You could probably write a rule similar to go_repository[1] that would invoke pkgconfig to find the location of local libs instead of downloading a lib.
[1] https://github.com/bazelbuild/bazel-gazelle/blob/master/inte...
[1] https://github.com/bazelbuild/bazel-gazelle/blob/master/inte...
Additionally, adding lots of additional customization on top of the build system itself defeats the purpose of using a popular system in the first place.