Archive for the ‘South Africa’ Category
The Khoisan people of South Africa have achieved a defining moment in that country’s history
There was a conference held last year in Oudtshoorn, South Africa, which is on South Africa’s famous Garden Route between Port Elizabeth and Cape Town. At this conference, the Khoisan people were officially proclaimed to be the first indigenous people of South Africa. As the layman looks into what this means, some interesting lessons emerge about the way we have tended to classify different people in different ways, and frequently in the wrong ways. Canadian socio-linguist Nigel Crawhall says it this way: “These people moved across this land before any other human being. It was they who named the plants and the trees and the features of this land. . . . There [has been an] explosion of identity . . . [among] people who had spent their whole lives having to hide who they were. These people had been destroyed and now suddenly there [is] light and air.” Read the rest of this entry »