<
https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2024/9/22/the-surfer-and-tribal-chief-fighting-to-save-a-550km-south-african-coast>
"Martinus Fredericks meets me outside the police station in South Africa’s
Atlantis, a somewhat forlorn semi-industrial town on the outskirts of Cape
Town. On this winter’s morning, Atlantis is shrouded in fog. After a firm
handshake, he leads me across the road into an unmarked building.
On the second floor, at the end of a wide, airy corridor that also houses the
community radio station, we enter an empty coffee shop with six plastic tables
adorned with black tablecloths and gold place settings. Over tea and
sandwiches, Fredericks tells me how an astounding midlife revelation led him to
become the face of a social and environmental battle.
Born in 1965, he grew up in the agricultural town of Robertson, speaking
Afrikaans and identifying as “coloured” – the apartheid regime’s catch-all term
for people who did not fit into their “white”, “Black” or “Indian” racial
boxes. After school, he studied agriculture and environmental sciences, later
working in nature conservation.
His life was upended in 2012 when representatives of the !Ama Chieftaincy in
Bethany, Namibia, visited him in Atlantis. “They told me that I was a direct
descendant of their leader !Abeb,” he says, adding that they asked him to take
over the South African leadership of the !Ama tribe.
The !Ama people are pastoralists who, before the arrival of Europeans, followed
their herds across a vast swath of Southern Africa (present-day South Africa
and Namibia) in search of the best grazing.
“My first thought was, ‘What the hell?’” he says. “I was in complete shock.”
When he was growing up, his father had spent a lot of time in Namibia (then
known as South West Africa), but he had never explained why. “We only found out
after his passing that he was visiting his people. Our people.”
In the 12 years since being made “gaob”, or supreme leader, Fredericks has
grown into the role. Although he still dresses in Western clothes and can only
speak a smattering of !Ama, he has taken it upon himself to fight for the
rights of his people – who have been excluded by successive governments for at
least 350 years."
Via Frederick Wilson II.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
