Andriesvale is a village situated in the middle of the Kalahari Desert in the Northern Cape Province of South Africa, 13 km west of Askham along the co-signed R31 and R360 roads as they cross the Molopo River (adjacent to its confluence with the Kuruman River).
This serene village is nestled amidst the picturesque, dry, and sparse landscapes of the Northern Cape Province.
Andriesvale falls within the Dawid Kruiper Local Municipality and the ZF Mgcawu District Municipality.
Andriesvale is located approximately 195 km north-west of Upington, the main town and administrative centre/seat of both the District and Local Municipality.
In Andriesvale, there are no basic amenities, no thriving economy, and very few employment opportunities. Water is scarce, clinics and shopping centres are far away, and the education system struggles. The nearest town and hospital are over 180 kilometres away.
The area is home to the ‡Khomani San people, whose ancestors were forced to give up their hunting and gathering lifestyle, as a result of the creation of the Gemsbok National Park (now part of the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park) in 1931. A few families were able to stay in the Park, as labourers and trackers, until they were expelled in the 1970s.
In 1995, a group of traditional Khoi-San made a claim to the South African government for the return of the land from which their ancestors were forcibly moved to make way for the Park.
As part of a land claim process, the surviving claimants had to provide convincing evidence that they were indeed the aboriginal people of this territory. To strengthen the claim, they invited others with demonstrable lineage to form a new clan called ‡Khomani.
The land claim was settled in 1999, and in 2002, this new “community” was awarded land ownership in the park, although denied the right to live there. In its place, they were given the right to live a traditional lifestyle on farmland near the park borders but without support from the government. Today, this area is called Andriesvale.
The ‡Khomani San have lost their sense of community and identity by being dispossessed of their territories and physically dispersed.
The land that was given to these people doesn’t fall under any municipal jurisdiction, which means the Government does not supply infrastructure. NGOs and other institutions provide some financial support to develop and maintain very basic infrastructure.
Even the most traditional of the ‡Khomani do not live in skins, journeying out to hunt wild animals and gather plants. Instead, they wait for the change they have been promised, the electricity, houses, and services that they still expect but have so far been denied. The animals that they would like to hunt are inside the park, and the little money that they have comes in the form of small government grants or inadequate wages from piecemeal employment. The money doesn’t go far and is quickly used to support large extended families. It is spent on food, tobacco, and alcohol from the bottle store that the nearby tourist lodge has conveniently opened to cash in on the vulnerability of the community.
The housing situation in the village is not good at all; houses are mostly metal corrugated sheet houses (shacks), with very few brick and mortar buildings.
Since there is no electricity in Andriesvale, few residents have primitive solar panels that charge batteries for cellphones.
In Andriesvale, the people who have jobs work at the nearby Molopo Guest Lodge, schools, CPA office, tavern, shop, bottle store, or are entrepreneurs who sell arts & crafts along the road.