The San and Khoi People

The San (pronounced saahn) or Bushmen occupied Africa long before the arrival of the first immigrants from Europe in sailing ships.  They refer to themselves as the First People and have lived here for more than 20 000 years in groups that often weren’t even aware of each other’s existence.  They shared a common appearance and a similar range of click sounds in their language, as well as a similarity in the way they painted on rock surfaces. They also shared a common history of oppression and huge land loss after the earliest white settlers and black herders came into the area. Their culture was very different to that of the newcomers and they were driven off their original land.  Today their descendants are still struggling to regain some of their land as well as their dignity.

The San groups recognize they share a common history. They speak their own separate language and have their own group identity, but they all practice similar healing techniques and some still survive on hunting and foraging for roots and berries.  Films and books have depicted them as living an almost sub-human existence in uninhabitable regions, but there are clusters of descendants of San people scattered throughout South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Angola. The fact that they appear to have survived better in the Kalahari Desert, is only because no one else has wanted to settle there permanently because of the unsuitability of these harsh lands for farming.

They have been called by many names. The early Dutch settlers called them Bosjesmen from which the word Bushman came. But they prefer to be called by their respective group names like: the \\Anikhwe, the Bugakhwe, the Ju\‘hoansi and the !Xun. For a long while they lived side by side with herdsmen, called the Khoikhoi, who kept cattle.  The Khoikhoi referred to the San as ‘people without land’ because they foraged for food and hunted rather then keeping livestock.

The San were thought of as nomadic but this is not entirely true. Their oral stories tell of clans living in defined territories where they protected and guarded their natural resources of water and wild animals.  By calling them nomads, there is the suggestion they have no attachment to any particular piece of land - which is not true.  But it helped farmers justify taking their land… saying it didn’t matter, they could always move on.

With the expansion of both white and black farming the San became more and more impoverished.  And as wildlife began disappearing they hunted cattle as a means to survival.  This led to more conflict with farmers, who wanted them eliminated.  They were hunted and their heads displayed as trophies just as a set of antelope horns might be displayed. Bushmen children were often taken as slaves and white families ‘adopted’ local bushmen to become servants in their households and labourers on their lands.

The final blow to the San came through the spread of smallpox.  It was an unknown disease in Africa and spread very quickly as they had no resistance to it. The first outbreak of smallpox in the 18^th century resulted in the death of thousands. The disease came from a ship’s infected linen and clothing that was brought ashore to be washed. 

Fish Notes and Star Songs and the story of Sara Baartman touches on a long history of using Khoisan people in exotic displays for curious onlookers. Even in the 20^th century, the San came to represent a link to our past, and were used as ‘props’ in various dehumanizing shows. ‘Live Bushmen’ were put on display in Cape Town in 1907. In 1952, at the Van Riebeeck Festival, they were displayed as: ‘Living History’ and as recently as 1993 they have been used as tourist attractions, posing for visitors as:  ‘People from the nearly forgotten past’.

whalesong	star myths	caves	rock art	identity	extract	shamanism	home