Pegasus Reporters Issues on the Wing
“He earned $80,000 in the second film, released in 1989. He quickly learned about money and capitalist life. With the fame that followed, he traveled all over the world and acted in other films. He went to America, Paris, and Japan. He became a figure used by the white man. He became addicted to alcohol and cigarettes.”
*N!xau Toma of the film, “Gods Must Be Crazy”
PEGASUS REPORTERS, LAGOS | AUGUST 26, 2024
N!xau Toma, the diminutive Bushman catapulted from the remote sand-swept reaches of the Kalahari Desert to international stardom in the film ”The Gods Must Be Crazy,” died a wretched man at about 59, although he himself said he did not know his exact age.
When he died in the the remote area of Tsumkwe in the Namibian part of the Kalahari where N!xau had any details of how or when he died. He had suffered from tuberculosis in the past.
“The Gods Must Be Crazy” became a worldwide hit and a top-grossing foreign film after its release in 1980. He portrayed an earnest Bushman with a sheepish smile whose discovery of a Coca-Cola bottle sets off a comedy of errors.
When he was discovered by the South African director of the film, Jamie Uys, he had had little exposure to modern life. According to a 2000 article in The Namibian newspaper, he had seen only three white people in his life before being cast and had never seen a settlement larger than the village huts of his San people.
Not knowing the value of paper money, he let his first wages, $300, blow away. By the time of ”The Gods Must Be Crazy II,” he had learned the value of money, demanding several hundred thousand dollars before agreeing to be recast in the film. He said the money was needed to build a cinderblock home with electricity and a water pump for his family, according to the Internet Movie Database Web site.
N!Xau playing his role in the film “The Gods Must Be Crazy”
Mr. Uys dismissed criticism that it was cruel to take N!xau out of his home environment. He said he was born to act. ”All Bushmen are natural actors,” Mr. Uys said in a 1990 interview with The Associated Press. After the sequel, N!xau appeared in Hong Kong films and the Chinese film ”The Gods Must Be Funny.”
When his film career ended, N!xau returned home to a newly built brick house. He tended his cattle and raised corn and pumpkins. He had a car for a while, but he had to employ a driver because he had never learned to drive.
He earned $80,000 in the second film, released in 1989. He quickly learned about money and capitalist life. With the fame that followed, he traveled all over the world and acted in other films. He went to America, Paris, and Japan. He became a figure used by the white man. He became addicted to alcohol and cigarettes. His money ran out. After 1997, he returned to the Kalahari Desert with his wife Kora, four daughters, and two sons.
He lived a modest life here with his tribe and family, farming until 2003. In July 2003, Xau left his house to collect firewood and didn’t return for three days. His family searched for him for days. On the 4th day of the search, he was found dead in a field.
The leading actor of the movie that we watched and laughed at dozens of times actually had a sad story. In fact, it was not his fault. The people of a geography where there was no material wealth and only a struggle for survival were introduced to the capitalist order, money and other pleasures, and perhaps the gods must have gone crazy.
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