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.”
South Africa’s Deputy President Jacob Zuma spoke to the National Khoisan Consultative Conference in Oudtshoorn, South Africa, last year in what was billed by Beauregard Tromp, reporting for Cape Argus, as a “ground breaking recognition by the government of the Khoisan as the first indigenous people of South Africa.” Of course, in the process, Mr. Zuma and Ms. Tromp introduced us to the Khoisans.
Mr. Zuma described the conference as “a defining moment in the history of our country in general and that of the Khoisan people in particular - the first indigenous people of our country”.
When someone or something is the first in anything, and you don’t know much about it, you are obliged to look into it, so we did.
Thousands of years before the Europeans ever showed up on Africa’s shores, most of southern Africa was inhabited by small groups of hunter-gatherers who adapted their way of living to survive.
Khoisan is the name by which the lighter skinned indigenous peoples of southern Africa, the Khoi (Hottentots) and the San (Bushmen) became known in recent times. These people dominated the sub-continent for millennia before the appearance of the Nguni and other black peoples. The picture here is of a painting entitled, “Bushmen Hottentots armed for an expedition” by Samuel Daniel, from the Africana Museum.
When the colonists arrived, these people became known as the Hottentots and the Bushmen, terms which eventually took on racial meanings in the late 19th and 20th centuries. While many different groups developed among the Khoisans, each with their own names, languages and dialects, they generally shared common patterns of kinship, territorial organization, rituals and religious beliefs.
As you would expect, the introduction of European colonization impacted these people in important ways. Many of them lost control over their lands, many were killed in wars, many died from diseases such as smallpox, and many of the survivors were drawn in to colonial society as servants, laborers, and industrial workers.
Some were able to maintain some level of independence and live on the land in traditional ways, but by the mid-20th century there were only a few groups left dependent on hunting and gathering for the livelihood, and many descendants who had assimilated into much of South African society.
It is this point that needs to be stressed. Throughout the entire evolution very briefly described above, many Khoisans were incorporated into all levels of society throughout southern Africa. With the end of apartheid, many began to search for and re-establish their roots in an attempt to revive their cultural identity. And now, it appears that at the official level, they have achieved a milestone, recognized by the Government of South Africa as the first indigenous people of that country.
Much of the country is involved in revisiting the way they have viewed these people. The South African Museum at Cape Town, for example, together with other museums, is in the process of reviewing its overall directions and priorities. As a result, it has closed its famous “hunter-gatherer” diorama and placed it in archive status. The museum wants to encourage debate within the museum, and with the public, and especially with the people of Khoisan descent about how best to describe their history, culture and traditions.
We need to dwell on this point for a few moments, because it is important to the lessons learned from taking this brief look at the Khoisans.
The display at the South African Museum over the past 40 years was the most popular exhibition in the South African Museum. It was a high tech display and its realism drew viewers into an idealized representation of lives of the past. The bad news was that the display depicted the Bushmen and Hottentots as races near extinction and cast them into the category of hunters-gatherers, as pure bushmen in terms of appearance and language. That was done even though most of those with Khoisan roots were no longer living that way.
Another mistake made was that the Khoisan were categorized into the anthropology collections with natural history displays, while other collections were placed into historical displays. While we do not pretend to be experts by any means in this field, we did run across an example of what happens when a group of people is grouped in the anthropology exhibitions while everyone else is put into more of a historical context. We found one description of the Khoisan as follows:
“(They have) short, slight bodies, small hands and feet and yellow-brown skin that wrinkle early. The women tend to store fat in their buttocks and have sharply hollowed backs. They move in small clans, each with its clearly defined territory. The women gather wild melons such as tsamma - a source of food and water, roots and edible berries. The men hunt with wooden bow and arrow and use clubs and spears if necessary. The arrowheads are tipped with poison made from insect grubs. It acts slowly on the victim’s nervous system.”
While that is probably the way anthropologists explain things, one does get an uncomfortable feeling with the images of these people that are being created. If one were to read, for example, descriptions of the European colonialists, it is highly doubtful that such explanations of their characteristics would be found. Instead, there would be a more historical review of their deeds.
We found another example where they are described as “the Stone Age people” who have for the most part disappeared as a people. In fact, we then learned that during the apartheid years, the Khoisan were seen to have been less than human or even from a side-branch from the rest of humanity. There was some thought that they were a different species of creature. According to a recent article by Helize van Vuuren (1995), in 1913 the Cape Synod of the Dutch Reformed Church “had an intense debate on whether the Bushmen should be seen as human beings or animals”.
BBC has reported in the past that there are about one million or two percent of the population who are Khoisan descendants. Very few of them live in the traditional way. Historically, they were essentially dispossessed by the colonialists, oppressed by the apartheid regime, and they now charge they are being marginalized by present-day South Africa. Few speak any of the traditional languages or maintain a traditional lifestyle. Their pride, however, has not been shattered. They want to preserve their indigenous culture, they want their culture and language protected by law, and Mr. Zuma seemed to oblige them, telling them, “You have taken charge of your own heritage and your own destiny.”
As is almost always the case, there is land involved in taking charge of their destiny. They are urging the government to look into land thefts that date back to 1652. South Africa has a mechanism to do this. It is called the Land Claims Court, set up in 1996. It is a specialist court which performs an independent adjudicator function. It hears disputes arising from those laws which underpin South Africa’s land reform initiative.
Let us show you three views of the modern day Khosian we were able to discover from our desktop research on the Internet to do this story:
Khoisan in the desert
Displaced Khoisan
Khoisan at their 2001 conference
We want to conclude this report by underlining what we see as the most major lesson to be learned here. We really do have to beware of our penchant to label people. In the case of the Khoisan, we have seen in our short study that they have been labeled as Stone Age people, Bushmen, and creatures of another species, not human. Eddie Koch says it well in an article in the 1998 guide to South African arts, culture and heritage:
“The Khoisan peoples of Southern Africa are unique in at least one respect: more myths and misunderstandings have been held about them than any other of our planet’s populations … Against the background of South Africa’s recent history, it is most important that great care be taken when labels such as Khoisan are applied to segments of the population. During the apartheid era, the entire life and destiny of everyone in South Africa was determined by an artificial, arbitrary and totally unscientific system of race classification. South Africa occupied a unique position in the world, in that it based its Constitution, legislative system and practically every other phase of life on differential treatment of different sections of its population. These groups of people were spoken of as ‘races’. Under the suffocating mentality of apartheid, all aspects of life came to be dominated by the classificatory status of every man and woman.”
We would simply take those words and extrapolate them to a more global application. We must stop labeling people. People are people.
POINTS OF INTEREST TO EXPLORE
Introduction to the work of Nigel Crawhill. History. How should the remains of Africa’s early inhabitants be treated? How can one satisfy conflicting claims – between descendants and museums – to these priceless relics?, by Eddie Koch.
Research in Khosian Studies, edited by Rainer Vossen, Johann Wolfgang Goethe - University Frankfurt/Main.
Debating the Diorama. ‘Bushmen’ marginalised in South Africa, by BBC.
“Row erupts as Khoisan call for return of old bones,” by Bobbie Jordan.
Khoisan Hunter-gatherers and Pastoralists in southern Africa.
Hunters and Gatherers: The Khoisan People of South Africa.
Khoisan languages.
The Khoisan. South African land Claims Court