The Bushmen

The Bushmen

There are several Connotations given to the words San and Bushmen. Alan Barnard 2007 on p.x of his Anthropology and the Bushmen writes: “The word ‘Bushman’ is certainly not without its problems. Indeed the same can be said for the currently more politically correct term ‘San’, which historically and in the Khoekhoe dialects in which it is found has carried connotations of poverty, low status, thievery and scavenging, as well as purposeful food-gathering (that being perhaps its most literal translation).” 

Alan Barnard survives our pramana test of personal perception because he has spent some time among some Bushmen (we write the term with the capital letter it deserves). As usual, we start at the foundation. This will be covered more in detail under the section on the Evolution of Humans, but we will use only a small amount of it to create our basis here.

Remember that we only point the direction out to you. Those of you who want a firmly founded identity will go out and build your house upon a rock (Matthew 7:24-25). So, Google “Khoisan” and download what interests you, but be sure to download the article by Wiki, under the same name. What I so much like about Wiki is that all the very high-quality writings are authorless, in other words completely selfless, one of the main ingredients to get into the Kingdom of Heaven.

Wiki: Khoisan: “Khoisan /ˈkɔɪsɑːn/ KOY-sahn, or Khoe-Sān (pronounced [kxʰoesaːn]), is a catch-all term for those indigenous peoples of Southern Africa who do not speak one of the Bantu languages, combining the Khoekhoen (formerly "Hottentots") and the Sān peoples (formerly "Bushmen"). Khoisan populations speak click languages and are considered to be the historical (pre-Bantu) communities in the South African Cape region, through to Namibia, where Khoekhoe populations of Nama and Damara people are prevalent groups, and Botswana.”

We are so fortunate today that science has discovered that the mtDNA haplogroup L0 is in the southern African ancestral Khoisan and everyone – irrespective of race – who has this gene inside them. The word “Khoisan” (more correctly Khoe-Saan as in Afrikaans spelling). The Khoe-khoe and Saan were one group some 260 000 to 350 000 years to go. The MIS 5 megadrought struck this central, southern African group 130,000 years ago and the ancestral population was obliged to find survival means elsewhere. (Still from Wiki but simplified)

 It was at this time when the Khoe-Saan split came with the Sān (the macron on the a lengthens the vowel) moving southwards, where they expanded their purposeful techniques of gathering natural food. It is wrong for whites to typify this existence of the Khoekoe and San as primitive and savage as they so often, given that the Europeans did not even exist at that time.

The Khoe trekked northwards where they were not welcomed by the bearers of the haplogroup L1-6 in central and east African regions. Wiki also has a reference 13:    [Crowe, Tim (4 February 2016). “How the origin of the KhoiSan tells us that ‘race’ has no place in human history.] The Wiki writer goes on to add that this Khoe group went on to populate Europe and Asia by stating: “this group carried DNA from Eurasian as well as some Neandertal groups.” 

The convenient part of the Khoe-Sān protogroup eventually found its way into South Africa whence they spread out of the country and eventually made their way to the Cape region. From here they will meet up with their other lineage, the Khoe again sometime later when the Khoe-khoe entered South Africa about 300 years BCE (before the common era).

  We have only used the term Khoe-Sān to show that the Bushmen and Khoe-khoe had a common origin which is why they both speak the rare click language. Bushmen were so-called by the Dutch as “Bosjesmans” because they did not have actual homes. They couldn’t because - especially in the Kalahari where they had to continually go for food after they had left enough for more to grow and serve them on their return.

Yes, their women foraged for roots, berries and other edible foodstuff while the men tried to hunt a wild animal. And, yes, they sought out a bush or a cave because it was senseless to have the block houses like the 17th century and onward imperialists had. [Imperialists are people who practice, or advocate the policy of extending the power and dominion of a nation esp. by direct territorial acquisitions or by gaining indirect control over the political or economic life of other areas; broadly: the extension or imposition of power, authority, or influence. Merriam-Webster Dictionary] Aside: It sounds to me as just another word for colonists, settlers or conquistadors.

So, of all the pejorative [disparaging or belittling] names given to San or Bushmen, they accepted Bushmen as being the closest - in Enlightened terms – that resembled their way of life. But with the Khoikhoi, having become pastoralists [people of a social organization based on livestock raising as the primary economic activity. Merriam-Webster Dictionary] and calling themselves Khoikhoi (Khoekhoe) [superior men because they owned livestock and did not have to wander in search of food and the Bushmen], added this negativity to the white man’s blind-sided view of the San as also being “connotations of poverty, low status, thievery and scavenging.” 

Writer Megan Biesele who would like to ‘ennoble’ the word Bushmen notes “One Ju/’hoan leader made the ‘Bushmen’ preference to ‘San” at a community meeting in 1991, the year after Namibia’s independence, while his brother at the same meeting said he ‘never wanted to hear the term [San] used again in post-apartheid Namibia’. Many at the meeting had never heard the word ‘San’, and no one present argued in favour of its use.” In: Alan Barnard  2007: Anthropology and the bushman p.7

Let us end by asking: “What do the Bushmen call themselves?” Let us first apply the Perception Pranama and test the validity of our source:

“We have crossed this desert three times, my family and I, on three expeditions, which usually numbered between ten and fourteen people and included my father, my mother, my brother, and myself, as well as several other Europeans who were linguists, zoologists, botanists; or archaeologists; sent by universities of the Union of South Africa (probably University of South Africa, UNISA), England, or the United States, as well as four or five Bantu men - several interpreters, a cook, and a mechanic - who were the staff. 

We usually travelled in four big trucks and jeeps and had to carry all our food and water, gasoline, and equipment in supplies to last us for several months. We crossed great drought areas, once crossing four hundred miles of the central desert of Bechuanaland where there was no water at all, and once travelling every day for two weeks into an unmapped part of the desert of South-West Africa, close to the Bechuanaland border, where we found a waterhole and refilled our empty drums. All this was to film and study the life and customs of the people of the Kalahari, who are called the Bushmen.”

Elizabeth Marshall Thomas 1959: The Harmless People  p.19

She was nineteen years old when Elizabeth Thomas started out on their missions and afterwards in 1979 wrote this book which has to this day never stopped selling. She was not only untainted by the downgrading racism of the time, she even brought her non-discriminating family along. 

They came with their Western resources but soon came to realise how ill-equipped the Western one-sided view of the Bushmen's existence was. They were experiencing a touch of it themselves. Why? All for the madness “of filming and studying the life and customs of the people of the Kalahari, who are called the Bushmen.” Quite different to the 97% white-written books concocted in a fancy study using the hearsay of other biased people some of whom (like Jan van Riebeeck in 1647) had not even seen an indigene in his eight-day stop with a fleet of twelve ships but called them ‘brutes, savages who cannot be trusted at all.’

But how long were they with the Bushmen?

The back cover of the David Philip Africasouth Paperbacks 1988 Print says that Elizabeth Thomas and her family spent four years in all in the Kalahari to study the life of the hunting-and-gathering Bushmen. What does Thomas herself say about this enigmatic community of J/wasi Sān?

“We have visited four of the Bushman language groups, two of which we stayed with for long periods of time. In 1951, after a survey expedition to learn where Bushmen could be found, we went into the Nyae Nyae area of South-West Africa, close to the border of Bechuanaland, to look for Kung Bushmen. We found a band living near a waterhole, as it was June, the drought of the year, and we stayed with them for four months. 

“At first only a few Bushmen were there. but as the news spread that we were friendly, more and more people came to visit us and receive presents of tobacco and salt, for Bushmen love to smoke but rarely have tobacco, which they get in trade. Also, most of the Bushmen had never seen a European before, none had ever seen a European woman, and they came by dozens to sit together in a cluster at a distance to observe my mother and me. By the end of our stay, we had become friendly with them, and in 1952 we visited them again. 

“We found them waiting confidently for us, living beside the track our trucks had made, as we had told them that we would come back if we were able, and this time we stayed with them for a year. In August 1955 we returned to them again, but before we did so we spent four months in Bechuanaland. We lived one month with a group of Naron and Kõ Bushmen at a place called Okwa (the two groups were mixed together because their territories happened to meet at that place), and almost two months with Gikwe Bushmen in the four-hundred-mile stretch of empty desert between Ghanzi, near the border of South-West Africa, and Molepolole, near the border of the Transvaal.

Elizabeth Marshall Thomas 1959: The Harmless People  p.24

Let’s bring in some spirituality, the highest form of Truth. The back cover begins with a very short extract from a review of the book by The New York Times:  ‘... the study of a ...people which, for the beauty of both style and concept, would be hard to match ...” 

The beautiful style of Marshall is simple, unpretentious, and easy for anyone who can read to relate to. She also has a beautiful concept of the Bushmen, telling everything as it is which gives the reader access to people living in the Kingdom of Heaven rather than in the hell of savage brutes that the ignorant West typifies them.

It is, however the word beauty that conjures up one of the four trinities Jesus speaks about in the Gospel of the Holy Twelve and The Gospel of the Nazarenes (both freely downloadable). 

The word trinity is made of tri, meaning three and unity, one and therefore trinity means that the parts (three) are closely interrelated to each other. The second Trinity Jesus says is made up of Truth, Goodness and Beauty. What does this mean? It means that when you tell the whole Truth and nothing but the Truth, it will always be beautiful and filled with goodness. In a trinity, if you mention the one, the other two would automatically be linked to it. Here we have beauty being used to describe this wonderful book which calls up the other two.

Okay so let’s conclude with what the Bushmen call themselves:

“So the distinction between people was caused by the great god, and the Bushmen, who want only to be left in peace, do not compete in issues which they cannot win. They are only frightened by other people and hope to be spared their attention. Kung Bushmen call all strangers zhu dole, which means “stranger" but, literally, “dangerous person"; they call all non-Bushmen zo si, which means "animals without hooves," because, they say, non-Bushmen are angry and dangerous like lions and hyenas. 

But Kung Bushmen call themselves zhu twa si, the harmless people. Twa means “just" or "only" in the sense that you say: "It was just the wind” or “It is only me.”

Elizabeth Marshall Thomas 1959: The Harmless People  p.34

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