Beef from Bechuanaland
Rconcerning ranching announcements in the daily Press conceing ranching developments in Bechuanaland Protectorate may display that large but little-known Protectorate in a more• favourable light than did the Seretse Khama contro- versy, Although the railway- line to Central Africa from the Cape passes through the Protectorate for four hundred miles, the major portion of the country is little known and rarely travelled except by those who have business in the Territory. Consequently it has acquired various descriptive names which do scant justice to its potentialities, such as " the Kalahari Desert." In Boer literature it is often known as " the Great Thirstland." This more accurate name is to be preferred, because, covered as it is for the most part by Kalahari sand, it carries very little surface water. Yet it is very far from being a desert.
Two sections of the Territory cannot even be called a Thirst- land. In the south-east, along what is known as the Railway Belt, the rainfall is round about 20 inches per year. Here there is at least one permanently running river, and the farms, both European and African, produce beef and grain under conditions which are not really marginal, though there is a proportion of bad years. In the north-west, again, an area of at least 10,000 square miles is very well watered, indeed over-watered, since rivers from Angola and Northern Rhodesia pour in from the north-west and form the mighty Okavango and Chobe Swamps. Though a swamp by its very name and nature betokens wasted land, means are being discovered whereby African swamps may be reclaimed in some measure. There is certainly a future for this north-west corner, but much reconnaissance and survey work is necessary before a plan of development can be drawn up. Even then success will depend less on the natural resources of water and soil than on man-made resources such as rail communications and irrigation schemes.
The rest of this large country consists of an area of over 200,000 square miles with not a single permanent river in it. Broadly speaking the eastern third is native reserve, and there is room for large expansions of population in the five main tribes without undue overcrowding. There remains a broad zone running from the south-west, where the Protec- torate adjoins the Union and South-West Africa, to the north- east, where it ends at the Zambesi. It is this zone, and especially the southern half of it, that has been described by some explorers as a sea of sand and by others as a sea of grass, but all agree in saying that the water-supply depends entirely on numerous small pans filled by the three months' rainy season, and that travel in any other part of the year is dan- gerous if not impossible. It is the northern part of this zone which is about to be developed under a large ranching scheme. It is too densely wooded to be ideal open-range cattle country, but those responsible for the ranching plans have measures to cope with this kind of difficulty. Water has been found by boring at depths under 200 feet in this area, while the northern end of it has a rainfall of over 20 inches and can support an agri- cultural development which will be no doubt complementary to the pastoral one. At the southern end of this northern section, just to the north of the Makarikari Pan, the country is of the type that would rejoice the heart of any cattle-man. Rolling plains covered with.grass and low scrub, much of which is edible to stock, are the general rule, but there are, too, large flat pans, some of them over 20 square miles in area, where there is nothing but a short sweet grass and con- sequently a concentration of game such as can be seen else- where only in the game reserves of Kenya and Tanganyika. To see a herd of five thousand springbok or four hundred eland or two hundred gemsbok is an experience denied now to the greater part of Southern Africa except in this Territory. There are hazards, of course ; if there were not, the country would have been occupied long ago. There is the incidence of drought years,, about one in four. There is a poison plant in certain areas. The water is all underground and must be pumped ; and there are lion and leopard and even fence- destroying elephant.
These hazards have been taken into full account by the recent reconnaissance party, and have confirmed its opinion that only very large-scale ranching can develop the country on a permanent basis. It is quite uninhabited, and in a devious journey of over 300 miles in this area the party met only one solitary Bushman. He, curiously enough, was looking for honey, but welcomed tobacco as a variant and was very little perturbed at seeing four large motor-lorries crashing through the dense scrub, a great steel fender in front of the leading lorry bending or breaking anything in its path less than three inches in diameter. This mode of travel, known as " bush-crashing," makes the going good for the following lorries but very awkward for one coming in the opposite direction.
The south-western section, which is more truly the Kalahari, is Crown land, but there is a curious settlement, known as Ghanzi, at the northern end which has done its best to prove that the district it occupies is habitable. This settlement originated in the far-seeing mind of Cecil Rhodes, who enabled a number of Boer families to move there as a buffer against German encroachment on the western frontier of that no- man's-land. Their descendants now produce cream for the Union market, sending it for two hundred miles by lorry to the railhead in South-West Africa. It is a very small settle- ment, and its only other income is from an occasional " drive " of cattle down to the railhead at Lobatsi, a journey of some 500 miles which can only be attempted in the rainy season.
South of Ghanzi lies some 50,000 square miles of low sand- dunes covered with scrub and, for half the year, with grass from two to four feet in height. It is inhabited only by a few hundred wandering Bushmen who, like the Central Australian aborigines, prefer to remain entirely primitive as hunters and gatherers, with no settled abode, no modern weapons and very little contact with the white man. They are shy little folk, but they will accept tobacco with avidity, and once their shyness is overcome they are quite friendly. Near the tiny settlement of Lehututu there is also a small colony of the original Hottentots, only five hundred in number, who are goat-graziers rather than hunters and have adopted the European's type of clothing and some of his bad habits. In all this vast area, therefore, there are few inhabitants, and those few would welcome rather than resent the benefits of perman- ent water, communications, etc. which are the prerequisite to a ranching industry. As far as grazing is concerned (including the browsing of edible scrubs), this area is better cattle country than the northern section, but without water it would be too marginal for safety. The game itself is limited by lack of surface water to numbers which cannot possibly use more than a small percentage of the abundant feed in any wet season. If sub-surface water can be found, to provide water- points, there is room here for over half-a-million head of cattle. Such country can only be used in very large units and with very careful pasture management. It would be easy to create a dust-bowl by over-grazing, as has happened elsewhere, and without frequent water-points the stock would have to con- gregate in an unhealthy way near the larger pans. Fencing must be done and communications made more secure. Yet here is a region with an enormous potential for beef, once a full water-reconnaissance has been made, provided only that the area is treated as a whole .under single organisation and management. It is far too early to build extravagant hopes on this insecure and sand-covered region, even though it is densely, covered with pasture for much of the year. There must be further close examination, particularly by the water engineer, in the light of the experience gained in the northern section, where the first scheme is about to be established ; but it will be money well spent and should be undertaken without undue delay.
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