All over the world, the San hunter-gatherers of southern Africa are known as dainty, lithe people who once carried their water in ostrich eggshells, tracked large antelope and used arrow poison extracted from beetle larvae. The San developed ways of life that allowed them to adapt to the arid zones of South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Angola and Namibia, including the Kalahari and Namib Deserts. Archaeological research shows that the Kalahari people lived on wild food until recent times, maintaining ecological balance for thousands of years in an environment that hardly exists today. The San lived in small, widely scattered groups whose numbers were precisely tailored to the respective area and its resources. These included a variety of large and small animals as well as tree fruits, nuts, berries, roots and the so-called Tsama melon, the “mother” of the cultivated watermelon.
A project supported by the Jutta Vogel Foundation in 2009 and 2010 is now intended to help preserve the San culture, which is threatened with extinction, and pass it on to the younger generation. The material that has to be collected for this includes old storytelling traditions, but also current oral traditions, for example in the field of healing; this tradition also includes the political demands of the San, which they raised in connection with Namibia’s independence (1990). All this is collected by specially trained young San who use tape recorders and video cameras to interview older family and group members in their own environment. Some of these elders are particularly respected as healers who pass on their art orally and treat mental illnesses in particular, for example by laying on hands or guiding people into other states of consciousness. Still others occupy leadership positions in the social life of their community; their memories are important for understanding the political process in which the San citizens of the modern state of Namibia have become. The management of this extensive project is in the hands of Megan Biesele. She is Director of the Kalahari Peoples Fund (KPF). Megan Biesele is an anthropologist and ethnologist. For 39 years, her work has focused on the Ju/’hoan (Bushman) and their language Khoisan, the so-called “click” language spoken in north-eastern Namibia and north-western Botswana. The aforementioned San employees transcribe the tape recordings into written form and also translate them from Ju/’hoan (pronounced “Ju-twan”) into English. The resulting complex collection of San culture will enable the young San to remain aware of their own cultural heritage. According to archaeological findings, its roots go back at least 40,000, perhaps even 75,000 years – a period of time in which people lived in almost the same way as the Ju/’hoan until recent times. In the meantime, many San have realized how important it is that their children speak their mother tongue in the first three years of primary school and are familiarized with their own traditions. This is the only way they will be able to safeguard and continue their literary tradition, as there are currently only around 17,000 people in Namibia and Botswana who speak Ju/’hoan – a language whose very existence is under serious threat. Nevertheless, since Namibia’s independence, the Village School Project (VSP) has been contributing to its preservation and at the same time guaranteeing the San an equal position in Namibian society.
Further information: www.kalaharipeoples.org
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