Elusive Identities: Karoo Xam Descendants and the Square Kilometre Array

In 2007, in order to facilitate the building and operations of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), the Astronomy Geographic Advantage Act proclaimed a large 'astronomy reserve' in the central Upper Karoo, a roughly rhombic space covering some 120,000 square kilometres. As it happens, this geographic reserve coincides almost exactly with a region described by Xam prisoners of the mid 19th century as Xam-ka! au, their homeland. We show how archival records indicate that Xam descendants are still living in the space now reserved for astronomy and how the claims of the Kalahari communities represented in the South African San Council of having once lived in the area lack substance. We compare the Xam and the SKA notions of landscape, describe the historic evolution from the one to the other and suggest that benefit for local communities can only be in the form of bottom-up discussions about the planning of future developments and the distribution of tangible benefits.