Vol. 4 · No. 1 · 2000

Kazunobu Ikeya

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Although the San are well known as hunter-gatherers in the Kalahari desert (Lee 1979, Tanaka 1980, Silberbauer 1981), those San living in Central Kalahari of Botswana -the ||Gana -engage in a combination of hunting-gathering and cultivation-pasturage, while continuing to maintain a semi-nomadic life. The Botswana government's plan to resettle ||Gana outside the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, in order to protect wildlife in the reserve, has been met by opposition from ||Gana living in the Molapo area (Ikeya 1998a). In her study Cashdan (1984) discussed the migration routes taken by the inhabitants of Molapo, their dependency on wild watermelons as a source of water for goats in the dry season and the use of cultivated watermelons as a source of water for camp inhabitants. However, the grazing and management system of goats, agricultural techniques and combinations of occupations practised by the inhabitants of Molapo have not so far been studied. In this paper I shall describe these in some detail, before proceeding to examine the changes that have occurred in Molapo in terms of migration routes and occupations over a thirteen year period since Cashdan's study in 1976.