Platfontein is a San (!Xun and Khwe) community located in the Northern Cape Province of South Africa, approximately 20 km outside the city of Kimberley.
Platfontein, a formerly abandoned farmland, falls within the Sol Plaatje Local Municipality and the Frances Baard District Municipality.
Platfontein, which means “flat fountain”, is the largest San township in Southern Africa, home to !Xun and Khwe people, who were relocated here in the early 2000s.
The population is growing rapidly, from 5,000 in 2011 to current estimates of approximately 10,000, likely due to the high rate of early teenage pregnancy.
Before then, the San people lived in Schmidtsdrift, about 80 km from Kimberley. They were moved to Schmidtsdrift in 1990 from northern Namibia and southern Angola when then-South West Africa became independent, and the South African Defence Force withdrew.
But, in 2003, they were moved from Schmidtsdrift after a land claim by the Batlhaping and Griqua people was granted. The !Kung and Khwe people now live in Platfontein, an area with limited basic services.
About 20 kilometres outside the city of Kimberley, a left turn into an almost 3-kilometre stretch of a dusty road leads to this forgotten place. The sides of the road are filled with long grass, trees, and cactus in between.
The gravel road ends, and a small burgundy building with a large SABC logo emerges. It’s the local community radio station, X-K FM of Platfontein.
There is no signage or welcome board, just a discoloured whiteboard with faint traces of font on it.
The board that indicates you turn left into Platfontein, on the road from Kimberley to Kuruman in the Northern Cape, is not the usual white-on-green board that you would expect in many parts of South Africa. It is a whiteboard with faded letters, probably put there by a non-profit organisation that worked among the Platfontein Khoe and San communities and left the village when the donations dried up. Platfontein is itself dry, indicating that the Kalahari Desert is not too far from here. There are more shrubs than trees. One can imagine how the red dust clouds the village in the windy month of August. But people here are resilient; they have food gardens, even though they are few and far between. There are a few goats and sheep too.
If you are expecting to see young and old men with bows and arrows, and women and girls in thatched huts, you will be disappointed. Platfontein is a village made up of RDP houses, these Reconstruction and Development Programme houses built by the South African government for the previously disadvantaged people in South Africa with no financial means to buy or build their own.
Each house in the village has electricity. Here and there, you will see an old army tent. Houses are fenced in, and some have trees for shade. This is Platfontein, not a Khoe and San settlement as presented in old picture and story books or in the tourism promotional videos and billboards. On a couple of houses, there are satellite television dishes (DSTV) attached to exterior walls.
There are two communities in Platfontein, the !Xun and Khwe. The main languages spoken in the village are !Xun and Khwedam, with some basic Afrikaans picked up while the men served in the old South African Defence Force in Angola and Namibia. The younger generation even speaks a bit of Setswana, the main language in this part of South Africa.
The village is divided into two sections, with a sizeable “no-man’s land” between the two sections. A large part of this open “no-man’s land” is not used for much; it is overgrown with grass, except for the public facilities that occupy a small part of it.
Initially, the !Xun and Khwe in Platfontein did not mix at all, but the young ones started falling in love across the two communities. It is they who are integrating this community. Many among the older members of the community don’t even understand each other’s language.
It is in the “no-man’s land” that the post-apartheid government put public facilities; the !XununKhwesa Combined School, the clinic, offices of the South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) – as most people in this village live on social grants, a community radio station, an entrepreneurship centre, and a creche. The school and the clinic look like usual township facilities, with light brown facebrick structures, paved yards, and a few plants.
Nurses, teachers, social workers, and other government officials who work in Platfontein are mainly from the neighbouring Kimberley and Barkly West, but have some grasp of the two local languages. There are also some tuck shops and taverns.
On a weekday when many people are supposed to be at work and the youths at school, the streets of Platfontein are always teeming with all sorts. Clearly, unemployment is high in Platfontein.
The radio station in Platfontein, X-Kfm, is the only community radio station that is owned by the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC). It keeps the youths entertained and their parents informed. It is the glue that holds the community together because people in Platfontein love the radio so much. Save for the music, all adverts and community notices are in !Xun and Khwedam.
In Platfontein, there is one towering church building, the Dutch Reformed Church, started by the late Reverend Mario Mahongo, a respected community leader. On a Sunday, there are other church services that take place out in the open.
These two groups of the Khoe and San people originally came from parts of Angola and the Caprivi Strip, a 450-kilometre stretch starting in the north-eastern corner of Namibia, bordered by Angola and Botswana, with the Okavango Delta cutting across it, with the Zambezi River separating it from Zambia, and the Chobe River separating it from Botswana.
These peaceful hunter-gatherers were forced to join the Portuguese Special Forces, where they were made to fight against liberation movements such as the MPLA, the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola.
The Khoe and the San, being nomadic and living in dry areas, are known for their excellent tracking skills, and that is apparently what the soldiers wanted help with: to track freedom fighters.
In 1975, the people of Angola, through MPLA, gained independence from the Portuguese, and the !Xun and Khwe, who had involuntarily joined the army, found themselves facing the possibility of living with a hostile nation against whose freedom they had fought.
They joined the apartheid-era South African Defence Force and fought against SWAPO, the South West African People’s Organisation, the liberation movement in Namibia, as members of the notorious Battalion 31.
In 1989, in anticipation of Namibian democracy in 1990 and in fear of reprisals, members of Battalion 31 left with the South African Defence Force for South Africa where they were resettled in Schmidtsdrift, a cluster of about six villages in the Northern Cape, on the N8 National Route between Kimberley and Upington. The army put the men in the dull green military tents, which became their homes until Batlhaping, the rightful owners of the land who had been forcibly removed to Kuruman, about three hundred kilometres away, made a successful claim to their land and sent the !Xun and Khwe packing.