In Remembrance: N!xau

     N!xau, the Kalahari Bushman who was catapulted to stardom in the film The Gods Must Be Crazy, has passed away on July 5, 2003. Though he did not know his actual age, he estimated himself to be approximately 59 years old.

     Police in the remote area of Tsumkwe in the Namibian part of the Kalahari where N!xau lived confirmed his recent death. His name is a usual transliteration of his tribal language, which uses clicking noises that have no letter in English.

     "Apparently he went out to find wood on Tuesday and never returned," said Mireschen Troskie-Marx of Mimosa Films, which produced The Gods Must Be Crazy. "His family went out looking for him and he was found dead in a field. We believe it was of natural causes."

     N!xau's signature role was Xixo, a member of the Khoisan or 'Bushmen' tribe of Africa's Kalahari desert who finds a Coca-Cola bottle dropped from an airplane and mistakes it for a gift from the gods. Some reviewers criticized the movie for reflecting the racism of apartheid in its depiction of the Khoisan; the southern African hunter-gather tribes who have seen their traditional lifestyle increasingly intruded upon by modern civilization. Regardless, the film would go on to become a worldwide hit, with N!xau becoming an unlikely star.

     N!xau was discovered by South African director Jamie Uys. At the time, the Bushman had only ever seen three white people and had never seen a settlement larger than the small village he lived in.

     Unaccustomed to the idea of paper money, N!xau let his first pay from the movie, $300.00, blow away. N!xau learned the ways of civilization well, and when it came time for the sequel he demanded several hundred thousand dollars.

     Some criticized Uys for casting N!xau, saying that it was cruel to take him from his simple lifestyle and thrust him into the limelight. Uys disagreed. ''All Bushmen are natural actors. I suppose it's because they don't have television, and they spend their evenings telling stories and acting them out. And they don't have any hang-ups or inhibitions at all,'' Uys said in an Associated Press interview.

     In addition to The Gods Must Be Crazy (1980) and its 1989 sequel, N!xau also starred in three Gong Kong films. He retired from filmmaking in 1994, returning to his former life of a herdsman raising cattle and vegetables in the Namibian brush.