The objective of this exhaustive programme is presumably to give each community copyright control in respect of those elements of its knowledge that it claims to be indigenous to itself. Presumably, the lawyers are wetting their lips anticipating the huge lifelong killings that they will soon be making in trying (unavailingly of course) to decide whether this or that area of knowledge is specific to the Bakwena or the Bangwato because knowledge, supposedly indigenous to small communities, will inevitably prove to be shared with so many others. How can it be, otherwise, when the Tswana peoples maintain they are essentially one people with a shared culture? What happens when a community claims that knowledge which is common to all is theirs and theirs alone? Will the Ministry be able to disentangle those claims or will it have walked itself into a minefield from which there can be no escape? What does it do with rainmakers? When communities invite rainmakers, or traditional healers, from afar because of their reputation, are they automatically accepting that their own abilities and knowledge have been lost? In which case, how will the Ministry's civil servants determine the value of the claims that will undoubtedly be made about residual rain making powers in respect of their advertised deficiency? What will the consultancy team do - I have no idea about its size, competence or brief - about a plant valued for its medicinal properties, which is found throughout huge geographically similar areas - as one might expect. This or that community then claims that knowledge about this plant is specific to itself and claims protection, copyright and payment. How can knowledge be disentangled when it is shared between different communities? How can indigenous knowledge be disentangled when it crosses international borders - as it does everywhere in the world? What can the Batswana this side of the border claim that is different from that of their immediate relatives on the other side of the river? What can be indigenously different from the Kalanga here and the Zimbabwe Kalanga there? If there is any more immediately effective way of setting one way people against another, it will be very hard to think of it!
