Daily Maverick
Dailymaverick logo

Maverick Life

Maverick Life

Listening in the age of big data — what the makers of !Aitsa learnt from people in the Karoo and Kalahari

Listening in the age of big data — what the makers of !Aitsa learnt from people in the Karoo and Kalahari
!Aitsa film poster, featuring Ashwill van Wyk at the Nelspoort rock art site. (Photo: Supplied)
Neil Rusch
By Neil Rusch
2 Sep 2024
Facebook
2
The makers of !Aitsa visited 11 small-town communities to say thank you to the people who contributed to the creation of the film. It was also a journey of self-enquiry and ethical listening.

As the audience gathered under the thorn trees to watch !Aitsa it was not popcorn but the smell of meat roasting on open fires that permeated the atmosphere amid the quiet conversations. 

Two key characters in the film, the ǂKhomani San elders, Isak and Cakase Kruiper were present to watch !Aitsa for the first time. Release agreements signed years before were irrelevant in this moment, a Saturday evening in Andriesvale; how would !Aitsa be received by the Kalahari community?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTZyqkGqirw

Our three-week, 4,000km journey to 11 small-town communities was motivated by two questions. 

We wanted to hear what people had to say about the question of representation. Most people know – marginal and indigenous people more so than others – that when people lose the ability to define themselves, other people can define them. 

As filmmakers we were saying thank you to the people who contributed to the creation of the film. At the same time, the journey engaged us in a process of self-enquiry and ethical listening.

Our field trip also had a sociopolitical focus: in the Karoo and Kalahari, how does the science of radio astronomy and big data engage ordinary people – their beliefs, star lore and cosmology – given land alienation and severe township social conditions? 

We felt certain that audiences would respond because central to what !Aitsa presents are the science of radio astronomy and the impact of the SKA Observatory (SKAO) in the central Karoo. 

This is what we learnt. 

Who owns science?


Petrus Vaalbooi places in question his role as ǂKhomani San leader, pointing to his own failure if he did not insist that information and data collected by anthropologists and scientists from the community was not returned to the community. 

Further, he raised the issue of self-determination. Who determines the research agenda? Is data collection relevant and helpful to the community, or is the information exclusively being used to advance the careers of researchers? 

An attempt to address Vaalbooi’s concerns and others like them is voiced in a United Nations Human Rights policy document on The Right to Participate in Science:

“Indigenous peoples must be guaranteed free, prior and informed consent in any projects and decision-making that affect them.”

Preparing to screen !Aitsa in Uniondale, painting the wall white. (Photo: Dane Dodds)



!Aitsa The audience gathered to watch !Aitsa in the Karoo town of Brandvlei, under a star-filled night sky. (Photo: Dane Dodds)


Whose knowledge is this?


As we heard in a Q&A discussion following the film screening in Nieu-Bethesda, the issue of knowledge sovereignty is real. 

One person told, from his own experience, how plant knowledge which he had shared was appropriated for ulterior purposes and was not, as he had been led to believe, an equitable collaboration but theft.

Local plants like rooibos, hoodia, kougoed (Sceletium tortuosum) are commercialised but very little if any profit finds its way back to the traditional knowledge holders. The person in Nieu-Bethesdaa was, like many others, at the receiving end of an attitude that does not understand how to cooperate with communities for mutual benefit and added value.

The drive is one-sided and commercially driven: “These people know a lot about plants. How do I make money from this knowledge?” With this approach there is no benefit sharing. Communities in the Karoo and Kalahari are underresourced and unable to challenge violations of their intellectual property rights. 

As a single case this testimony goes to the heart of knowledge extraction and data harvesting. Control and access is mostly inadequate in South Africa and Kalahari contexts. Research codes and contracts have been developed to protect indigenous and marginalised people from exploitation but when put to the test are shown to have loopholes and limitations.

Besides, most people living in rural areas and settlements barely understand the complexities of data collection nor documents written in a language that is foreign to local realities.  

Oom Petrus Vaalbooi is acutely aware of ongoing acts of suppression and co-option, when an organisation or person tasked to manage contracts on behalf of the community adopts a management style that runs counter to the wishes of the community and its members. He speaks of actions and people with two horns. In other words, situations of duplicity and deceit.



!Aitsa Gershin Green peering into the night sky through a SAROA Astro Guide telescope. (Photo: Dane Dodds)


Kalahari ground truths 


Isak Kruiper and citizens of Carnarvon admit not understanding the economics, technology nor the motivations of the SKAO. 

Instead, Kruiper places emphasis on climate change and global warming, drawing on his own experience as a geneser (healer) connected to the porcupine (!Noab), the medicine doctor of the Kalahari. 

He asks: “Wat van dié plante van my?” (What about these plants of mine?). Isak Kruiper and Cakase Kruiper’s wisdom is place-based. 

Significantly, their place-based knowledge conveys a ground truth with Kalahari inflection that is recognised beyond the specifics of locality. For example, in Carnarvon, Kaptein John Cornelius Witbooi suggested that !Aitsa be introduced into the education system so that young people can witness their heritage by means of film and intergenerational communication. 

Curiously, international audiences, far removed from the Karoo and Kalahari, appear to have an empathy with the ground truths expressed in !Aitsa, measured by the film’s reception in more than 20 countries and the awards it has received. 

This is gratifying but not surprising. Worldwide there is growing recognition that climate, biodiversity and ecosystem solutions will require many sources of knowledge and data, especially by communities who remain close to the land.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bx6GMQPclv8

This cannot be citizen science as commonly understood. 

Today, the term is pejorative in the context of indigenous knowledge, implying as it does that practitioners are a sub-group lacking formal scientific training, and therefore are marginalised from any true participation and contribution towards science. 

For Cakase, Kalahari ground truth is what keeps ǂKhomani San hopeful. 

“This is why we, as Bushmen, are not sad,” she says. 

Hope is transmitted. We witnessed this immediately after the Andriesvale screening as Cakase and her husband returned to the bush and a field school where, under their supervision, land ethics and stewardship practices are shared and passed on to the children and next generation. 

The land belongs to me, I belong to the land


Steve van Wyngaard came to see the film in Uniondale. In the film he summarises the effects of colonial history: 

“Colonisation is where the Western world, the Western culture, came in first. From then on that’s when they put things on paper. I own this. This is my piece of land.”

In view of colonial history and the legacies of apartheid we had to organise two screenings in Uniondale – one for the white population in town and another for the coloured people in the township. Unlike the mixed audiences we encounter in other towns, we were advised by locals that this would not happen in Uniondale. To reach the entire community we built a temporary screen in the township hall and for the second screening, in an attractive old hall, we painted a wall white. 

Expressed in the film there is another way of relating to the land, which poses a challenge: do we own or do we belong to the land?  

On our journey we encountered two prevalent attitudes. 

One idealises Bushmen living in an imagined past, roaming freely across the land among abundant herds of animals. This disconnect is a form of denial, dwelling as it does in nostalgia so that no change needs to happen in the present. 

On the contrary, wherever we went we talked to ǂKhomani San and /Xam descendants, alive today. This blind spot precludes seeing what capitalist and colonial culture looks like to capitalist and colonial victims. 

The other view, muddled with the first, is based on unequal power dynamics. Thus, we heard how indigenous insights are being shared with scientists working to unlock the secrets of the universe. 

This one-sided narrative is hierarchical and condescending and is based on long-standing imbalances in power relations, which gives rise to:

“[…] a problematic scientific research paradigm that perpetuates disparities in knowledge generation and access, inhibiting diverse knowledge exchanges, innovation, and problem-solving potential.”

Frustration with authoritarian science has, for example, shut down (for now) the construction of a large telescope on the island of Hawaii, where the issue is not with astronomy but with colonial assumptions and disregard for the mountain, Mauna Kea, which the people hold sacred.

The Brandvlei sports stadium audience lit in the pale light of the screen. (Photo: Dane Dodds)



Saturday night, Andriesvale, Isak Kruiper intently watching the movie. (Photo: Dane Dodds)



Isak Kruiper on-screen, at the Kalahari community screening. (Photo: Dane Dodds)


The body, a temporary thing


In !Aitsa time is presented at various scales – the big bang, cosmic time, fossils, geological time, plants, seasonal time and the time of our lives. In Carnarvon we were reminded of time and transience because Pastor Hoorn, who looms large in !Aitsa, had passed away not long before our arrival in the town. His family were at the screening, as were many children in the stadium who had known Pastor Hoorn as their teacher. To see him immortalised on the screen was a poignant moment, and to hear him say: “Die liggaam is ‘n tydelikke ding” (the body is a time-bound, temporary thing). 

One of the joys of our journey was the engagement with young people, facilitated by the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory Astro Guides in Brandvlei and Carnarvon. 

Pastor Benjamin Hoorn in his home during the filming of !Aitsa. (Photo: Dane Dodds)



Production still of !Aitsa showing the Square Kilometre Array Observatory (SKAO).



After film screenings, the telescope star-gazing sessions aided one of our agendas as filmmakers. We wanted to assess the possibilities for a participatory video programme. Participatory video is a methodology for capturing and communicating knowledge that goes beyond interviews and conventional documentation. 

Rather, in the situation we envisage we foresee sharing video recording and film documentation skills. The aim is to empower young people to express and represent their community knowledge and identity from their own perspective.

Rain, a powerful blessing 


This trip prepared us to expect the unexpected, as was the case in Andriesvale. 

An impending thunderstorm cut short the anticipated Q&A. The following day, no one said anything directly about the film. Instead, much mention was made of the rain that fell in the night. 

Saying but not saying, we were being instructed that it was presumption to expect an opinion. Instead we were led to understand that !Aitsa had been accepted and blessed by the rain.

As a personage beyond-the-human, rain contributes to the conversation. Ecological etiquette informs right understanding. DM

!Aitsa film poster, featuring Ashwill van Wyk at the Nelspoort rock art site. (Photo: Supplied)

Categories:

Tags: