The San speak, or their ancestors spoke, languages of theKhoe,Tuu, andKxʼa language families, and can be defined as a people only in contrast to neighboring pastoralists such as theKhoekhoe and descendants of more recent waves of immigration such as theBantu,Europeans, andSouth Asians.[citation needed]
In 2017, Botswana was home to approximately 63,500 San, making it the country with the highest proportion of San people at 2.8%.[6] 71,201 San people were enumerated in Namibia in 2023, making it the country with the second highest proportion of San people at 2.4%.[1]
The term "San" comes from theKhoekhoe language, where it has a long vowel and is spelledSān. It means "foragers" and is used in a derogatory manner to describe people too poor to have cattle. Based on their hunter-gatherer lifestyle, the term has been applied to speakers of three distinct language families living between theOkavango River in Botswana andEtosha National Park in northwesternNamibia, extending up into southernAngola; central peoples of most ofNamibia and Botswana, extending intoZambia andZimbabwe; and the southern people in the centralKalahari towards theMolopo River, who together with the Khoekhoe are the last remnants of the previously extensive indigenous peoples of southern Africa.[7]
The designations "Bushmen" and "San" are bothexonyms. The San have no collective word for themselves in their own languages. "San" comes from a derogatoryKhoekhoe word used to refer to foragers without cattle or other wealth, from a rootsaa "picking up from the ground" + plural-n in theHaiǁom dialect.[8][9]
"Bushmen" is the older cover term, but "San" was widely adopted in the West by the late 1990s. The termBushmen, from 17th-century DutchBosjesmans, is still used by others and to self-identify, but is now considered pejorative or derogatory by many South Africans.[10][11][12] In 2008, the use ofboesman (the modernAfrikaans equivalent of "Bushman") in theDie Burger newspaper was brought before theEquality Court. The San Council testified that it had no objection to its use in a positive context, and the court ruled that the use of the term was not derogatory.[13]
The San refer to themselves as their individual nations, such asǃKung (also spelledǃXuun, including theJuǀʼhoansi),ǀXam,Nǁnǂe (part of the ǂKhomani),Kxoe (Khwe and ǁAni),Haiǁom,Ncoakhoe,Tshuwau,Gǁana and Gǀui (ǀGwi), etc.[14][15][16][17][18] Representatives of San peoples in 2003 stated their preference for the use of such individual group names, where possible, over the use of the collective termSan.[19]
Adoption of the Khoekhoe termSan in Western anthropology dates to the 1970s, and this remains the standard term in English-language ethnographic literature, although some authors later switched back to using the nameBushmen.[7][20] The compoundKhoisan is used to refer to the pastoralist Khoi and the foraging San collectively. It was coined by Leonhard Schulze in the 1920s and popularized byIsaac Schapera in 1930. Anthropological use ofSan was detached from the compoundKhoisan,[21]as it has been reported that the exonymSan is perceived as a pejorative in parts of the central Kalahari.[22] By the late 1990s, the termSan was used generally by the people themselves.[23] The adoption of the term was preceded by a number of meetings held in the 1990s where delegates debated on the adoption of a collective term.[24][25] These meetings included the Common Access to Development Conference organized by theGovernment of Botswana held inGaborone in 1993,[17] the 1996 inaugural Annual General Meeting of the Working Group of Indigenous Minorities in Southern Africa (WIMSA) held in Namibia,[26] and a 1997 conference inCape Town on "Khoisan Identities and Cultural Heritage" organized by theUniversity of the Western Cape.[27] The termSan is now standard in South African, and used officially in the blazon of thenational coat-of-arms. The "South African San Council" representing San communities in South Africa was established as part of WIMSA in 2001.[28][29]
The termBasarwa (singularMosarwa) is used for the San collectively in Botswana.[30][31][32] Themo-/ba-noun class prefixes are used for people; the older variantMasarwa, with thele-/ma- prefixes used for disreputable people and animals, is offensive and was changed at independence.[27][33]
In Angola, they are sometimes referred to asmucancalas,[34] orbosquímanos (aPortuguese adaptation of theDutch term for "Bushmen"). The termsAmasili andBatwa are sometimes used for them inZimbabwe.[27]The San are also referred to asBatwa byXhosa people and asBaroa bySotho people.[35] The Bantu termBatwa refers to any foraging tribesmen and as such overlaps with the terminology used for the"Pygmoid"Southern Twa of South-Central Africa.
The hunter-gatherer San are among the oldest cultures on Earth,[36] and are thought to be descended from the first inhabitants of what is now Botswana and South Africa. The historical presence of the San in Botswana is particularly evident in northern Botswana'sTsodilo Hills region. San were traditionallysemi-nomadic, moving seasonally within certain defined areas based on the availability of resources such as water,game animals, and edible plants.[37] Peoples related to or similar to the San occupied the southern shores throughout the eastern shrubland and may have formed aSangoan continuum from theRed Sea to theCape of Good Hope.[38] Early San society left arich legacy of cave paintings across Southern Africa.[39]: 11–12
In theBantu expansion (2000 BC–1000 AD), San were driven off their ancestral lands or incorporated byBantu speaking groups.[39]: 11–12 The San were believed to have closer connections to the old spirits of the land, and were often turned to by other societies for rainmaking, as was the case atMapungubwe. Sanshamans would enter a trance and go into the spirit world themselves to capture the animals associated with rain.[40]
By the end of the 18th century after the arrival of the Dutch, thousands of San had been killed and forced to work for the colonists. TheBritish tried to "civilize" the San and make them adopt a more agricultural lifestyle, but were not successful. By the 1870s, the last San of the Cape were hunted to extinction, while other San were able to survive. The South African government used to issue licenses for people to hunt the San, with the last one being reportedly issued in Namibia in 1936.[41]
From the 1950s through to the 1990s, San communities switched to farming because of government-mandated modernization programs. Despite the lifestyle changes, they have provided a wealth of information inanthropology andgenetics. One broad study of Africangenetic diversity, completed in 2009, found that the genetic diversity of the San was among the top five of all 121 sampled populations.[42][43][44] Certain San groups are one of 14 known extant "ancestral population clusters"; that is, "groups of populations with common genetic ancestry, who share ethnicity and similarities in both their culture and the properties of their languages".[43]
Despite some positive aspects of government development programs reported by members of San andBakgalagadi communities in Botswana, many have spoken of a consistent sense of exclusion from government decision-making processes, and many San and Bakgalagadi have alleged experiencingethnic discrimination on the part of the government.[37]: 8–9 TheUnited States Department of State described ongoing discrimination against San, orBasarwa, people in Botswana in 2013 as the "principal human rights concern" of that country.[45]: 1
Drinking water from the bi bulb plantStarting a fire by handPreparing poison arrowsSan man
The Sankinship system reflects their history as traditionally small mobile foraging bands. San kinship is similar toInuit kinship, which uses the same set of terms as in European cultures but adds a name rule and an age rule for determining what terms to use. The age rule resolves any confusion arising from kinship terms, as the older of two people always decides what to call the younger. Relatively few names circulate (approximately 35 names per sex), and each child is named after a grandparent or another relative, but never their parents.[citation needed]
Children have no social duties besides playing, and leisure is very important to San of all ages. Large amounts of time are spent in conversation, joking, music, and sacred dances. Women may be leaders of their own family groups. They may also make important family and group decisions and claim ownership of water holes and foraging areas. Women are mainly involved in the gathering of food, but sometimes also partake in hunting.[46]
Water is important in San life. During long droughts, they make use of sip wells in order to collect water. To make a sip well, a San scrapes a deep hole where the sand is damp, and inserts a long hollow grass stem into the hole. An emptyostrich egg is used to collect the water. Water is sucked into the straw from the sand, into the mouth, and then travels down another straw into the ostrich egg.[46]
Traditionally, the San were an egalitarian society.[47] Although they had hereditarychiefs, their authority was limited. The San made decisions among themselves byconsensus, with women treated as relative equals in decision making.[48] San economy was agift economy, based on giving each other gifts regularly rather than on trading or purchasing goods and services.[49]
As of 1994, about 95% of San relationships weremonogamous.[50]
Villages range in sturdiness from nightly rain shelters in the warm spring (when people move constantly in search of budding greens), to formalized rings, wherein people congregate in the dry season around permanent waterholes. Early spring is the hardest season: a hot dry period following the cool, dry winter. Most plants still are dead or dormant, and supplies of autumn nuts are exhausted. Meat is particularly important in the dry months when wildlife cannot range far from the receding waters.[citation needed]
Women gather fruit, berries, tubers, bush onions, and other plant materials for the band's consumption.Ostrich eggs are gathered, and the empty shells are used as water containers. Insects provide perhaps 10% of animal proteins consumed, most often during the dry season.[51] Depending on location, the San consume 18 to 104 species, including grasshoppers, beetles, caterpillars, moths, butterflies, and termites.[52]
Women's traditional gathering gear is simple and effective: a hide sling, a blanket, a cloak called akaross to carry foods, firewood, smaller bags, a digging stick, and perhaps, a smaller version of thekaross to carry a baby.[citation needed]
Wandering hunters (Masarwa Bushmen), North Kalahari desert, published in 1892 (fromH. A. Bryden photogr.)
A set of tools almost identical to that used by the modern San and dating to 42,000 BC was discovered atBorder Cave inKwaZulu-Natal in 2012.[54]
In 2006, what is thought to be the world's oldest ritual is interpreted as evidence which would make the San culture the oldest still practiced culture today.[55][56][57][58]
Historical evidence shows that certain San communities have always lived in the desert regions of the Kalahari; however, eventually nearly all other San communities in southern Africa were forced into this region. The Kalahari San remained in poverty where their richer neighbours denied them rights to the land. Before long, in both Botswana and Namibia, they found their territory drastically reduced.[59]
VariousY chromosome studies show that the San carry some of the most divergent (earliest branching)human Y-chromosome haplogroups. These haplogroups are specific sub-groups of haplogroupsA andB, the two earliest branches on the human Y-chromosometree.[60][61][62]
Mitochondrial DNA studies also provide evidence that the San carry high frequencies of the earliesthaplogroup branches in the human mitochondrial DNA tree. This DNA is inherited only from one's mother. The most divergent (earliest branching) mitochondrial haplogroup,L0d, has been identified at its highest frequencies in the southern African San groups.[60][63][64][65]
In a study published in March 2011, Brenna Henn and colleagues found that the ǂKhomani San, as well as theSandawe andHadza peoples ofTanzania, were the most genetically diverse of any living humans studied. This high degree of genetic diversity hints at the origin ofanatomically modern humans.[66][67]
A 2008 study suggested that the San may have been isolated from other original ancestral groups for as much as 50,000 to 100,000 years and later rejoined, re-integrating into the rest of the human gene pool.[68]
A DNA study of fully sequenced genomes, published in September 2016, showed that the ancestors of today's San hunter-gatherers began to diverge from other human populations in Africa about 200,000 years ago and were fully isolated by 100,000 years ago.[69]
According to professorsRobert K. Hitchcock, Wayne A. Babchuk, "In 1652, when Europeans established a full-time presence in Southern Africa, there were some 300,000 San and 600,000Khoekhoe in Southern Africa. During the early phases of European colonization, tens of thousands ofKhoekhoe and San peoples lost their lives as a result of genocide, murder, physical mistreatment, and disease. There were cases of "Bushman hunting" in which commandos (mobileparamilitary units or posses) sought to dispatch San andKhoekhoe in various parts of Southern Africa.[70]
Muchaboriginal people's land in Botswana, including land occupied by the San people (orBasarwa), was conquered during colonization. Loss of land and access to natural resources continued after Botswana's independence.[37]: 2 The San have been particularly affected by encroachment by majority peoples and non-indigenous farmers onto their traditional land. Government policies from the 1970s transferred a significant area of traditionally San land to majorityagro-pastoralist tribes andwhite settlers.[37]: 15 Much of the government's policy regarding land tended to favor the dominantTswana peoples over the minority San andBakgalagadi.[37]: 2 Loss of land is a major contributor to the problems facing Botswana's indigenous people, including especially the San's eviction from theCentral Kalahari Game Reserve.[37]: 2 The government of Botswana decided to relocate all of those living within the reserve to settlements outside it. Harassment of residents, dismantling of infrastructure, and bans on hunting appear to have been used to induce residents to leave.[37]: 16 The government has denied that any of the relocation was forced.[71] A legal battle followed.[72] The relocation policy may have been intended to facilitate diamond mining byGem Diamonds within the reserve.[37]: 18
Hoodia gordonii, used by the San, was patented by the South AfricanCouncil for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in 1998, for its presumed appetite suppressing quality, although, according to a 2006 review, no published scientific evidence supported hoodia as an appetite suppressant in humans.[73] A licence was granted toPhytopharm, for development of the active ingredient in theHoodia plant, p57 (glycoside), to be used as a pharmaceutical drug for dieting. Once this patent was brought to the attention of the San, a benefit-sharing agreement was reached between them and the CSIR in 2003. This would award royalties to the San for the benefits of their indigenous knowledge.[74] During the case, the San people were represented and assisted by the Working Group of Indigenous Minorities in Southern Africa (WIMSA), the South African San Council and the South African San Institute.[28][29]
This benefit-sharing agreement is one of the first to give royalties to the holders of traditional knowledge used for drug sales. The terms of the agreement are contentious, because of their apparent lack of adherence to the Bonn Guidelines on Access to Genetic Resources and Benefit Sharing, as outlined in theConvention on Biological Diversity (CBD).[75] The San have yet to profit from this agreement, as P57 has still not yet been legally developed and marketed.[citation needed]
The San of theKalahari were first brought to the globalized world's attention in the 1950s by South African authorLaurens van der Post. Van der Post grew up in South Africa, and had a respectful lifelong fascination with native African cultures. In 1955, he was commissioned by theBBC to go to the Kalahari desert with a film crew in search of the San. The filmed material was turned into a very popular six-part television documentary a year later. Driven by a lifelong fascination with this "vanished tribe", Van der Post published a 1958 book about this expedition, entitledThe Lost World of the Kalahari. It was to be his most famous book.[citation needed]
In 1961, he publishedThe Heart of the Hunter, a narrative which he admits in the introduction uses two previous works of stories and mythology as "a sort of Stone Age Bible", namelySpecimens of Bushman Folklore' (1911),collected byWilhelm H. I. Bleek andLucy C. Lloyd, andDorothea Bleek'sMantis and His Friend. Van der Post's work brought indigenous African cultures to millions of people around the world for the first time, but some people disparaged it as part of the subjective view of a European in the 1950s and 1960s, stating that he branded the San as simple "children of Nature" or even "mystical ecologists".[citation needed]In 1992 by John Perrot and team published the bookBush for the Bushman – a"desperate plea" on behalf of the aboriginal San addressing the international community and calling on the governments throughout Southern Africa to respect and reconstitute the ancestral land-rights of all San.[citation needed]
John Marshall, the son ofHarvard anthropologistLorna Marshall, documented the lives of San in theNyae Nyae region ofNamibia over a period spanning more than 50-years. His early filmThe Hunters, shows a giraffe hunt.A Kalahari Family (2002) is a series documenting 50 years in the lives of theJuǀʼhoansi of Southern Africa, from 1951 to 2000. Marshall was a vocal proponent of the San cause throughout his life.[76] His sisterElizabeth Marshall Thomas wrote several books and numerous articles about the San, based in part on her experiences living with these people when their culture was still intact.The Harmless People, published in 1959, andThe Old Way: A Story of the First People, published in 2006, are two of them. John Marshall and Adrienne Miesmer documented the lives of the ǃKung San people between the 1950s and 1978 inNǃai, the Story of a ǃKung Woman.[77][78] This film, the account of a woman who grew up while the San lived as autonomous hunter-gatherers, but who later was forced into a dependent life in the government-created community at Tsumkwe, shows how the lives of theǃKung people, who lived for millennia as hunter gatherers, were forever changed when they were forced onto a reservation too small to support them.[79]
South African film-maker Richard Wicksteed has produced a number of documentaries on San culture, history and present situation; these includeIn God's Places /Iindawo ZikaThixo (1995) on the San cultural legacy in the southern Drakensberg;Death of a Bushman (2002) on the murder of San tracker Optel Rooi by South African police;The Will To Survive (2009), which covers the history and situation of San communities in southern Africa today; andMy Land is My Dignity (2009) on the San's epic land rights struggle in Botswana'sCentral Kalahari Game Reserve.[citation needed]
A documentary on San hunting entitled,The Great Dance: A Hunter's Story (2000), directed by Damon andCraig Foster. This was reviewed byLawrence Van Gelder for theNew York Times, who said that the film "constitutes an act of preservation and a requiem."[80]
The BBC'sThe Life of Mammals (2003) series includes video footage of an indigenous San of the Kalahari desert undertaking apersistence hunt of akudu through harsh desert conditions.[81] It provides an illustration of how early man may have pursued and captured prey with minimal weaponry.
The BBC seriesHow Art Made the World (2005) comparesSan cave paintings from 200 years ago toPaleolithic European paintings that are 14,000 years old.[82] Because of their similarities, the San works may illustrate the reasons for ancient cave paintings. The presenterNigel Spivey draws largely on the work of ProfessorDavid Lewis-Williams,[83] whose PhD was entitled "Believing and Seeing: Symbolic meanings in southern San rock paintings". Lewis-Williams draws parallels with prehistoric art around the world, linking in shamanic ritual and trance states.
A 1969 film,Lost in the Desert, features a small boy, stranded in the desert, who encounters a group of wandering San. They help him and then abandon him as a result of a misunderstanding created by the lack of a common language and culture. The film was directed byJamie Uys, who returned to the San a decade later withThe Gods Must Be Crazy, which proved to be an international hit. This comedy portrays a Kalahari San group's first encounter with anartifact from the outside world (aCoca-Cola bottle). By the time this movie was made, the ǃKung had recently been forced into sedentary villages, and the San hired as actors were confused by the instructions to act out inaccurate exaggerations of their almost abandoned hunting and gathering life.[84]
"Eh Hee" byDave Matthews Band was written as an evocation of the music and culture of the San. In a story told to theRadio City audience (an edited version of which appears on the DVD version ofLive at Radio City), Matthews recalls hearing the music of the San and, upon asking his guide what the words to their songs were, being told that "there are no words to these songs, because these songs, we've been singing since before people had words." He goes on to describe the song as his "homage to meeting... the most advanced people on the planet."
Rock engraving of a giraffe in Twyfelfontein valley
InPeter Godwin's biographyWhen A Crocodile Eats the Sun, he mentions his time spent with the San for an assignment. His title comes from the San's belief that a solar eclipse occurs when a crocodile eats the sun.[citation needed]
Laurens van der Post's two novels,A Story Like The Wind (1972) and its sequel,A Far Off Place (1974), made into a1993 film, are about a white boy encountering a wandering San and his wife, and how the San's life and survival skills save the white teenagers' lives in a journey across the desert.[citation needed]
InWilbur Smith's novelThe Burning Shore (an instalment in theCourtneys of Africa book series), the San people are portrayed through two major characters, O'wa and H'ani; Smith describes the San's struggles, history, and beliefs in great detail. San characters also appear in many of his other books, often working as trackers and guides for Smith's main characters.[citation needed]
Norman Rush's 1991 novelMating features an encampment of Basarwa near the (imaginary) Botswana town where the main action is set.[citation needed]
Tad Williams's epicOtherland series of novels features a South African San named ǃXabbu, whom Williams confesses to be highly fictionalized, and not necessarily an accurate representation. In the novel, Williams invokes aspects of San mythology and culture.[citation needed]
In 2007,David Gilman publishedThe Devil's Breath. One of the main characters, a small San boy named ǃKoga, uses traditional methods to help the character Max Gordon travel across Namibia.[citation needed]
The San feature in several of the novels by Michael Stanley (thenom de plume of Michael Sears and Stanley Trollip), particularly inDeath of the Mantis.[citation needed]
InChristopher Hope's bookDarkest England, the San hero, David Mungo Booi, is tasked by his fellow tribesmen with asking the Queen for the protection once promised, and to evaluate the possibility of creating a colony on the island. He discovered England in the manner of 19th century Western explorers.[citation needed]
^"WIMSA Annual Report 2004-05". WIMSA. p. 58. Archived fromthe original on 18 March 2014. Retrieved18 March 2014.the term 'San' comes from the Haiǁom language and has been abbreviated in the following way ... Saa – Picking things up (food) from the ground (i.e. 'gathering'), Saab – A male person gathering, Saas – A female person gathering, Saan – Many people gathering, San – One way to write 'all of the people gathering'
^"The old Dutch also did not know that their so-called Hottentots formed only one branch of a wide-spread race, of which the other branch divided into ever so many tribes, differing from each other totally in language [...] While the so-called Hottentots called themselves Khoikhoi (men of men,i.e. menpar excellence), they called those other tribesSā, the Sonqua of the Cape Records [...] We should apply the termHottentot to the whole race, and call the two families, each by the native name, that is the one, theKhoikhoi, the so-calledHottentot proper; the other theSan (Sā) orBushmen." – Theophilus Hahn,Tsuni-ǁGoam: The Supreme Being to the Khoi-Khoi (1881), p. 3.
^"Use of the word 'boesman' not hate speech, court finds".Mail & Guardian. 11 April 2008.Schroeder, Fatima (14 April 2008)."Court: Use of 'boesman' not hate speech".IOL. "Objectively speaking and taking into account the context in which (Die Burger) published the word 'boesman' and the evidence of the San Council witness, I find that the usage of the word did not cause harm, hostility or hatred. Instead, the San Council's representative was adamant that no hurt or harm was caused to them or the San community with the manner in which (Die Burger) published the word 'boesman'."
^Lee, Richard B. and Daly, Richard Heywood (1999)The Cambridge Encyclopedia of -Hunters and Gatherers, Cambridge University Press,ISBN052157109X
^Sailer, Steve (20 June 2002)."Feature: Name game – 'Inuit' or 'Eskimo'?".UPI."The fashion of renaming the Bushmen of Southwestern Africa as the 'San' exemplifies many of the problems with the name game. University of Utah anthropologistHenry Harpending, who has lived with the famous tongue-clicking hunter-gatherers said, 'In the 1970s the name "San" spread in Europe and America because it seemed to be politically correct, while 'Bushmen' sounded derogatory and sexist.' Unfortunately, the hunter-gatherers never actually had a collective name for themselves in any of their own languages. 'San' was actually the insulting word that the herding Khoi people called the Bushmen. [...] Harpending noted, 'The problem was that in the Kalahari, "San" has all the baggage that the "N-word" has in America. Bushmen kids are graduating from school, reading the academic literature, and are outraged that we call them "San." [...] one did not call someone a San to his face. I continued to use Bushman, and I was publicly corrected several times by the righteous. It quickly became a badge among Western academics: If you say "San" and I say "San," then we signal each other that we are on the fashionable side, politically. It had nothing to do with respect. I think most politically correct talk follows these dynamics.'"
^"Schapera is the author of the convenient term Khoisan, compounded of the Hottentot's name for themselves (Khoi) and their name for the Bushmen (San)."Joseph Greenberg,The Languages of Africa (1963), p. 66.
^Le Raux, Willemien (2000)."Torn Apart – A Report on the Educational Situation of San Children in Southern Africa". Kuru Development Trust and WIMSA. p. 2. Archived from the original on 13 January 2014.Although the people are also known by the names Bushmen and Basarwa, the termSan was chosen as an inclusive group name for this report, since WIMSA representatives have decided to use it until such time as one representative name for all groups will be accepted by all.
^Schlebusch, Carina M.; Naidoo, Thijessen; Soodyall, Himla (2009). "SNaPshot minisequencing to resolve mitochondrial macro-haplogroups found in Africa".Electrophoresis.30 (21):3657–64.doi:10.1002/elps.200900197.PMID19810027.S2CID19515426.
^N!ai; Marshall, John; Marshall-Cabezas, Sue; Miesner, Adrienne; Mbulu, Letta (2004),N!ai: the story of a !Kung woman, Documentary Educational Resources (Firm), Public Broadcasting Associates, Documentary Educational Resources, retrieved30 March 2024
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