The San are the aboriginal people of South Africa. Their distinct hunter-gatherer culture stretches back over 20 000 years, and their genetic origins reach back over one million years. Recent research indicates that the San are the oldest genetic stock of contemporary humanity.

Today, the two largest San groups in South Africa are immigrants from Angola via Namibia. These are the !Xû and the Khwe, currently living at Schmidtsdrift, 80 km outside the Northern Cape provincial capital, Kimberley. There are 3 500 !Xû and 1 100 Khwe. Both groups claim an indigenous identity on the basis of their languages and cultures.

The next largest group is the San population of the southern Kalahari. Today, most San in this area (Lower Orange District) describe themselves as the ‡Khomani. The group is descended from several original San groups, including the ||Ng!u (close relatives of the !Xam who lived south of the !Gariep River), the ‡Khomani who spoke the same language as the ||Ng!u but had distinct lineage, the |’Auni, the Khatea, the Njamani and probably others whose names are now lost to us. Most San of this bloodline now speak Khoekhoegowap and /or Afrikaans as primary language. There are 23 confirmed speakers of the ancient N|u language. They constitute some of the few surviving aboriginal South African San. Approximately 1 500 adults are spread over an area of more than 1 000 km in the Northern Cape Province. Most people live in the northern reaches of Gordonia, at Witdraai, Ashkam, Welkom, Rietfontein and surrounding villages. Others live in and around Upington and Olifantshoek.

A small pocket of aboriginal South African ||Xegwi San lives on farms in Mpumalanga Province near Lakes Banager and Chrissie and around the towns of Lothair and Carolina. Their numbers are not known, though estimates run between 30 and 100 adults. These ||Xegwi San are descendants of a displaced group of Drakensberg San, famous for the rock paintings made by their ancestors up until the middle of the last century. Their original language is extinct.

There is a group of about 70 adult !Kung San living across the border from South Africa at Masetleng and Ngwaatle Pans in Botswana. These people originally lived next to the ‡Khomani in what became the Kalahari Gemsbok National Park (KGNP). They were displaced by the KGNP and driven into Botswana. They have lodged a land claim in South Africa though they have yet to resolve the issue of their citizenship. !Kung is a Northern San language.

There are thousands of people in the Northern Cape who are to some degree aware that they are direct descendants of the largest South African San population of the 18th and 19th centuries, the !Xam. In the area of Prieska there are semi-nomadic farm labourers known as Karretjiemense (Cart People). These people know they are of San descent and may have spoken San languages in the previous century.

Recently, the Khoisan Representative Council has attempted to claim responsibility for !Xam representation. It is unclear at this stage if there are any coherent community structures that have maintained a !Xam identity or whether this is a form of revisionism.

Elsie Vaalbooi

(One of the most famous Khomani San people)

Born approximately August 1895 on the farm Grondneus outside Upington, Gordonia District. Died 7 October, 2002

Her parents were !Uxe “Vaal” and ||Qoisi “Marie”, both of them N||n=e San. They were hunters and gatherers who later became itinerant farm workers.

Mrs Vaalbooi was present at several key historical events in the Kalahari. In her early memories she recalls seeing the officers of the German Imperial Army with their feathered helmets during their hot pursuit of Simon Koper’s Nama rebel army into South Africa in 1908. In 1911, Elsie and her mother were interviewed by the famous linguist, Dorothea Bleek. The photographs or Elsie and ||Qoisi are at the University of Cape Town.

During the Second World War, Elsie had to flee a farm where the police were trying to arrest the Nazi spy, Robbie Leibrandt. During the 1950s, Elsie’s nephew Jan became a prophet in Noenieput. He predicted that the San people would get their land back and that the news would travel overseas in a silver bird. Mrs Vaalbooi was afraid the European farmers would kill them and told her cousin to keep quiet. Later Jan was murdered.

In 1997, the Khomani San community was busy with their land claim. They were sad that their ancestral language had died out and asked people if any elders remembered the language. Mrs Vaalbooi was living in Rietfontein, and said she spoke “die Boesmantaal”. In February 1997, Professor Anthony Traill interviewed Mrs Vaalbooi and confirmed she was able to speak the extinct language of the Kalahari which had been recorded in 1936 at Twee Rivieren. Later, the South African San Institute worked with Mrs Vaalbooi to find another 25 people who could speak N|u or understand the language. Today there are 8 living fluent N|u speakers in the province.

In 1998, Elsie provided the Northern Cape with its new motto: Sa ||’a !ainsi uinsi (We are going to a better life). In March 1999, Elsie watched at Deputy President Thabo Mbeki signed over 40 000 hectares of land to the =Khomani community. The news was broadcast across the world. Mrs Vaalbooi conducted a number of radio and film interviews including with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and National Geographic.

N|u, Elsie’s language, is the last language of the !Ui language family, that was once spoken across South Africa by hunter-gatherer peoples. The most famous example of a !Ui language was |Xam, the language of the Karoo San people. The |Xam language went extinct in the early 20th century. The National motto is now in |Xam: !Ke e: |xarra ||ke (Diverse peoples united)

Ouma Elsie is survived by her two sons, Petrus and Hendrik, her grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.

Source: www.san.org.za/sasi/

Anthony Traill (linguist)

Professor Anthony Traill was a linguist (specifically a phonetician), who was the world’s foremost authority on a San (more broadly, a Khoisan) language called !Xóõ. He published widely on this language, including a dictionary of the language. !Xóõ is famous for having probably the largest consonant inventory of any language on the planet.

For the most part, Traill’s publications addressed the phonetics of !Xóõ in relation to related San languages. He also contributed importantly to the Khoisan and Bantu instrumental phonetic literature on tone (linguistics) with respect to voice (phonetics) and breathy voice.

Anthony Traill was Professorial Research Fellow at Wits University for nearly the decade since he was Professor and Chair of Linguistics (until 1998), in the Department of Linguistics, at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. He spoke highly competent !Xóõ, having conducted research in the !Xóõ communities of Botswana on nearly 100 field trips over more than 35 years. He also spoke Zulu, Tsonga, Tswana and Afrikaans.

After a long illness, Professor Tony Traill died on April 26, 2007, in Johannesburg, at 8am. His towering knowledge of Khoisan languages and general phonetics, and above all his sense of humour in !Xóõ, Zulu, Tswana, Tsonga, Afrikaans and English, will be missed. He is survived by wife, Jill, and children Stephen, Carol and Patrick.

Source: www.wikipedia.org

Bushmen or San – the “Aboriginal” or “First” people of the Kalahari and Southern Africa

The Bushmen or San as they are known to Science, are part of the so-called Khoi-San races. The word KhoiSan denotes the two related groups of people, namely the larger KhoiKhoi people, also called Hotentotte who were a physically larger and more yellow people than the San or Bushmen, and who were cattle-herders and pastoralists.

There is quite a bit of evidence to suggest that the Khoisan derided the hunter-gatherer Bushmen or San, to some extend. I vaguely remember having read somewhere that , the name San, is actually a slightly derogative name that the KhoiKhoi used for the Bushmen. The two terms are however so widely used today, that it would be difficult to change.

The San or Bushmen of the Southern Kalahari around Witdraai, are called the “Khomani San” by scientists, although the remaining speakers of the language, of which 25 have now been identified, say that this refers to a specific clan. Academics from the turn of the century had used the name Khomani san for them, but the community says it is the name of a related clan, that does not really apply to them. They refer to themselves in the aggregate as “Saasi”, and their language as “!Kabee”.

The following main groups of Kalahari Bushmen still live in the Kalahari region and on its borders: the !Kung Bushmen. the Khomani San, the Vasekela bushman, the Mbarakwena, the /Gwi, //Ganaa, Kua and !Xo. The !Kung and /Kwe located just below the name “Lesotho”, is at Schmidtsdrift just outside Kimberley, where they were translocated after the ending of South Africas military campaigns against Swapo and Angola, many years ago. They were given the choice of remaining in Angola or Northern Namibia where thet were employed by the South African Army as trackewrs and interpreters, or to be translocated to an area within South Africa. Those located at Schmidtsdrift today, chose to be relocated.

The Bushmen are a people with very little in the line of personal belongings. Just the few skins that they carry on their backs, sticks, a minimum of iron utensils and tools that they now use, which they have picked up from their modern neighbours, is all that they have. When you have to carry everything you own on your back, one learns to travel light! Food, clothing, weapons, everything he needs the bushman gets from nature.

The Bushmen or San does not have a government, a King or a National leader. Not even a “Chief”, “Chieftain” or “Captain” in the sense understood in Africa. They lead what many believe to be an ideal and simple social life, where at the most one or two related families or family groups or clans live together in a loose knit community or group. Each individual do largely as he pleases, within the constraints of their customs, and if there is a disagreement about something, the group simply splits up and the families go their separate ways, with little or no coercion. They have no taxes, no Government, except that imposed upon them by outsiders.

The San or Bushmen do, however, have a culture and a religion, and we would do well to copy many of their cultural practices. They have a life-style that is most highly attuned with nature, and the ultimate in eco-friendly and sustained life-style, that they have maintained fore aeons and perhaps millenia. So-called “Modern man” has only lately started to realise the importance of this.

The Bushmen of the Kalahari is known for their legendary ability to track or “sny spoor” from “spoorsny” (= cut track) as it is known in Afrikaans. They are equally well known for their superb hunting ability and endurance. If you had to catch your meat on the hoof after killing it from a short distance with a poisoned arrow, you would also develop marvelous endurance, or become mighty thin in a short time.

The Bushmen are equally well known for their dancing and music, the mimicing of birds and animals, their knowledge of plants as medicine, poison, and food. They are perhaps the people on earth that lives the closest to nature, and scientists are often amazed at the acurate knowledge and fine observational skills of the San Bushmen of the Kalahari.

Source: www.abbott-infotech.co.za

Queenstown, Eastern Cape

(It has been proposed that the name Queenstown become Khomani. The Khomani are a subset of the Bushman San)

Queenstown is a town in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. It is the commercial, administrative, and educational centre of a prosperous farming district.

The layout of Queenstown reflects its original objective as a defensive stronghold for the frontier area and has a most unusual design. There is a central hexagonal area where canon or rifle fire could be directed down 6 thoroughfares radiating from the centre. The canon sites have now been replaced with gardens and a central fountain was the dominant feature. A striking abstract sculpture replaced the fountain as part of the town’s 150th anniversary.

Queenstown lies on the Komani River which forms part of the Great Kei system of rivers and has a refreshing climate and plentiful water supply from the surrounding rugged mountains. The water is collected in Bongolo Dam, set in the hills, used extensively for recreation and watersports. Each year, around the beginning of June, the town holds an art exhibition with the emphasis on paintings and sculpture. Perhaps inspired by some of the most interesting Bushman paintings in nearby caves, which are accessible to the visitor.

Close to Queenstown is a nature reserve with numerous antelope, white rhinocerous and spectacular flowering plants together with panoramic views from the mountain summit.

Queen’s College and Queenstown Girls’ High School are secondary schools located in Queenstown.

Geology

The Queenstown area is located in the burgesdorp formation of the takastard sub group, in the upper beaufort group traisic in age in the karoo super group.The lithology is red mudstone 1-10m rich layers and surb ordinate 1m-2m rich sand stone layers deposited by meandering rivers in the flood plain in an oxidising environment.
Queenstown is located within the Chris Hani Municipal district of the Eastern Cape.

The Chris Hani District

PROFILE
The Chris Hani District ranges across the centre of the province, covering a range of terrain from semi-arid Karoo in the west to the hills of the Transkei in the east. It is the second largest of the six districts with an area of 37,111 square kilometres. The district encompasses both large commercial livestock farms and ex-Ciskei and Transkei areas. Queenstown lies at the centre of the district and is the main town. Cradock, Middelburg, Elliot and Engcobo are other major towns in the district.

POPULATION
Chris Hani had an estimated population of 822,891 in 1999, giving it a low population density of 22km². The majority of the population (93%) lives in the former Transkei and Ciskei areas. Coloureds make up 4% and the proportion of whites is 2%. Xhosa is the majority language.

CHALLENGES
The Chris Hani District has a base in agriculture with limited agro-processing industries. The challenge is both to reverse the relative decline in agricultural production, primarily through increased livestock production in the ex-homeland districts and to source investment in agro-processing industries. The unemployment rate of 55% is close to the provincial average, but hides high unemployment in the ex-Transkei and Ciskei and in the more remote areas of the Karoo. Social services and infrastructure require improvement, primarily due to poor services in the former homelands. Some 73% of houses are informal, reflecting traditional unserviced sites. Only 28% of households have potable water on site and 50% have a flush toilet or pit latrine.

Source: www.ecprov.gov.za

Bushmen

The Bushmen, San, Basarwa, !Kung or Khwe are indigenous people of the Kalahari Desert, which spans areas of South Africa, Botswana, Namibia and Angola. They were traditionally hunter-gatherers, part of the Khoisan group, and are related to the traditionally pastoral Khoikhoi. Starting in the 1950s through the 1990s they switched to farming, with only minor hunting and gathering activities. Archaeological evidence suggests that they have lived in southern Africa (and probably other areas of Africa) for at least 22,000 years but probably much longer. Genetic evidence suggests they are one of the oldest, if not the oldest, peoples in the world — a “genetic Adam” according to Spencer Wells, from which all humans can ultimately trace their genetic heritage.

Naming

The terms San, Khwe, Bushmen, and Basarwa have all been used to refer to hunter-gatherer peoples of southern Africa. Each of these terms has a problematic history, as they have been used by outsiders to refer to them, often with pejorative connotations. The individual groups identify by names such as Ju!!hoansi and !Kung (the punctuation characters representing different clicks), and most call themselves “Bushmen” when referring to themselves collectively.

The term “San” was historically applied by their ethnic relatives and historic rivals, the Khoikhoi. This term means “outsider” in the Nama language and was derogatory because it distinguished the Bushmen from what the Khoikhoi called themselves, namely the First People. Western anthropologists adopted “San” extensively in the 1970s, where it remains preferred in academic circles. The term “Bushmen” is widely used, but opinions vary on whether it is appropriate – given that the term is sometimes viewed as pejorative.

In South Africa, the term “San” has become favored in official contexts, being included in the blazon of the new national coat-of-arms. In South Africa “Bushman” is considered derogatory by some groups. Angola does not have an official term for Bushmen, but they are sometimes referred to as Bushmen, Kwankhala, or Bosquímanos (the Portuguese term for Bushmen). Neither Zambia nor Zimbabwe have official terms, although in the latter case the terms Amasili and Batwa are sometimes used. In Botswana, the officially used term is Basarwa, where it is partially acceptable to some Bushmen groups, although Basarwa, a Tswana language label, also has negative connotations. The term is a class 2 noun (as indicated by the “ba-” class marker), while an older class 6 variant, “Masarwa,” is now almost universally considered offensive. (using class 5 labels with class 6 plurals is a common strategy used by speakers of southern Bantu languages to show contempt for ethnic groups, though there are many societies whose own endonyms are class 1 nouns with irregular class 6 plurals)

Relocation and government persecution

Since the mid-1990s the central government of Botswana has been trying to move Bushmen out of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve even though the national constitution guarantees the Bushmen the right to live there in perpetuity. The Game Reserve was originally created in 1961 to protect the 5,000 Bushmen living there who were being persecuted by farmers and cattle-rearing tribes. The government’s position is that it is too costly to provide even such basic services as medical care and schooling, despite the reserve’s tourism revenues. It has banned hunting with guns in the reserve and has said that the Bushmen threaten the reserves ecology. Others, however, claim that the government’s intent is to clear the area – an area the size of Denmark – for the lucrative tourist trade and for diamond mining. As of October 2005, the government has resumed its policy of forcing all Bushmen off their lands in the Game Reserve, using armed police and threats of violence or death. Many of the involuntarily displaced Bushmen live in squalid resettlement camps and some have resorted to prostitution, while about 250 others remain or have surreptitiously returned to the Kalahari to resume their independent lifestyle.

The group as a whole has little voice in the national political process and is not one of the tribal groups recognized in the constitution of Botswana. Over the generations, the Bushmen of South Africa have continued to be absorbed into the African population, particularly the Griqua sub-group, which is an Afrikaans-speaking people of predominantly Khoisan that has certain unique cultural markers that set them apart from the rest of the Africans.

On December 13, 2006, the Bushmen won an historic ruling in their long-running court case against the government. By a 2-1 majority, the court said the refusal to allow the Basarwa into the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR) without a permit was “unlawful and unconstitutional.” It also said the state’s refusal to issue special game licenses to allow the Bushmen to hunt was “unlawful” and “unconstitutional” and found that the Bushmen were “forcibly and wrongly deprived of their possessions” by the government. However, the court did not compel the government to provide services such as water to any Bushmen who returned to the reserve. More than one thousand Bushmen intend to return to the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, one of Africa’s largest protected nature reserves.

Bushmen from the Kalahari desert have won a court case in which they accused Botswana’s government of illegally moving them from their land. The court said the bushmen – or San people – were wrongly evicted from their ancestral homeland in 2002. A panel of three judges ruled by two-to-one in their favour in the major issues in the case. It is seen as a wider test of whether governments can legally move people from their tribal and ancestral lands. The leader of the bushmen, Roy Sesana, emerged from court wearing traditional headdress and smiling broadly. He told the BBC’s Orla Guerin that he would return to the Kalahari to greet his ancestors within the next few weeks. It is unclear how many of the San people will want to return. More than 1,000 were evicted four years ago.

Society

The Bushman kinship system reflects their interdependence as traditionally small, mobile foraging bands. Also, the kinship system is comparable to the Eskimo Kinship system, with the same set of terms as in Western countries, and also employ a name rule and an age rule. The age rule resolves any confusion arising around kinship terms, because the older of two people always decides what to call the younger. According to the name rule, if any two people have the same name, for example an old man and a young man both named !Twi, each family uses the same kin term to refer to them: Young !Twi’s mother could call Old !Twi “son”, Old !Twi would address young !Twi’s sister as his own, Young !Twi would call Old !Twi’s wife “wife”, and Old !Twi’s daughter would be strictly forbidden to Young !Twi as a potential bride. Since relatively few names circulate, and each child is named for a grandparent or other relative, Bushmen are guaranteed an enormous family group with whom they are welcome to travel.

Traditional gathering gear is simple and effective: a hide sling, blanket, and cloak called a kaross to carry foodstuffs, firewood, or young children, smaller bags, a digging stick, and perhaps a smaller version of the kaross to carry a baby. Women and men would gather, and men hunted using poison arrows and spears in laborious days-long excursions.

Villages ranged in sturdiness from nightly rain shelters in the warm spring, when people moved constantly in search of budding greens, to formalized rings when they congregated in the dry season around the only permanent waterholes. Early spring, a hot dry period following a cool dry winter, was the hardest season, after autumn nuts were exhausted, villages concentrated around waterholes, and most plants were dead or dormant. Meat was most important in the dry months, when wildlife could never range far from receding waters.

Traditionally the San possessed no status hierarchies. They had no “chief” but instead made decisions among themselves, on a consensus basis. Women’s status was relatively equal. Women did not begin bearing children until about 18 or 19 years of age due to late first menstruation due to the low calorie and low fat diet and had them spaced four years apart, due to lack of enough breast milk to feed more than one child at a time, and the requirements of mobility leading to the difficulty of carrying more than one child at a time.

Children were very well behaved and treated kindly by the their parents and group. Children spent much of the day playing with each other and are not segregated by sex, neither sex is trained to be submissive or fierce, and neither sex is restrained from expressing the full breadth of emotion that seems inherent in the human spirit”.

The San economy was a gift economy, based on giving each other gifts on a regular basis rather than on trading or purchasing goods and services.

Early history

Bushmen had an advanced early culture evidenced by archaeological data. For example, Bushmen from the Botswana region migrated south to the Waterberg Massif in the era 10,000 to 20,000 years ago. They left rock paintings at the Lapala Wilderness area and Goudriver recording their life and times, including characterizations of rhinoceros, elephant and a variety of antelope species (resembling impala, kudu and eland, all present day inhabitants).

In the media

The Bushmen of the Kalahari were first brought to the Western world’s attention in the 1950s by South African author Laurens van der Post with the famous book The Lost World of the Kalahari, which was also a BBC TV series.

The 1980 comedy movie The Gods Must Be Crazy portrays a Kalahari Bushman tribe’s first encounter with an artifact from the outside world (a Coke bottle).

John Marshall documented the lives of Bushmen in the Nyae Nyae region of Namibia over more than a 50-year period. His early film The Hunters, released in 1957, shows a giraffe hunt during the 1950s. N!Ai: The Story of a !Kung Woman (1980) is the account of a woman who grew up while the Bushmen were living as autonomous hunter-gatherers and was later forced into a dependent life in the government created community at Tsumkwe. A Kalahari Family (2002) is a five-part, six-hour series documenting 50 years in the lives of the Ju!!hoansi of Southern Africa, from 1951 to 2000. Marshall was a fierce and vocal proponent of the Bushman cause throughout his life, which was, in part, due to strong kinship ties, and had a Bushman wife in his early 20s.

In Wilbur Smith’s The Burning Shore, the San people are portrayed through two major characters, O’wa and H’ani, and the Bushmen’s struggles, history and beliefs are touched upon in great detail. The Burning Shore is a volume in the Courtney’s of Africa series.

PBS’s series How Art Made the World compares San cave painting 200 years ago to Paleolithic European painting 14,000 years old. Because of their similarities, the San can help us understand the reasons for ancient cave paintings. Lewis Williams believes that their trance states (traveling to the spirit world) are directly related to the reasons people went deep into caves, experienced sensory deprivation, and painted their visions onto the cave walls.

Spencer Wells’ 2003 book The Journey of Man—in connection with National Geographic’s Genographic Project—discusses a genetic analysis of the San and asserts their blood contains the oldest genetic markers found on earth, making the Bushmen humankind’s “genetic Adam”. These genetic markers are present on the y chromosome and are therefore passed down through thousands of generations in a relatively pure form. The documentary continues to trace these markers throughout the world, demonstrating that all of humankind can be traced back to the African continent and that the San are the last, most genetically unadulterated, remnant of humankind’s ancient ancestors.

Source: www.wikipedia.org

Sir Laurens Jan van der Post

(aka Laurens van der Post) December 13, 1906 – December 16, 1996. Famous 20th century Afrikaner author of many books, farmer, war hero, political adviser to British heads of government, godparent of Prince William, educator, journalist, humanitarian, philosopher, explorer, and conservationist.
Contents

Early years

Laurens was born in the small town of Philippolis in the Orange River Colony, a British colony in what is today South Africa. His father, Christiaan Willem Hendrik van der Post (1856–1914), of Dutch origin, had arrived in South Africa at the age of three and later married Laurens’s mother in 1889. Her name was Lammie and she was of German origin. The family had a total of fifteen children, with Laurens being the thirteenth, the fifth son. Christiaan was a lawyer and politician, and fought in the Second Boer War against the British. After the Second Boer War he was exiled with his family to Stellenbosch, where Laurens was conceived. They returned to Philippolis in the Orange River Colony in 1906, where Laurens was born.

Laurens spent his early childhood years on the family farm, remembering how he became a fan of reading books from his father’s extensive library which included Homer and Shakespeare. In August 1914 his father died and then in 1918 Laurens went to school at Grey College in Bloemfontein. There it was a great shock to him that he was “being educated into something which destroyed the sense of common humanity I shared with the black people”. In 1925 he took his first job as a reporter in training at The Natal Advertiser in Durban, where his reporting included his own accomplishments playing on the Durban and Natal field hockey teams. In 1926 he and two other rebellious writers, Roy Campbell and William Plomer, published a satirical magazine called Voorslag (English: whip lash) which promoted a more racially integrated South Africa; it lasted for three issues before being forced to shut down because of its radical views. Later that year he took off for three months with Plomer and sailed to Tokyo and back on a Japanese freighter, the Canada Maru, an experience which produced books by both authors later in life.

In 1927 Lauren met Marjorie Edith Wendt (d. 1995), daughter of the founder and conductor of the Cape Town Orchestra. They traveled to England and on March 8, 1928 married at Bridport, Dorset. A son was born soon after on December 26, named Jan Laurens (later known as John). In 1929 Laurens returned to South Africa to work for the Cape Times, a newspaper in Cape Town, where “For the time being Marjorie and I are living in the most dire poverty that exists,” he wrote in his journal. He began to associate with bohemians and intellectuals who were opposed to James Hertzog (Prime Minister) and the white South African policy. He wrote an article entitled ‘South Africa in the Melting Pot’ which clarified his views of the South Africa racial problem, he said “The white South African has never consciously believed that the native should ever become his equal.” But he predicted that “the process of leveling up and inter-mixture must accelerate continually … the future civilization of South Africa is, I believe, neither black or white but brown.”

In 1931 he returned to England and formed friendships with members of the Bloomsbury group including Arthur Waley, J. M. Keynes, E. M. Forster and Virginia Woolf. Virginia and her husband Leonard Woolf were publishers, and had previously published William Plomer’s works, and it was through Plomer’s connections that Laurens gained introduction to the Woolfs and the somewhat exclusive and scandalous “Bloomsberries”.

In 1934 the Woolfs published Laurens’s first novel under the Hogarth Press label. Called In a Province, it portrayed the tragic consequences of a racially divided South Africa. Later that year he decided to become a dairy farmer and, possibly with the help of Lilian Bowes Lyon, bought a farm called Colley Farm, near Tetbury, Gloucestershire, with Lilian as his neighbor. There he divided his time between the needs of the cows and occasional visits to London where he was a correspondent to South African newspapers. He considered this a directionless phase in his life which mirrored Europe’s slow drift to war. In 1936 he made five trips to South Africa and during one trip he met and fell in love with Ingaret Giffard (d. 1997), an English actress and author five years his senior. Later that year his wife Marjorie gave birth to a second child, a daughter named Lucia, and in 1938 he sent his family back to South Africa. When the Second World War started in 1939 he found himself torn between England and South Africa, his new love and his family; his career was at a dead end, and he was in depressed spirits, often drinking heavily.

War years

In May 1940 Laurens volunteered for the British Army and upon completion of officer training in January 1941 he was sent to east Africa in the Intelligence Corps as a Captain. There he took up with General Wingate’s Gideon Force which was tasked with restoring the Emperor Haile Selassie to his throne in Abyssinia. His unit led 11,000 camels through difficult mountain terrain and he was remembered for being an excellent caretaker of the animals. In March he came down with malaria and was sent to Palestine to recover. In early 1942 he was transferred to the Dutch East Indies because of his Dutch language skills. He was placed in command of “special mission 43”, whose purpose was to organize an allied retreat after the Japanese invasion of Java.

On April 20, 1942 he was captured by the Japanese. He was first taken to Soekaboemi (Sukabumi) camp and then to Bandoeng. He played a legendary role in keeping up the morale of troops from many different nationalities. Along with other compatriots he organized a “camp university” with courses from basic literacy to degree-standard ancient history, and he also organized a camp farm to supplement nutritional needs. He could also speak some basic Japanese, which helped him greatly. Once, depressed, he wrote in his diary: “it is one of the hardest things in this prison life: the strain caused by being continually in the power of people who are only half-sane and live in a twilight of reason and humanity.” He wrote about his experiences in A Bar of Shadow (1954) and The Seed and the Sower (1963). Japanese film director Nagisa Oshima based his film Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1982) on these books.

While his fellow POWs left for home, Laurens remained in Java, and on September 15th, 1945 he joined Admiral William Patterson on the HMS Cumberland for the official surrender of the Japanese to the British.

He then spent two years helping to mediate between Indonesian nationalists and members of the discredited Dutch colonial regime. He had gained trust with the nationalist leaders such as Mohammad Hatta and Ahmed Sukarno and warned both Mountbatten and prime minister Clement Attlee, whom he met in London in October 1945, that the country was on the verge of blowing up. He went to The Hague to repeat his warning directly to the Dutch cabinet. In November, 1946 British forces withdrew and he became military attaché to the British consulate in Batavia, but by 1947, after he had returned to England, his worst fears came to pass: Indonesia collapsed into the civil war which led to independence. Soon after in the same year, he retired from the army and was made a CBE.

Rise to fame

With the war over and his business with the army concluded, Laurens returned to South Africa in late 1947 to work at the Natal Daily News, but with the election victory of the National Party bringing in apartheid he came back to London. In May 1949 he was commissioned by the Colonial Development Corporation (CDC) to “assess the livestock capacities of the uninhabited Nyika and Mlanje plateaux of Nyasaland”.

Around this time he divorced Marjorie, and on October 13, 1949 married Ingaret Giffard. Before he married Ingaret, he had become engaged to Fleur Kohler-Baker, the daughter of a prominent farmer and businessman, who was seventeen years old; they had met on a ship with an intense but brief affair of love letters, and so she was shocked when he broke off the relationship. He went on a honeymoon with Ingaret to Switzerland where his new wife introduced him to Carl Jung. Jung was to have probably a greater influence upon him than anybody else, and he later said that he had never met anyone of Jung’s stature. He continued to work on a travel book about his Nyasaland adventures called Venture to the Interior, which borrowed on the structure of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.

In 1950 Lord Reith (head of the CDC) asked Laurens to head an expedition to Bechuanaland, to see the potential of the remote Kalahari Desert for cattle ranching. There Laurens for the first time met the Kalahari natives, a hunter-gatherer bush people known as San. He repeated the journey to the Kalahari in 1952, the same year Venture to the Interior was published, and it became an immediate best-seller in the US and Europe. In 1954 he published his third book Flamingo Feather, an anti-communist novel about a Soviet plot to take over South Africa, which sold very well. Alfred Hitchcock planned to film the book, but lost support from South African authorities and gave up the idea. Penguin Books kept Flamingo Feather in print until the collapse of the U.S.S.R.. In 1955 the BBC commissioned Laurens to return to the Kalahari in search of the bushmen, a trip that turned into a very popular six-part television documentary series in 1956. In 1958 his most famous book was released under the same title as the BBC series: The Lost World of the Kalahari, followed in 1961 by The Heart of the Hunter, derived from 19th-century Bushmen stories by Wilhelm Bleek.

Laurens described the bushmen as the original natives of southern Africa, outcast and persecuted by all other races and nationalities. He said they represented the “lost soul” of all mankind, a type of noble savage myth. This mythos of the Bushmen inspired the colonial government to create the Central Kalahari Game Reserve in 1961 to guarantee their survival, and the reserve became a part of settled law when Botswana was created in 1966.

Later years

Laurens’s fame and success was now assured. He had become a popular television personality, had introduced the world to the Kalahari bushmen, and was considered an authority on Bushmen folklore and culture. “I was compelled towards the Bushmen,” he said, “like someone who walks in his sleep, obedient to a dream of finding in the dark what the day has denied him.” Over the next decade he had a steady stream of book releases, including novels drawn from his war experiences, The Seed and the Sower (1963) and The Night of the New Moon (1970). A travel book called A Journey into Russia (1964) described a long trip through the Soviet Union. In 1972 there was another BBC television series of his 16-year friendship with Jung, who died in 1961, which was followed by the book Jung and the Story of our Time (1976).

Ingaret and he moved to Aldeburgh, Suffolk where they became involved with a circle of friends that included an introduction to Prince Charles, whom he then took on a safari to Kenya in 1977 and with whom he had a close and influential friendship for the rest of his life. Also in 1977, together with Ian Player,a South African conservationist, he created the first World Wilderness Congress in Johannesburg. In 1979 his Chelsea neighbor Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister and she called on his advice with matters dealing with southern Africa, notably the Rhodesia settlement of 1979–80. In 1981 he was given a Knighthood.

In 1982 he fell and injured his back and used the downtime from tennis and skiing to write an autobiography called Yet Being Someone Other (1982), which discussed his love of the sea and his journey to Japan with Plomer in 1926. By now Ingaret was slipping into senility, and he spent much time with an old friend Frances Baruch. In 1984 his son John (who had gone on to be an engineer in London) died, and Laurens spent time with his youngest daughter Lucia and her family.

Even in old age Laurens was involved with many projects, from the worldwide conservationist movement, to setting up a centre of Jungian studies in Cape Town. He remained a captivating speaker and storyteller both in public and in private. In 1996 he tried to prevent the eviction of the Bushmen from their homeland in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, which had been set up for that purpose, but ironically it was his work in the 1950s to promote the land for cattle ranching that lead to their eventual downfall and removal. In October 1996 he published The Admiral’s Baby describing the events in Java at the end of the war. For his 90th birthday party he had a five-day celebration in Colorado, with a “this is your life” type event with friends from every period of his life. A few days later, on December 16th, 1996, after whispering in Afrikaans “die sterre” (the stars), he died. The funeral took place December 20th in London, attended by Prince Charles (who was photographed in tears) Lady Thatcher, Nelson Mandela and many friends and family. His ashes were buried in a special memorial garden at Philipolis on April 4th, 1998. Ingaret died five months after him on May 5th, 1997.

Controversy

After his death a number of writers discredited Laurens. It was revealed that in 1952 he had fathered a child with a fourteen-year-old girl who had been under his care during a sea voyage to England from South Africa. His reputation as a ‘modern sage’ and ‘guru to Prince Charles’ was questioned and journalists opened a floodgate of examples of how Laurens had not always told the truth in his books. These facts came together in the 2001 book by J.D.F. Jones Teller of Many Tales: The Lives of Laurens van der Post, an authorised yet hostile biography which damaged Laurens’ reputation.[3] A rebuttal was offered by Christopher Booker, a friend of Laurens. While Jones’ book did interpret a darker side to Laurens’ life, it did not diminish his popularity and he continued to strike a chord with many people. Nor could many of his wartime accomplishments and his conservation efforts be easily dismissed.

Selected works:

• In a Province, 1934
• Venture to the Interior, 1952
• Flamingo Feather, 1955
• The Lost World of the Kalahari, 1958 (BBC 6-part TV series, 1956)
• The Heart of the Hunter, 1961
• The Seed and the Sower, 1963
• A Journey into Russia, 1964 (US title: A View of All the Russias)
• The Night of the New Moon, August 6, 1945… Hiroshima, 1970 (US title: The Prisoner and the Bomb)
• Jung and the Story of Our Time, 1975
• Yet Being Someone Other, 1982
• The Admiral’s Baby, 1996

Movies

Movie adaptations of his books; otherwise he is not in or involved directly with these movies.

* Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983) —- Based on The Seed and the Sower (1963) and The Night of the New Moon (1970), about his experience as a prisoner of war. Starring David Bowie.
* A Far Off Place (1993) —- Based on A Far-Off Place (1974) and A Story Like the Wind (1972).

Source: www.wikipedia.org

The Gods Must Be Crazy

This film was released in 1980, written and directed by Jamie Uys. Set in Botswana and South Africa, it tells the story of Xi (IPA: [gi]), a Bushman of the Kalahari Desert (played by Namibian bush farmer N!xau) whose band has no knowledge of the world beyond. The film is followed by four sequels, the final three of which were made in Hong Kong.

The Gods Must Be Crazy I & II

The first two films both present the Bushmen as noble savages leading a simple, fairly utopian life in contrast with western culture. There are several slapstick situations, accentuated by the use of fast motion.

These films, and the songs of Miriam Makeba, are probably the only exposure to a click consonant language for most people living outside of southwest Africa. Conversely, the arrival of a Coca-Cola bottle thrown from a passing light aircraft represents the only exposure that the bushmen have with western culture, reminiscent of so-called New Guinean ‘Cargo Cults’.

While a large Western white audience found the films funny, there was considerable debate about its racial politics. The portrayal of Xi (particularly in the first film) as the naive innocent incapable of understanding the ways of the “gods” was viewed by some as patronising and insulting. The film was banned in Trinidad and Tobago for this reason. However, its many fans believe that it is exactly the opposite, a send-up of so-called civilization and condemnation of racism with Xi as the hero.

Some of the debate centered on Xi’s reaction to the first white people he met, assuming they were gods since they were strange (he had only known Bushmen before), rode vehicles (which he also had never seen before), and were comparatively huge. However, within minutes he began doubting they were gods. The second film clearly shows Xi’s greater understanding as he tells the children about the people he had met: “heavy people … who seem to know some magic that can make things move,” but are “not very bright, because they can’t survive without their magic contrivances.”

It should also be noted that the films’ depictions of the Bushmen, even if they were accurate in the 1980s (also a source of debate), are clearly no longer accurate. The DVD’s special feature “Journey to Nyae Nyae” (N!xau’s homeland in northeastern Namibia), filmed in 2003, demonstrates this.

The Gods Must Be Crazy

The first film is a collision of three separate stories — Xi’s, the romance between a klutzy scientist and a schoolteacher, and a band of terrorists on the run.

The bushmen of Xi’s group are living well off the land. They are happy because the “gods” have provided plenty of everything, so no one in the tribe has unfilled wants. One day, the pilot of a passing airplane drops a glass Coke bottle. Initially, this strange artifact seems to be a boon from the gods — Xi’s people find many uses for it. But unlike anything that they have had before, there is only one bottle to share among all members of the group. They soon find themselves experiencing things they never had before: envy, hatred, even violence.

It is decided that the bottle, renamed “the evil thing”, must be thrown off of the edge of the world. Xi volunteers for the task. As he travels on his quest, he encounters western civilization for the first time. The film presents an interesting interpretation of civilization as viewed through Xi’s perceptions.

There are also plot lines about biologist Andrew Steyn (Marius Weyers) who is studying the local animals, and the newly-hired village school teacher Kate Thompson (Sandra Prinsloo), and some guerrillas who are being pursued by government troops after unsuccessfully attempting a coup. Xi encounters both groups.

Xi eventually finds himself at the top of a cliff with a solid layer of low-lying clouds obscuring the landscape below. This gives Xi the convincing illusion that it is indeed the edge of the world, and he throws the bottle from there. This was filmed at a place called God’s Window in what was then called the Eastern Transvaal, South Africa (now a separate province called Mpumalanga). This is at the edge of the escarpment between the high and low-velds of South Africa.

The biologist’s mode of transportation is an early Series I Land Rover with no brakes and tight piston rings, making it difficult to start. Dubbed “The Anti-Christ” by his mechanic, Mpudi, the biologist’s misadventures with the cantankerous Land Rover make up some of the most hilarious scenes in the film.

The Gods Must Be Crazy II

Xi Changes his name to Xixo–A sequel, The Gods Must Be Crazy II, was filmed in 1985 but not released until 1989. In it, Xixo’s two young children encounter poachers in the Kalahari and explore the back of their truck, and become unable to jump off once it starts moving. Xixo must once again travel great distances to retrieve them, and once again encounters various other western characters who are on quests of their own. The film is notable for the increased role of animals throughout the story, and for its light-hearted treatment of the civil war still raging in nearby Angola at the time.

Source: www.wikipedia.org

John Marshall (filmmaker)

John Kennedy Marshall (1932–April 22, 2005) was a filmmaker and anthropologist, particularly known for his involvement with the field of visual anthropology.

He has been described as a “foul-tempered Hub brahmin who after spending 50 years filming the people of Namibia might be America’s greatest barely known documentarian”.

The Hunters – a film by ethnographic filmmaker John Marshall.

The film is an early classic in anthropological film follows the hunt of a giraffe by four men over a five-day period. The film was shot in 1952-53 on the third joint Smithsonian-Harvard Peabody sponsored Marshall family expedition to Africa to study Ju/’hoansi, one of the few surviving groups that lived by hunting and gathering. John Marshall was a young man when he made this, his first feature length film. He was a natural cameraman who found a subject that would dominate the rest of his life. He has since shot over 600,000 feet of film from which 24 films were edited. The value of the footage as an encyclopedia of !Kung life is unequaled by any other body of ethnographic film.

Source: www.wikipedia.org

Biography of King Khoebaha Cornelius of the First Nation Indigenous People of South Africa

From the very beginning, before the colonials started invading the southern most point of Africa, the only people that roamed the plains of Southern Africa were the San people known as the hunter-gatherers. These people started bartering with cattle and fat-tailed sheep from Egypt and China. Some of the San people started to eat more meat and drank more milk and the children born from these people were born bigger and stronger and they called themselves the Khoi-Khoi, meaning men of men.

The first Colonials that arrived here in 1503 were a Portuguese named Captain Saldania and his crew. Since these people were lost, they went up Table Mountain to find directions. But unbeknown to them they were transgressing the sacred burial grounds of the Khoi-Khoi and were killed in clashes with the natives. The Portuguese then named the southern point of Africa “Capo de Saldania.”

In 1631 the English East India Company took Autchomoa, who was a Khoi-chief to Java to teach him humanness according to their standards. A year later he returned to the Cape and was appointed by the English East India Company as their postmaster to hand over letters and goods to the passing ships. Because of this, he became quite well-known as “Herrie” which was what he was renamed.

In 1652 the V.O.C. (Jan van Riebeeck) arrived here to build a halfway station to assist the passing ships with fresh wares and water. They saw the potentials of the Cape and decided to stay. These colonials arrived at the Cape without wives and started consummating with the Khoi and San women. Out of these unions children were born. Some children were born with sharp features, blonde hairs and blue eyes since the genes of the fathers were so strong. But the others were born with the skin tones and features of the mother.

Since the Khoi and San had refused to be enslaved and to work for these Colonials, they had then brought in slaves from Indonesia, Malaysia and Madagascar. But these slaves also came without wives and also consummated with our Khoi and San women. From these unions children were also born and once again, when the genes of the father were the stronger, the children were born with sleek hair and tan complexion with sharp features. And the other children were born with Khoi and San features.

When the Ngunis (Blacks) arrived here out of Middle Africa, they also impregnated our women and again children were born from these alliances. Once more when the genes of the father was the more dominant, these children born had flat dark features and dry curly hairs and the other children had the Khoi and San features. When we offered them land and signed peace treaties with them, they also took more than was given and inter-married with the Khoisan People.

Many atrocities were committed against the natives of the Cape by everybody who came here. In 1659 with the first Khoi-Dutch war, an order was given by Jan van Riebeeck that every Khoi person the soldiers captured and kill during that time, to cut off the upper lip of the Khoi person and bring it to the commander – Jan van Riebeeck – and they would get paid for it. That order caused that the Khoi people were hunted down like dogs just so that order could be fulfilled and the monies could be given. These Khoi- San people were sometimes still alive when these atrocities were committed and they were disfigured / defaced and dehumanized.
When the elders spoke the ancient tongue of the Khoisan the meat was cut off their bones while they were alive to stop them from teaching the children. When you did not listen and died your meat was boiled off your bones as a warning to the community and your bones sent to Europe for scientific studies. This is just some of the atrocities that happened during colonization of my country.

When the Dutch arrived here at the Cape, they specifically came to find “Herrie” who was known by all colonials as the Strandloper because of his “job” as well as the fact that he could speak enough of the foreigners’ language to understand and to be understood, since he was taught that during his year of captivity in Java. He had a niece named Krotoa, who was the daughter of his slain brother. “Herrie” had taken this ten-year-old girl into his house when her father was killed. Krotoa’s lineage was of royalty and she was known to all the Cape-Khoi as a princess since her father was a chief.

During the Jan van Riebeeck reign, Krotoa was taken up into his house-hold and worked as their domestic worker. Later van Riebeeck started using her abilities as an interpreter since she could at the age of fourteen, spoke Dutch, Portuguese, English as well as all the dialects (18). This aptitude of her worked well for van Riebeeck because she then became his interpreter. She and a Danish under-surgeon named Pieter van Meerhoff, who at that time was the scriber for Jan van Riebeeck, met, had children and later with the blessings of the VOC, got married and were moved to Robben Island to be the first Governor there. This language aptitude of Krotoa, who later was also renamed and became known as “Eva” made it possible for her to make up a mix of Khoekhoeghoewab (the mother tongue of the Khoi-San people) and all other languages spoken at the Cape and used it as a bartering tool between everybody. That mixture later became known as Afrikaans.

This is the same language that was later taken by the Boers, who also took my family name Afrikaner and made it their own.

During these times the Colonials started documenting the rich history of the Khoisan People of South Africa.

The stripping of our identities started way back, when the Dutch decided to rename us from Khoi-Khoi and San to Hottentots and Bushmen. The English thereafter renamed us non-Europeans. The Boers decided that we should be called non-whites and the Apartheid regime decided that we should be called coloureds. All this renaming happened within the space of three hundred years.

Since democracy took over in our country and with pressure from the United Nations, we were invited to be part of the White Paper to include the Khoisan Indigenous Leaders into the House of Traditional leaders of South Africa. That white paper became Traditional Leaders Act of South Africa in 2003. But we as the Khoi-Khoi and San peoples of Southern Africa were not included in that act, even though the United Nations sanctioned us as first nation indigenous peoples of Southern Africa in 1997 which was acknowledged by our current government, hence our inclusion on the coat of arms. We are still not recognized as people in the land of our Ancestors even though we are used as window dressing to the world.

The First Nation Indigenous People of South Africa, the Khoisan suffered under Colonialism, Afrikaanerdom, Apartheid and now Democracy.

In 2007 our Government signed the Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous first nation people and we saw some light at the end of the tunnel to be accepted and acknowledged for who we are in our country of birth. Up to date that has not happened.

Many {Coloured People, Black people, some White People} are now saying they are descendants of the Khoisan Nation.

I truly feel so blessed and hopefull, that now the world will start to know the truth about my people.

I am the Head of the Royal House of the KhoiSan Nation (my bloodline is traced back to 1695 – that is documented – and obviously way before – undocumented -)

A short synopsis of the history of the First Nation Indigenous People of South Africa.

The Cornelius Monarchy:

From 1695 the Kai ||khaun ruled the area from the Upper Fish River to the Orange River under the leadership of #Hâb who died in 1710 and was succeeded by ||Khomab #Hâmab.
||Khamab #Hâmab died in 1725 and was succeeded was ||aub gaib ||Khomab.
||Khaub gaib ||Khomab died in 1740 and was succeeded by #Ô-||nâib °Khaumab.
#Ô-||nâib °Khaumab died in 1755. In that year a peace treaty was signed between the Rharhabe King and Kai ||khaun so that they could all live in peace and harmony for the way forward.
For fifteen years | Hanab #Ô||nâimab was the regent until !Gaob / Hanamab could take up his rightful place as successor to #Ô-||nâib °Khaumab and this took place in 1770 until he died in 1800 and was succeeded by Gaméb !Gaomab.
The successor of Gaméb !Gaomab named Tsawúb Gamab, followed after his death in 1814.
In 1824 Tsawúb Gamab died and was followed up by !Na-khom Gamab who died in 1840.
The successor to !Na-khom Gamab was Chief || Oaseb !Na-Khomab (Cornelius) who was declared as one of the greatest sons of the nation. He left the Fish River area to form an alliance with Jan Jonker Afrikaner at Klein Windhoek. At a peace treaty of Hoachanas on the 09-01-1858, Cornelius acknowledged Jan Jonker as an equal leader.
On the 15th June, 1863 Cornelius and the son of Jan Jonker, Christiaan Jonker was defeated by Andersson’s Private Army. The place and cause of Cornelius death in 1867 could not be traced. He was succeeded by # Goraxab || Oasmab (Barnabas).
# Goraxab || Oasmab (Barnabas) died in 1877 and was succeeded by ! Gôbeb # Gorexab (Petrus) who was the last of the || Oeseb dynasty. He returned home to his fatherland above the Fish River in 1880.

The Jonker Monarchy:

Jan Jonker was born in Tulbagh in the Cape and ruled from 1823. After slavery was abolished in 1834 and the Vagrancy Law was passed to force the Khoi-khoi to be employed by farmers where the “dop” system started. Jan Jonker rebelled quoting: “a vagrant is like a dog; you hit him over the head and think nothing of it.” He and his people left the Cape and in 1840 established the town called Klein-Windhoek in Namibia, now known as Windhoek. There he rebelled against the Colonials, Germans and died in 1861. He was succeeded by his son Christiaan Jonker who died in 1863.

Christiaan Jonker was succeeded by His brother, Jan Jonker who died in 1889. He was succeeded by his daughter Maria Jonker, who left the area and moved back to the Cape and lived in Mamre. Hendrick Witbooi carried on the battle as Maria was too young to rule.

Some years later she met up with and married Petrus (Piet) Cornelius and after their marriage they moved to Dordrecht in the Eastern Cape to live on a horse racing farm.

Chief Petrus (Piet) Cornelius and Maria Jonker Cornelius continued their reign in the Dordrecht area in the Eastern Cape until they were forcefully removed from their farm by the then ruling Afrikaanerdom regime and their farm taken over. Their first born son David Daniel Cornelius was born in 1907 in Dordrecht and in acknowledgement to him being the firstborn son of the chief, he was cut under his feet.

Chief Piet Cornelius moved to Cape Town after his forceful removal where David Daniel Cornelius (firstborn son) met and married Henrietta Arendse. Their firstborn son, named John Peter Cornelius was born in 1937 and married Theresa Magdalene Roman. Out of their union a firstborn son named Calvin Denver John Cornelius was born in 1960.

As a young boy Calvin Denver John was reared and schooled about the past and responsibilities by his grandfather, David Daniel Cornelius who spent the last five years of his life doing that and when he was laid to rest in 1992, John Peter Cornelius (Father) handed over the responsibility of ruling to his first born son Calvin Denver John Cornelius.

In 1998 Calvin Denver John Cornelius was sworn in as a headman by the then Paramount Chief Kaneylis at a ceremony in Oudtshoorn.

In 2000 he was appointed as chief of the Goringhaicona tribe (Strandlopers).

In December 2001 he was taken to Genadendal by the Elders who then officially sworn him in (!Nau – Rites of passage) as Paramount Chief of the Western Cape as he is the only one who could trace his lineage right back to King Ndoda as well as Paramount Chief Jan Jonker.

On the 11th of March 2004, Paramount chief Cornelius (Khoebaha) paid a visit to ruling monarch, His Royal Highness – King Maxhoba Sandile at the great Place Mnqesha to reaffirm the peace treaty which was signed between Queen Rhorho of the Kai ||khaun of the Khoi-Khoi and King Sandile in the 1700’s. This reaffirmation was sealed with a royal feast at the great place Mnqesha in King William’s town on the 2nd February 2005 where His Royal Highness, King Khoebaha Cornelius was introduced to the ancestors at the Great Kraal.

It is herewith accepted that His Royal Highness, King Maxhoba Sandile of the Rharhabe Kingdom acknowledge His Royal Highness, King Khoebaha Cornelius as the reigning monarch of the Western Cape.

Source: Facebook

The San/Bushmen Creation Story

The San (Bushmen) Creation Story – the San are also known as the first peoples (the root of the tree of life)

In the timelessness of the early human race, all animals were humans, and all humans existed in the form of shape-shifting, interchangeable spiritual beings, possessing the ability to exchange body parts and assume the form of half- human, half-animal like beings. The body parts of these various early spiritual beings were all mixed up, so for example the horns and colours of the present day beautiful gemsbok used to belong to the ostrich before it was yet a bird but still an antelope. This was before there existed order in the world, before these early beings were fully human and had not learnt the manners and morals of basic humanness. In a way, you can say they were indecisive and uncultured. They were like clay, easily moulded, and not yet “hard-baked” and could all assume various forms. This was before the physical world, as we know it, existed. When early mankind only existed in spiritual form and lived in the underworld of Earth. The Earth above was a global ocean, covered in darkness and God had not yet created the mountains, valleys, streams and Gardens of Eden.

God dreamt creation into existence and therefore birthed the physical landscape from the cold, dark and lifeless ocean. Young Mother Earth was at that stage just one continuous ocean spanning the world. She was still a virgin at this young age. She had never known the presence of male energy in her company and had never experienced the masculine elements of light, heat or fire.

God established order on Earth by planting a sacred seed called the Tree of Life, inside the womb of Gaia. It was through the element of fire in the form of warm & comforting volcanic lava, that a large, bulging belly formed out of the ocean as the child of Mother Earth and Heavenly Father grew and developed in the protective womb of Gaia.

This was done without actual toiling of the soil or physical penetration of Earth’s sacred surface, but instead through miracle. So in other words, this was done through internal spiritual blessing and not through external physical penetration. As the child grew, Mother Earth’s belly gradually enlarged over the months.

The hot, fiery lava beneath was cooled and hardened by the icy cold waters of the ocean, forming a hardened crust of rock on the outside, and spectral colours of crystal on the inside. Like a protective eggshells crust enveloped around the embryo, developing inside from the harsh elements of the young Gaia. It was also through the establishment of order and light in the form of the presence of the glowing sun, symbol of Heavenly Father, above the previous dark skies of Earth, that the seed had a glowing goal to grow towards, and through the loving warmth of the sun, that the Earth was able to be hugged and held stable in the gravitational arms of the sun. This further created order by establishing a fixed rotation around the sun, opposed to the previous chaotic, unstructured, randomness of Mother Earth’s movements. A beautiful spectral rainbow formed between the warm, loving light of the sun and the cold waters of the ocean.

This child was to be a giant tree stretching across Pangaea and bearing all the fruits of the forest, with the entire Garden of Eden tucked safely underneath its ancient, outstretched branches. The Tree of Life symbolized order, a balance, or harmony of opposites, of water and fire, of female and male, of Mother Earth and Heavenly Father, of underworld and upperworld. It was a doorway, bridge, or portal between the dark, disordered chaos of the underworld, and the ordered, structured harmony of the heavenly skies. This doorway was also the birth canal of Gaia, with a sacred cave at the base of the ancient giant Tree being the vagina through which all of creation was birthed.

Right at the very top of the Tree of Life was a giant flower. As it was the largest and most sacred of all flowers, it was tended and pollinated by the gardening angels. The flower was full of golden, divine nectar and it bore a single, large round fruit, which glistened in the sun like a giant, reflective disc, and brushed right up against the clouds due to the fact that it stood at the very upper most reaches of the Tree.

With the establishment of order came the second creation. The first creation was of the various spiritual beings of the early race, the second creation was when humankind was distinguished from the animals, and the establishment of a world of balance, harmony and order.

When everything in the Garden of Eden was ready, God allowed all the humans and the animals to ascend out of the underworld through the sacred opening at the base of the Tree of Life. The first man stepped out, later the first wombman, and slowly but surely all the animals followed. In their excitement, some of the animals crawled up the inside of the trunk of the tree and pushed through the branches, and squeezed through the young buds and shoots to enter into this new world. Eventually all the animals and humans came to rest at the base of the Tree. They were all totally amazed at the beauty of the physical world and had never seen the sun before, because there was no sun in the underworld.

God then said to mankind that in this new world, they were to live in balance and harmony with nature. As it was a place of order and harmony, mankind was to live in peace with his environment, to never take more than he needed, to make full use of what he took, to practice sustainable utilisation of his natural resources and to therefore be a good conservationist. God also said, that even more important than this, mankind was allowed to gather all the fruits of the forest, with the exception of fire, fire was the forbidden fruit and humankind was not permitted to make fire, collect fire or taste fire in his new environment. The animals were naturally and instinctively afraid of fire, fleeing whenever they sensed it, so in order for the animals to walk side by side with the humans, unafraid, fire should not be partaken of. Mankind agreed to the laws that God had put in place, and God left them to watch over his creation from a distance

Written by: Gary Trower

(The San are also known as the Bushmen of Southern Africa and also known as the first peoples (the root of the tree of life), follow this link for more info… http://www.rockartgallery.com/cat3.php?catID=4)

The ‡Khomani San Land Claim

In March 1999, the world media carried a picture of South African President Thabo Mbeki embracing Dawid Kruiper, leader of the ‡Khomani San. The ‡Khomani land claim, lodged under the legal framework provided by the 1996 post-Apartheid constitution and settled out of court by the South African government, is the only current example of a successful aboriginal land claim in southern Africa, and provides an area of 65,000 hectares to the San in addition to extensive land use rights in and to the recently renamed Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park (KTP).

The “Southern Kalahari San” were evicted from the Kalahari Gemsbok National Park soon after its formation in 1931 and dispersed over the southern Kalahari in a wide diaspora into South Africa, Botswana, and Namibia. At the time of the land claim’s launch, they were no longer a functioning or definite community. In common with other displaced indigenous peoples, they had to a large degree become assimilated in or dominated by the local pastoralist groups, and their ancient cultural practices were sporadically maintained in isolated groups. The Southern Kalahari San were comprised of disparate groups known as the ‡Khomani, |Auni, and N|amani-speaking San. In seeking out members of the various clans and families with origins in the claimed land, anthropologists working for SASI discovered at least 20 old San community members still speaking a San language confidently pronounced “dead” in the early 1970s. After further study and analysis by socio-linguist Nigel Crawhall, this ancient language was named N|u (see page 49). A dynamic cultural resource management project is under way now with the aim of recording all existing forms of San culture and encouraging ways of reincorporating them into daily life. An entire dictionary is being prepared for the language, N|u songs are being taught to children and elders, and N|u original place names are being recorded. The process of restoring the language and associated culture from a position of near-extinction is dynamic, and has great power to resonate with and empower the reviving community.

In March 1999 the first phase of the land claim was settled. It returned to the San 38,000 hectares of farming land around the confluence of the Molopo and Nossob rivers, about 50 kilometers south of what is now called the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park. The second phase of the land claim was held in abeyance for a period of two years as the scattered members of the estimated 1500 ‡Khomani San (named after the largest of the original Southern Kalahari San groupings) organized their own self-government and began the novel process of managing communally owned farms. What made this process challenging was the community’s dispersion; no central coherence remained. Elected representatives had to lead a reconstituted and “virtual” community without the benefit of past policies or practices. Many of democracy’s lessons had to be learned, and in the absence of a functioning “tribal council” or other authoritative body, legislation required the San leaders to operate in accordance with received Western notions of “representative democracy.”

A particular challenge facing those facilitating the process was difficulty in ensuring that the interests of the more “traditional,” less modern, or less educated members of the community were sufficiently protected. A significant number among the ‡Khomani San abhor the constitutional instruments required to manage their affairs. Holding meetings, recording decisions, keeping minutes, and formulating land use plans and the like in accordance with government requirements are processes totally foreign to these San who “vote with their feet,” living apart from civil society. While their existence is clearly of importance to the emerging community’s identity, ensuring that they get a fair slice of the resources and are not sidelined by their more worldly-wise and therefore more effective colleagues is an ongoing source of conflict and debate. Their supporters want the community to experience the full extent of this conflict so that a solution will emerge from its own political process and not be imposed from outside.

With community-building processes underway, negotiations recommenced in May 2001 to finalize San rights to the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park. The agreement is now close to completion, even as internal struggles continue.

In essence, what the San will achieve as a result of the emerging agreement is summarized as follows:

1. Ownership of 25,000 hectares on the Park’s southern boundary, within which they will be relatively free–within the limits of a “contract park agreement”–to carry out cultural practices, hunt, collect bush foods, and conduct ecotourism ventures. These will include walking and overnight trails, and 4×4 vehicle routes. The San accept the provision that no permanent residence will be allowed inside the Park itself.
2. Priority commercial use of the area between the owned area and the Auob river. In this zone, the ‡Khomani will be entitled, in addition to all cultural practices, to formulate and conduct ecotourism projects, with the SA National Parks Board (SANP) or other partners.
3. Symbolic and cultural use of an area comprising about one-half of the South African section of the Park–about 4,000 square kilometers in the southern section. This right means, in effect, that the San are able to use the entire region of their traditional and ancestral use for any other than commercial reasons. Groups of elders and youth, for example, may travel deep into the Park and experience the Kalahari as it was, living off the land as they once did. One or more central sites will be developed where the elders can gather regularly to travel into the vast red-duned interior of the Kalahari.
4. Commercial opportunities. The SANP has recognized that the San heritage is–and should be–inextricably linked with the identity of this section of the Kalahari, and it intends to find ways to give that notion substance. A jointly owned (San and SANP) commercial lodge at the confluence of the Auob and Nossob rivers has been agreed to in principle. The San will be employed there, not only as trackers but also in other capacities. Further commercial opportunities, where guests will be able to explore the Kalahari through the eyes and experience of the ‡Khomani San, are now being discussed.
5. A community nature park, shared between the San and their rural neighbors. The community of Mier has been agreed to in principle, covering the area between the small town of Welkom, 10 kilometers from the Park gate, and the Park itself. This nature park will provide opportunities for the sale of crafts and artwork to tourists who do not wish to engage in more arduous journeys into the Kalahari.
6. An international heritage listing will be applied for in due course to register the interaction between the ancient culture of the ‡Khomani San and the conservation of the unique Kalahari ecosystem. The Government of South Africa will thus become a stakeholder and partner in the process.

The entire ‡Khomani San/SA National Parks enterprise will be subject to a contractual “joint management” regime comprised of elected San individuals with appropriate skills as well as representatives from a council of elders who bring their deep knowledge of the traditional areas and cultural practices to the management. The plan draws on “joint management” experiences from elsewhere in the Commonwealth, as well as national parks in Australia. All parties recognize the importance of sensitivity by both the San and the national conservation authority to the cross-cultural nature of the agreement and to the importance of bridging differing worldviews and priorities.

Source: Cultural Survival

Death of one of the last remaining speakers of Khomani San language

9 January 2016, Upington – One of the last speakers of the Khomani San language, N/U – has been laid to rest at Upington in the Northern Cape.

There are no only four people in the world who can speak the language, estimated to be around 25 000 years old.

Members of the Khomani San tribe burnt herbs at the entrance of the house in Rosedale, Upington, where the funeral of the 74-year-old took place.

“This is to cleanse the place. And rid it of bad spirits,” David van Wyk, one of the members of the tribe said.

It was followed by traditional Khomani San songs and dances, which later turn into gospel music as the religious part of the funeral took place.

Then in N/U a group of children recited a poem.

Ouma Magrieta’s death on New Year’s Eve raised fears about the survival of one of the world oldest languages.

“People keep on dying. Faster than the growth of the language. It scares me,” Katriena Esau – the leader of the western Khomani San and one of the remaining speakers said.

“Long ago, we were told to be ashamed of the language and we only spoke it behind closed doors. We just started trying to get people to get their pride back.

“I’ve been trying to teach the young people at the school I manage from my house. But it’s cramped and we don’t have the right infrastructure. And so people are not eager to come,” Esau said.

Language experts were astonished a few years ago when they “rediscovered” the language long thought to have died out.

They found eight people still able to speak the language. Since then they’ve recorded some of the people in an effort to preserve the language. A children’s book – with everyday phrases – was also released.

The eight has dwindled to four – Ouma Magrieta the most recent to die.

“She wanted to teach us the language [N/U]. But then she became ill and it never happened,” her daughter Lena Ora said.

Source: News24