The Bushman of the Kalahari Desert

As we left the Molopo Lodge we met Patat and his wife Mieta, two of the still surviving bushman of the Kalahari. Squatting down at their little curio shop next to the main road, he was wearing only a vel of a springbok around his hips with a little hat made of jackal skin covering his head.

Patat is part of an ancient tribe called the "Khomani San."

bushman of the kalahari, sacred, south africa

Over the last 3 000 years, humankind’s presence has been on the increase with the coming of white traders and hunters. Before the coming of these peoples, the Kalahari was the domain of the San (Bushman) . The San descended from the original hunting and gathering groups who have occupied southern Africa for some 150 000 years. During the last centuries, European settlers and other Africans absorbed or dispersed the San peoples and took much of their territory for farming and herding. Many San people perished from diseases and colonial violence. Today there are about 100 000 San in Southern Africa. They live in small scattered groups in the rural ares of Angola, Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Patat tells me that only the ‘grootmense’ (big people) can still speak the Bushman language, Khoisanid. Khoisanid is known as the ‘click’ language and is spoken by Bushmen and the Hottentots and is unique for its series of implosive sounds. He could still count from one to ten in the ‘click’ language.

The Bushmen are physically short, with pale ochre-colored skin and frizzy ‘peppercorn’ hair. Up until the 1900s the Bushmen practiced hunting and the gathering of wild plants. Hunting was an exclusively male pursuit. Using a simple bow and arrows tipped with deadly poison, produced from a powerful toxin taken from a beetle, the hunters caught large wild animals and small game.

The gathering of plants and small animals (beetles, worms and bees) which are essential for rounding out the Bushmen’s protein intake, was the job of the women.

Not having a particular leader, the groups recognized the authority of the eldest member of the group or of the individual with the greatest hunting experience.

The Bushman of the Kalahari traditional reliqious beliefs include the cult of a creator goddess who bestows rain, and to whom the souls of the dead go, and the cult of a destructive god (Gauab), the lord of the spirits and the dead, whom they supplicate with offerings and sacrifices so that he keeps sickness and ill-fortune away from the group.

Supernatural entities, like the spirits of the dead, are contacted during trances reached during dances around the fire. Lasting through the night, these ceremonies grow in emotional intensity under the power of the music and hand-clapping until the dancers reach paroxysm. The ‘shaman’ is also able to make contact with the spirit world during a state of trance when they ‘capture’ a spirit in order to use it, for example, to cure the sick.

Bushmen society is founded on the principle of altruism (unselfishness) and ignores classes of all types and even competitiveness. Only the elders, who are esteemed for their wisdom, are given titles of respect.

I took some pictures of these bushman of the Kalahari and bought 2 of his hand made gifts. How sad that humans had to rob this friendly, open-hearted tribe of their Kalahari land many many years ago……………

This bushman of the Kalahari desert now only has a few survivors left today, whereas before, many moons ago, they were roaming the ancient plains of south western Africa. We are witnessing the last chapter, before their extinction………

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