1.3 THE KHOISAN - a brief history of dispossession, subjugation and reclamation

1.3.2 The Early Inhabitants

South Africa is rich in fossil evidence of the evolutionary history of the human family, going back several million years. From the discovery of the Taung child in 1924 to the more recent discoveries of hominid fossils at the Sterkontein cave, which was recently declared a World Heritage Site, South Africa has been at the forefront of palaeontological research into the origins of humanity. Modern humans have lived in the region for over 100 000 years.

The small, migrant groups of Stone Stage hunter-gatherers, who created a wealth of rock art, were the ancestors of the KhoeKhoe and the San of historical times. These early inhabitants were referred to as pastoralists (initially herding sheep and cattle) and hunter-gatherers, who “adapted to local environments and were scattered across the sub-continent… between modern-day Namibia up to the Eastern Cape (along the coastline)” .

The arrival of the Nguni-speaking agro-pastoralists marked the introduction of an Iron Age culture and domesticated crops. Some authors argue that the effect of contact between the two groups precipitated the diminishing of the KhoiSan way of life, although this period was not notably characterised by open warfare between the groups. The European colonizers who arrived in the 17th century attempted to annihilate the KhoiSan and a better understanding of this contact between Europeans and KhoiSan is only possible within the “context of colonial dispossession, indigenous resistance and slavery as a method of warfare” inflicted on the indigenous people.

For Abrahams this subjugation and the introduction of slavery subsequently became the determinant, if not the structural foundation of “relations between Black people and White people” . The influence and impact of missionary activity and its “civilising mission” during this period of KhoiSan dispossession cannot be underestimated in these foundations of South Africa's race relations.

Chief Basil Matthys Coetzee of the Cochqua writes in a paper entitled Die KhoiSan se Identiteit (The KhoiSan Identity) presented at the National KhoiSan Consultative Conference, Oudtshoorn in 2001:

“The KhoiSan were regarded by these Europeans as 'heathens' that did not fit into the society that was now formed in the Cape…. more and more (KhoiSan) were baptized and became Christians (and) were not allowed to continue practicing their own culture… accepting a Christian name… they were subjected to the European culture and lifestyle…. Their religion and practices superseded by those of the Church… they worked on farms owned by the Dutch…. (lived) at the mission stations… (and) as more missionaries arrived… this process of alienating people from their identity increased.”

In introducing the history of the KhoiSan and further cementing the injustices meted to the KhoiSan through centuries of colonial conquest and distorted imagery, two articles are worth noting: firstly, Paul Lane's article titled Breaking the Mould? Exhibiting KhoiSan in Southern African Museums which captures succinctly the history of the subjugation of the KhoiSan and secondly, a speech by the then Deputy President of South Africa, which outlines key issues pertaining to the KhoiSan as part of government's programme of redress.

Paul Lane wrote this article having previewed the Miscast exhibition on the KhoiSan at the South African National Art gallery in Cape Town:

“The encounter between the KhoiSan peoples of Southern Africa and Europeans was an occasion as barbaric as any of the experiences of the Native American peoples or Australian Aborigines in similar circumstances. For over three hundred years the Dutch, British, Portuguese and later Afrikaner colonists took KhoiSan for slavery, sport or exhibition, and measured , dissected and gazed upon KhoiSan bodies in the names of Medical Science and Anthropology. This relationship was not entirely one-sided, and a number of Khoi and San groups resisted colonial expansion through raids… and open rebellion. Whereas the leaders of some of these movements, such as Adam Kok and Simon Kopper, are increasingly regarded as folk heroes by their surviving descendants, history has been curiously silent about such figures. None of the African resistance movements makes reference to such leaders, and it is only recently that historians have begun the task of documenting their lives and causes of their consequences.”

In his keynote address at the opening ceremony of the National KhoiSan Consultative Conference in March 2001, the then Deputy President of the Republic of South Africa, Jacob Zuma, acknowledges that

“….(it was) the Khoi-Khoi in the Cape who waged the first wars of resistance against the colonial onslaught of the 17th century… the history of the struggle against colonialism cannot be complete until we record the stories of heroes such as KhoiSan leader Autshumato, the first political prisoner on Robben Island and the only man to escape from the island and survive… We are also moved by the tale of the chief of the San who chose to take his own life rather than surrender himself to the Voortrekkers…”

He goes on further to speak of the successful land restitution process of the Khomani and the Griquas in the Northern Cape, KhoiSan heritage sites of significance, such as rock engravings and paintings on private farmland that need to be protected and maintained, KhoiSan skeletons still housed in South African museums, the feasibility study by the Department of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology on the establishment of multi-purpose community centres in rural KhoiSan communities, work by the Wits Rock Art research Institute and the role of the Pan South African Language Board in preserving and promoting indigenous languages. He also states that “the /Xam language records, written down for the first time in the 1870s, are so important that they have been listed in UNESCO's memory of the World Project.”

These two articles begin to lay bare the fundamentals that should inform the envisaged development in Hankey with respect to content and narrative, ie. the KhoiSan culture; the universalism of their subjugation and dispossession as indigenous peoples throughout historical epochs with specific reference to the politics of race and gender; centuries of resistance to this subjugation; issues of cultural significance and value; and their intangible heritage, for example language, which can best serve to illustrate the cultural differences between the KhoiSan and Nguni-speaking Xhosa people. With respect to these themes, the Centre must however not only attach itself to the past, but must also holistically align itself with the present and future.