The Khoisan: South Africa’s First People and Their Way of Life
PS
The Khoisan (Khoesan)
There are different concepts of the Khoisan. We have given you a view of who the Khoikhoi, the original group were. In: Andrew Hofmeyr’s Discover South African Culture: Who are the Ancient Khoisan People? on page 1 he says: “The San [Khoe or Khoi] were hunter-gatherers who maintained a close relationship with the environment, needing to read the signs of nature to survive. They traditionally relied on gathering wild fruits and plants, as well as hunting wild game, and therefore led a nomadic lifestyle. It is agreed that the San hunter-gatherers were the first people of South Africa. Paleo anthropologists believe that the San were living in South Africa about 20,000 years before any other groups.”
The group split and some 20 000 to 30 000 years ago came into what is called South Africa today. They spread all over South Africa as the evidence of their art over this same period in South Africa indicates. The word Sān is thought of as foragers in the Kalahari and regions of Botswana, Namibia, Angola, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, and Northern South Africa. All these groups picked things from the ground and did not own livestock.
As such, it [Sān] was used in reference to all hunter-gatherer populations who came into contact with Khoekhoe-speaking communities and was largely referring to the lifestyle, distinct from a pastoralist or agriculturalist one, and not to any particular ethnicity. While there is attendant cosmologies and languages associated with this way of life, the term is an economic designator rather than a cultural or ethnic one.
With the entry of the Khoikhoi [Men of Men] around 300 CE, these two groups would not even recognise themselves as the same, if it were not that they spoke a similar click language. Their ways of life were different so there was no reason for mixing except where they would be looking for a mate.
When the huge herds of livestock of the Khoikhoi would drive away the wildlife of animals, the Sān would simply hunt an ox or sheep. This would cause an altercation which was summarily resolved. The Sān person may be put in charge of a part of the livestock he had raided.
The feeling between the two peoples was in general one of intense animosity, though there were occasional instances of a kind of compact between a Hottentot [Khoikhoi] tribe and the Bushmen in its neighbourhood, under which the former provided food in times of great distress, and the latter acted as scouts and gave warning of any approaching danger. This was only the case, however, when the Bushmen were so reduced in number as to be incapable of carrying on war.
George McCall Theal: History and Ethnography 1907: Hottentots, p.35
Another way of existing when the wild animals took off to the north, was for the Sān to partake of seafood such as whales, seals and such like thrown out by the sea. They also picked off mussels and other seafood from the rocks. Catching fish was another way of acquiring food for the family.
The Sān group was also a framework where Khoikhoi who had either been kicked out or left voluntarily would make its way. The eldest son of a Khoikhoi tribe inherited everything when the father died. The other sons were left disowned unless the heir was reciprocal. The Khoikhoi entities had an inclined love for liberty so that the brothers who were left uncared for, could go out on their own. The Sān racial entities and anatomical inclinations were not much different to the Khoikhoi, so, the Sān was the obvious group for the freedom seekers.
In the Sān group, the women collected all the plants, berries, bulbs, and fruits while the men had to take care to bring in the flesh. They did not care about having a pastoral life as is thought of the Sān in Botswana where they 10 000 years ago acquired the keeping of cattle, sheep, and goats.
When Vasco da Gama went ashore at St. Helena Bay on 8th November 1497, he found Khoi-Sān people who did not have any livestock.
On 14th December 1601, Joris van Spilbergen describes the people of the Cape of Good Hope as “yellowish in colour, like mulattoes, very ugly of countenance, of middling stature, lean and thin of body, and very fast runners, having a very strange speech, clucking like turkeys. Their clothing is the skins of deer or other animals, worn like cloaks.” R. Raven-Hart: Before Van Riebeeck, Struik, 1967 p.28
In the above, some 100 years after Da Gama, they came across seven men and a woman who did not respond with requested livestock for the whole period they were anchored at Table Bay. A Mulat is a child born of a black and a white parent.
Autshumao (Harry) had a group of about 40 people of whom he was the head. They, too, did not have any cattle or sheep.
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