserve the Bushmen and their homeland.

Related Topics:
Bushmen - Khoi - Herero - Hunter-gatherer - Laurens van der Post - Central Kalahari Game Reserve

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In 2002 the Botswanan government forced all the Bushmen from their lands within the borders of that country and "resettled" them in fixed encampments. The government has given several different justifications for their action: that it was for purposes of nature conservation; that it was too expensive to continue to supply the Bushmen with water (the water table had been lowered by farming and other development); that it was "to enable them to share in the wealth of the country"; that it was for their own good to become settled and "civilised". The campaign group Survival International have alleged that the real reason for the re-settlement is to clear the land for diamond mining, but a different group campaigning for the rights of the Bushmen, Ditshwanelo (the Botswanan Centre for Human Rights), dispute this, claiming that the Government's motives are altruistic but misguided.

Related Topics:
2002 - Survival International - Diamond - Altruistic

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There are large coal, copper, and nickel deposits in the region. One of the largest diamond mines in the world is located at Orapa in the Makgadikgadi, northeastern Kalahari.

Related Topics:
Coal - Copper - Nickel - Diamond mines - Orapa

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Kalahari is derived from the Tswana word Kgalagadi, meaning "the great thirst".

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KALAHARI DESERT, a region of South Africa, lying mainly between 20 and 28 S. and 19 and 24 E., and covering fully 120,000 sq. m. The greater part of this territory forms the western portion of the (British) Bechuanaland protectorate, but it extends south into that part of Bechuanaland annexed to the Cape and west into German South-West Africa. The Orange river marks its southern limit; westward it reaches to the foot of the Nama and Damara hills, eastward to the cultivable parts of Bechuanaland, northward and north-westward to the valley of the Okavango and the bed of Lake Ngami. The Kalahari, part of the immense inner table-land of South Africa, has an average elevation of over 3000 ft. with a general slope from east to west and a dip northward to Ngami. Described by Robert Moff at as the southern Sahara, the Kalahari resembles the great desert of North Africa in being generally arid and in being scored by the beds of dried-up rivers. It presents however many points of difference from the Sahara. The surface soil is mainly red sand, but in places limestone overlies shale and conglomerates. The ground is undulating and its appearance is comparable with that of the ocean at times of heavy swell. The crests of the waves are represented by sand dunes, rising from 30 to ioo ft.; the troughs between the dunes vary greatly in breadth. On the eastern border long tongues of sand project into the veld, while the veld in places penetrates far into the desert. There are also, and especially along the river beds, extensive mud fiats. After heavy rain these become pans or lakes, and water is then also found in mud-bottomed pools along the beds of the rivers. The water in the pans is often brackish, and in some cases thickly encrusted with salt. Pans also occur in crater-like depressions where rock rises above the desert sands. A tough, sun-bleached grass, growing knee-high in tufts at intervals of about 15 in., covers the dunes and gives the general color of the landscape. Considerable parts of the Kalahari, chiefly in the west and north, are however covered, with dense scrub and there are occasional patches of forest. Next to the lack of water the chief characteristics of the desert are the tuberous and herbaceous plants and the large numbers of big game found in it. Of the plants the most remarkable is the water-melon, of which both the bitter and sweet variety are found, and which supplies both man and beast with water. The game includes the lion, leopard, hippopotamus, rhinoceros, buffalo, zebra, quagga, many kinds of antelope (among them the kudu and gnu), baboon and ostrich. The elephant, giraffe and eland are also found. The hunting of these three last-named animals is prohibited, and for all game there is a close time from the beginning of September to the end of February.

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The climate is hot, dry and healthy, save in the neighborhood of the large marshes in the north, where malarial fever is prevalent. In this region the drainage is N.E. to the great Makarikari marsh and the Botletle, the river connecting the marsh with the Ngami system. In the south the drainage is towards the Orange. The Molopo and the Kuruman, which in their upper course in eastern Bechuanaland are perennial streams, lose their water by evaporation and percolation on their way westward through the Kalahari. The Molopo, a very imposing river on the map, is dry in its lower stretches. The annual rainfall does not exceed 10 in. It occurs in the summer months, September to March, and chiefly in thunderstorms. The country is suffering from progressive desiccation, but there is good evidence of an abundant supply of water not far beneath the surface. In the water-melon season a few white farmers living on the edge of the desert send their herds thither to graze. Such few spots as have been under cultivation by artificial irrigation yield excellent returns to the farmer; but the chief commercial products of the desert are the skins of animals.

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The Kalahari is the home of wandering Bushmen (~.v.), who live entirely by the chase, killing their prey with poisoned arrows, of Ba-Kalahari, and along the western border of Hottentots, who are both hunters and cattle-rearers. The Ba-Kalahari (men of the Kalahari), who constitute the majority of the inhabitants, appear to belong to the Batau tribe of the Bechuanas, now no longer having separate tribal existence, and traditionally reported to be the oldest of the Bechuana tribes. Their features are markedly negroid, though their skin is less.black than that of many negro peoples. They have thin legs and arms. The Ba-Kalahari are said to have possessed enormous herds of large horned cattle until deprived of them and driven into the desert by a fresh migration of more powerful Bechuana tribes. Unlike the Bushmen, and in spite of desert life, the Ba-Kalahari have a true passion for agriculture and cattle-breeding. They carefully cultivate their gardens, though in many cases all they can grow is a scanty supply of melons and pumpkins, and they rear small herds of goats. They are also clever hunters, and from the neighboring Bechuana chiefs obtain spears, knives, tobacco and dogs in exchange for the skins of the animals they kill. In disposition they are peaceful to timidity, grave and almost morose. Livingstone states that he never saw Ba-Kalahari children at play. An ingenious method is employed to obtain water where there is no open well or running stream. To one end of a reed about 2 ft. long a bunch of grass is tied, and this end of the reed is inserted in a hole dug at a spot where water is known to exist underground, the wet sand being rammed down firmly round it. An ostrich egg-shell, the usual water vessel, is placed on the ground alongside the reed. The water-drawer, generally a woman, then sucks up the water through the reed, dexterously squirting it into the adjacent egg-shell. To aid her aim she places between her lips a straw, the other end of which is inserted in the shell. The shells, when filled, are buried, the object of the Ba-Kalahari being to preserve their supplies from any sudden raid by Bushmen or other foe. Early travellers stated that no amount of bullying or hunting in a BaKalahari village would result in a find of water; but that on friendly relations being established the natives would bring a supply, however arid the district. The British government has since sunk wells in one or two districts. Though the Ba Kalahari have no religion in the strict sense of the word, they show traces of totemism, and as Batau, i.e. men of the lion, revere rather than fear that beast.

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The Kalahari was first crossed to Lake Ngami by David Livingstone, accompanied by William C. Oswell, in 1849. In 1878-1879 a party of Boers, with about three hundred wagons, trekked from the Transvaal across the Kalahari to Ngami and thence to the hinterland of Angola. Many of the party, men, women and children, perished of thirst during the journey. Survivors stated that in all some 250 people and 9000 cattle died.

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